My father’s
side of our family is from upstate New York.
Tupper lake, Herkimer county, VanHornesville and other towns named for
the native tribes that made up the Adirondack region that i cant pronounce let
alone spell.
Every summer
we would spend a week or two with my grandmother as well as aunts, uncles and
cousins. While our home life here in
Massachusetts was conservative and tame our New York tribe was anything
but. I was old enough to know what a
cocktail party was and just socially literate enough to be able to accurately
interpret conversations the adults would have the morning after. I loved those visits. Hitting the throughway heading east was
always sad for me.
Missing my
family really meant missing my uncle Dick.
He took me fishing and his wife at the time would take me on walks
beside the rocky creek that ran along my grandmother’s yard. It was from this creek that i first got a
taste of fly-fishing. I carried the
wicker creel, uncle Dick caught and cleaned the trout and together we cooked
ate our catch for breakfast. As strange
as it may sound, there is nothing like a native, brook trout for
breakfast.
Some years
later my father had become very ill and my mother and I decided an upstate trip
would put a little wind in our sails. A day
or two after our arrival uncle Dick decided we should visit his hunting
camp. Aunt Caroline , my cousins
Richard, Adam and my mother were traveling to camp in the Jeep Wagoneer, while
uncle Dick and I were in his beat up, ol powder blue ford pick up. I was delighted to have time with him and I
think he knew I needed it.
Uncle Dick is
a world-class watercolor artist.
Painting and teaching art is all he has ever done professionally. Add to a celebrated career as an artist the
fact that a few years ago he was inducted into the Ohio Northern University’s
football hall of fame, you begin to get a picture of the kind of man he
is. He works with wood, journals, paints,
cooks, dreams, lectures, listens, watches, hunts, fishes with a fly rod, loves, ties trout
flies, raises, repairs, addresses, constructs, defends, and
corrects,.
We made our
way through the tree-lined road and as he drove he instructed. Occasionally he would slow down and point to
a particular stretch of road and explain why a particular scene would make a
good painting. You or I may have not
noticed a difference but after he explained about color, composition and light
it all made sense. Time with my uncle
enabled me to see the landscape differently.
The following lesson has enabled me to view differently the landscape of
my heart.
“God and
family first” Uncle Dick said. He then repeated it, making sure that I was
paying attention. I was. I always listened when he talked. “God and family first and then this is the
order, art, fly fishing and hunting.
Those are my passions and those are my pursuits. I have unapologetically built my life around
these things and it is with these activities that I fill my days”.
He would carry
on talking about the virtue of finding one’s true passion and the importance of
filling our lives with those things. I
was a teenager and I have never forgotten this lesson. It has shaped a great deal of how I think and
helped to form my world view.
For me its
God, family and friends first, then music, fly fishing and cooking. These items
are the deep call and longing of my heart.
They enable me to say no to things that do not fit and they are the
ever-growing sunrise on the horizon of my years.
What are your
days made of? What are your passions?
Are you pursuing them? What’s the
chore, responsibility or “day job” holding you back? Just curious…
In exchange for your thoughts I offer uncle Dick’s Stroganoff
recipe. Here it is in his own
words. Enjoy.
Ingredients
1 onion, diced
or sliced thin
1 lb. lean
hamburger (venison or beef)
1 lb. good
smoked bacon
1 can
condensed mushroom soup
1 pint of sour
cream
Optional:
canned or fresh sliced mushrooms
Brown onion in
a pan. Add more if you like it, less if
you don’t. Remove the onions from the
pan. Sometimes I add small cooked
mushrooms, or fresh sliced mushrooms or any other kind as long as they are well
cooked.
Brown the
hamburger. I always use venison, but
it’s easier and less costly to buy beef hamburger at a store, rather than
harvest a deer. More fun with the
hunting.
Drain the meat
and remove it from the pan.
Cook the
bacon. I like bacon, but like the deer,
much less costly to just buy a pound of bacon.
I like the $6 kind, and apple smoked or at least smoked. Pan fry, microwave or otherwise cook very
crisp, so it crumbles in your hand.
Drain, pat dry, and throw out all the bacon grease. Crumble the bacon into ½ inch pieces.
Mix the bacon,
onion, and hamburger in a pan and add a can of condensed mushroom soup.
Stir in at
least a pint of sour cream.
Serve hot over
anything. I like flat egg noodles, but
rice, toast, spaghetti noodles or almost anything works because the taste is so
great you’ll be eating it out of the pan.
I never make a
small batch because it freezes really well and you can add greater or lesser
amounts of ingredients as you like. I
learned this from a friend in college and have never had it fail. We also like it with canned venison, but you
do have that deer problem. You could try
beef, steak or almost any beef, which I have tried. I like lots of sour cream, not the low fat or
anything like that. The bacon is the
key, I think.
