Raven Jake Dawes

Raven Jake in Bisbee

 

Raven Jake in Bisbee, AZ

 

Raven Jake on Main St, Bisbee

Lavender Pit copper mine

Well dang, folks! It's been quite a while since my last post and I'm going to have to make up for some lost time. As it happens, I just got back from an epic Arizona tour. Some friends of ours have started an ecocommunity near Bisbee and I've been hankering to check it out. Bisbee was a major mining town back in the day and they've still got a bunch of old buildings and Western charm - in fact the place looks like a cross between Nevada City and Diagon Alley. 

 

La Copine - New Restaurant in Flamingo Heights

 

Folks, there comes a time when camp food jut ain't gettin' it any more and you've got a hankerin' for something fancy. perhaps this impulse follows a soundbath at the Integratron. You don't know when it's going to hit. So if you're in the desert, but feeling like a gourmet Americana kind of meal is where it's at, Nikki Hill and Claire Wadsworth's new venture La Copine (Girlfriend) is it. Check out those vittles:

That eggplant parmesan is excellent, as is the tartine au saumon.  Save some room for dessert too. 

They tend to keep the hours they want to (a venerable desert tradition) and that includes a few months off for summer and the holidays, so check before you trek. It's also usually packed there and they don't take reservations. But once you make the journey, choice vittles await.

 

La Copine

848 Old Woman Springs Rd, Yucca Valley, CA 92284

(760) 289-8537

NOW OPEN: WED-SUN 2-7 pm

(walk-in only)

 

 

 

 

Reseasoning My Crusty Cast Iron

Y'all, I'm in the middle of a move and let me tell you, it's a rich voyage of discovery. Like King Tut's Tomb. Now I don't want to move anything that's going to go into go into another "maybe I'll fix this up someday..." pile. Time to roll up the old shirt sleeves and get to work. Here's some cast iron cookware I inherited that's pretty darned rusted (don't worry - no piece of cast iron is irredeemable. In certain quarters, it's a mark of shame if your iron's rusty, because it shows you ain't used it enough, but with some harsh chemicals and hard scrubbin' ANY piece of iron is salvageable. 

Seasoning iron is a Zen activity at best and a hot, tedious, stinky, time-consuming chore at worst. If you've got to do it anyway, might as well fill up that oven. Gather up all your iron, it ain't possible to over-season your pans.

Over there is your secret weapon - flax oil. 

The common wisdom, and what I've been doing all my life, is to wipe your new pan down with some canola oil and throw it in a 400 degree oven for an hour or so. Good to go. 

THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG. I have seen the light, and I've got to thank Sheryl Canter, for setting me right.

After getting your cookware as clean and rust-free as humanly possible, put it in a 200 degree oven to get thoroughly dry and "open the pores" of the metal to better absorb the oil.

Flax oil. Flax oil only.

Rub a thin layer all over the pan, put it face-down in the oven and crank it up to 500 degrees. Cook it for an hour, then turn off the heat, and let it cool down in the oven. 

YOU DO THIS SIX (6) MORE TIMES

And your house smells like you're  frying fish.

Don't try putting on a thick layer, it will just be a gooey mess.

Seven times all up. Gonna take days.

But it's worth it. The final product turns out perfectly non-stick with a lovely shiny coffee brown polymerized hard-as-nails surface.

Note the difference in that fajita pan - just a black mirror (and a long ways from its scabby beginnings.) All of it looks better than new. Like I said, if you have to do the work anyways, git all your irons in the fire! 

 I haven't had a steak in a long while, but this recipe using a cast iron

pan on the stove has me thinkin' about it. Comes highly recommended.

In the meantime, I think I've found my perfect pan for grillin' veggies.

Cambria also did this experiment, and found that one of Sheryl's commentators had some more sound advice:

"The final thing I do for skillets after seasoning is to cook some "throw-away" eggs in olive oil. Scrape them around the entire bottom of the skillet with a good stainless steel spatula. I use a Dexters (which are collectables in their own right and made in the USA!). The eggs will stick at first. Scour the skillet with kosher salt and oil. Repeat two or three more times. After that you’ll find the eggs slide around like Teflon."  

So I'll be giving that a shot too, and see what happens. Bon Appétit, y'all.

Old Spanish Trail Association Conference Returns!

After several years, it's time for the Old Spanish Trail Association's Annual Conference to return to California. This time we're in Barstow from October 5-8, 2017. Needless to say, I'll be there all weekend, doin' some bloggin' and visitin.' If you see me, come up and say "Hi!"

 

Raven Jake Goes House Shopping

What do y'all think of my new house? This beauty just came up on the market, but I'm about $2.7 million light. Too bad, too because besides being the ultimate luxury Watusi Village   I've always wanted, it also comes with some fine African art and a flock  of flamingos. 

This house, which ought to have a name if it doesn't already, was the abode of  Lindi Biggi founder of Loving All Animals . Besides
being the ultimate party house with two full-sized patio bars, an amazing swimming pool and a small putting green, also provided a perfect habitat for her animal rescues which included a pack of small dogs and as many as 80 exotic birds. There's an aviary right outside the master bedroom that would make a perfect sloth habitat, but maybe that's just me. You wouldn't have to be an animal lover to live there, but it sure wouldn't hurt. 

73179 Joshua Tree Street, Palm Desert CA

... is going to be my new address after I win the lottery. But until then you can still see ol' Raven Jake in less fancy surrounds. 

     

 

Fiesta at the San Gabriel Mission

Happy 246th Birthday, Mission San Gabriel! We came down to represent the Friends of the Michael White Adobe at the Old Spanish Trail Association booth. Alex King's going to be here all weekend, so if you're around, make sure you drop in, say "hi" and learn a bit about the trail. We also ran into our old friends Helen and Christina Salazar, which was a special treat. The mission will be holding the fiesta all weekend, including food, rides, music and a car show, so c'mon down, if you can stand the heat. 

Book Review: Peter Pan

Last summer while I was reading some of the classics, Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie came on up the list and I decided to revisit it.  Be assured folks, that the version I read as a kid in the '50s ain't nothin' like the original. I think kids were a lot tougher back in the day, and I also think that that tuning up the story to fit the times is all for the best.

Now let's pretend for a moment that you're trying to bridge some uncomfortable truths with your child like racism, particularly towards Native Americans, is so culturally ingrained that in the early part of the 20th century no one questioned depictions of Indians as "bloodthirsty savages." Or maybe that narcissistic sociopaths can be charming as all get out, and they'll smile the whole time they're cutting off your face. Or that young girls on the edge of adulthood are especially prone to being exploited by these nefarious types because of their desire to please, to be thought responsible and because they get a little "boy crazy." Well then, Peter Pan is like a case study. Check out this bit about population control in Neverland:   

All wanted blood except the boys, who liked it as a rule, but to-night were out to greet their captain. The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting the twins as two.

That's right. Peter Pan killed kids - the ones he lived with and took care of - for rules infractions or "getting too old." Not in a metaphorical "you have to leave Neverland" way - just straight shanked 'em. 

So here's the thing: in the original Peter Pan, Peter ain't exactly the hero. Captain Hook, the mermaids, the native tribe, Tinkerbell and the crocodile all try to kill some or all of the kids, but Peter Pan is the one who kidnapped them out of their beds and held them hostage. None of them would'a needed rescuing if they hadn't been put in harm's way to start with. Not that the Darling parents were so great either - most of the time the kids were just left with a large dog, and on the night that the children were abducted, the dog was tied up in the yard while the Darlings took off to go to a party up the road. Course I guess around that time, they were all just lucky not to be working in a coal mine or textile mill. Kids were tougher then...

Read it for yourself: Peter Pan 

Side note: This movie version  from 2003 ain't bad. Has a lot of the original in it, but without the cringey parts

Book Review: King Solomon’s Mines

Y’All, in my interests of being historical, plus my natural thriftiness, I’ve been readin’ more and more public domain books. And some of the books I’ve been reading are by a feller named H. Rider Haggard, who besides being quite prolific, was also way ahead of his time in terms of fantasy/adventure stories. For starters, he invented the lost world genre.  He also wrote very extensively about his time in Africa.

This revelation happened in a thrift store (a lot of my adventures either begin or end in that kind of establishment) where I found a "Great Illustrated Classics" version that was illustrated by Pablo Marcos, and the pictures were pretty darned cool.  That guy just has a flair for it, as you can see here. The text? Not so much - it was a 4th grade reading level book with all the good parts cut out or translated into elementary school English. So I looked online for inspiration.  

Haggard ain't so well known today, but back in his time he was prolific and an inspiration to hundreds of fantasy genre writers who came after. Allegedly, he and his brother had a £5 bet going over whether or not he could write a yarn good as Treasure Island, which came out a few years before in 1882. I don't know if he won or lost that bet, but King Solomon's Mines was a best seller, and I don't think it's actually ever been completely out of print in the last 132 years.

Now as I mentioned before in my “Cons of the Classics” post, a lot of what we would consider to be unacceptably racist/misogynistic in 2017 was just how things were in 1885. A case could be made that in some of his more racist/misogynistic moments, he was only describing social mores and not exactly offering an endorsement. That said, ol’ H. was way ahead of his time in terms of being non-racist and non-misogynistic with a few regrettable paragraphs thrown in there that can be safely skipped over without losing much of the story.

So where things get thorny is that he’s got a real nationalistic Hail Britannica thing going on, very common for his times. Pandering to his readers? Maybe, and that comes up again in his treatment of religion. He’s waaay more open-minded than the Christianity of the day would get behind, and offers a lot of time to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and indigenous beliefs in later books. I think he might have had Theosophical leanings… He also has some very well-developed African characters and female characters. Not so much in King Solomon’s Mines, but definitely in She and in Nada the Lily, which has no white characters, besides the traveler who hears the story but has no lines.  Many of the black characters in his books are basically redshirts (In Star Trek, red-uniformed security officers and engineers who accompany the main characters on landing parties often suffer quick deaths). Nowhere near as bad as in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series (I think Burroughs probably was a racist) and the justification is that most of these guys are Zulu warriors who have a low life expectancy anyway, but in the Raven Jake revision, I’d like to see this more equitable. Also, there’s a certain amount of trophy hunting going on, and we’ve seen the results of the ivory trade, and that’s rather uncomfortable. Leave them elephants alone, ok?

So those are the caveats. If you’ve ever seen a film version of King Solomon’s Mines, just erase that piece of crap from your memory. Rider ain’t like that. His writing is incredibly cinematic, considering this book was pre-motion picture, and his whole opus was pre-CG. I’d like to see Peter Jackson take on the She series, but I’m gonna leave that for another post. If y’all saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and wondered who Allan Quatermain was, he’s a big-game hunter based in South Africa who is persuaded to lead two other explorers into the African interior, trying to find the expedition sponsor’s (Sir Henry Curtis) treasure-seeking brother, George Neville. They’re accompanied by Curtis’ friend Captain John Good and a few African guys that Quatermain has hired to be porters and guides.   

Generally, “porters and guides” is code for “redshirt,” and that happens, but it is also revealed that Umbopa, one of the guides, is actually Ignosi, hereditary chief of the Kukuana tribe. Their mission shifts from finding the missing brother, to restoring Ignosi’s kingdom (the lost world ruled by a despot and an evil witch) and finding the missing diamond mine. In the meantime, Good falls hopelessly in love with a beautiful African girl, Foulata, who is tragically killed while saving the adventurers. Rider muses that it’s all for the best because mixed-race families didn’t really have a place in either British or African societies, and in this case I think he was doing more than pandering to his readership – this is both racist and misogynistic and the Raven Jake Mental Edition just chops those offending paragraphs right out.

Now in my plot synopsis, there isn’t a whole lot of appealing stuff that you probably can’t wait to read, but let me tell you folks – this story is awesome. It’s funny, it’s got fights and narrow escapes and witchcraft and battles, brave warriors, lost worlds and treasure. Allan Quatermain came more than 100 years before Indiana Jones and he’s a lot more likable. J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones) stole some of their best material from H. Rider Haggard, so if you’re a fantasy reader, you’re going to see Easter eggs all over the place with this. The African characters aren’t filler – the characters are fully fleshed out and in subsequent books like Allan Quatermain (1887) or Nada the Lily (1892), which is a fictionalized account of the life of Shaka Zulu, the character of Umslopogaas, a Zulu warrior friend of Quatermain’s, is one of the best drawn, wisest, bravest and most interesting of them all.  I’d like to see H. Rider Haggard make a big comeback.

As a small example of his self-effacing sense of humor, here's  Quatermain explaining in a letter to his son why he is writing down this adventure:

“Second reason: Because I am laid up here at Durban with the pain in my left leg. Ever since that confounded lion got hold of me I have been liable to this trouble, and being rather bad just now, it makes me limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion's teeth, otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your mauling? It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that.”

Read it here:

King Solomon's Mines

Allan Quatermain

She (Who Must Be Obeyed)

Nada the Lily

Raven Jake's Heart Attack

Alright folks, don't be deceived by that perfect blood pressure on the monitor behind my shoulder. Couple of weeks back on January 25, I had a heart attack. I had a heart attack tryin' to be healthy, so you see what clean livin' will bring. Now as Raven Jake die-hards know, I have a genetic disposition to depositing plaque on my coronary arteries. That's a gift I'd like to give back, but over the years, I've had four cardiac "incidents." This was my first actual heart attack (I think) and I got it walkin' up a hill near my house.                                              

Because many Raven Jake stories are cautionary tales, like "don't do the fool thing I did" I include this for your consideration: People havin' a heart attack ain't in their right mind. Their brain isn't getting enough oxygen, they're in pain, and they're full of adrenaline.  I had one thought "Get Home!" and that's what I did. The rational smart thing is to call 9-11, call someone for help, stop walking. I'm alive in spite of myself. So if you find yourself walkin' up a hill and you can't get yer breath and you think an invisible mule mighta kicked you in the chest - stop right there, amigo. It ain't getting better.

Anyway, my bro Anthony who lives across the street took me to Glendale Adventist Medical Center, the best place to have  heart attack, and they got down to business. Shout out to Sylvia, who is a terrific nurse, and the whole team for making sure Jane got a cot to sleep on for the three nights we were camped out there. When you have a heart attack, your body produces an enzyme called troponin which builds over than 24 hours and then fades away. Mine were way up there, so my cardiologist, a fantastic guy named Sanjay Sharma, did an angiogram. 

What he found is that while my bypass from two and a half years ago is holding up great, there's a blood vessel on the front that ain't doing so well and is clogging up some. Not enough to kill me, but enough to give me angina.  And folks, let me tell you it's brutal. Now I'm not a guy who talks politics (I've got more friends that way) but I'm here because of the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Care Act. Without that, I don't even know what would've happened with my pre-existing condition. I'm home now, but I've got a slow way back, so keep Raven Jake in your thoughts. 

Pendleton Blankets

This here blanket started me on a path I wasn't even lookin' for. Jane wanted to get a blanket that looked like this poncho I bought 

in Mexico back in the '70s. Y'all have seen it. It's my favorite poncho, but a little the worse for wear.  She probably thought she'd be able to swap it out without me knowin'. Heh. For reference, it's over there to the right. I'd know.

Now thanks to this birthday present I've become a Pendleton snob 100%.  Y'all can read about the company's history here. I didn't even know I liked wool blankets until I got this one. I like everything about this dang thing and it's the only blanket I'd even consider sleeping under. Sometimes I even travel with it. As you already know, Raven Jake is a thrifty guy, but price point per quality is good too - Pendleton is expensive, but the quality of its blankets is superior (Can't comment on the clothes, I don't have any). They're soft, not scratchy, they breathe and they maintain the perfect temperature - not too hot, not too cold. Looks sharp. What's more, they're made in America.

I had thought that this blanket pattern was called Jicarilla after New Mexico's Jicarilla Apache Nation, but it ain't, and what's more they don't even make this style anymore, whatever it's called. What's even worse than that was that after 10 years the edge binding on it was so old and ratty it looked like a piece of lace. Does this mean Raven Jake had to give up his favorite blanket? Hell no. 

At this point, Pendleton Woolen Mills Customer Service rep Christian Mattson came to my rescue. Down here in SoCal, I set to with a seam ripper and got all the moth chow off my blanket and took it to the cleaners. Packed it up in a UPS box and sent it off to the wilds of Oregon. Couple months later, blanket comes back lookin' great and you can bet I'll get another 10 years out of it at least. 

  In the meantime,  I couldn't exactly go without having a Pendleton blanket, so Jane  sprung for another blanket of my choice and the one I picked was Badlands. Comes in a queen size and a certain amount of the proceeds goes to support the National Parks. Win-win. Now I ain't on the Pendleton payroll, but I'm a big fan and I also have to give a shout out to Christian and the team for making a satisfied customer even more satisfied.  Pendleton supports the National Parks and the American Indian College Fund, a couple of causes I am in full agreement with and I try to vote with my wallet when I can. So if you're wonderin' what to get your favorite hard-to-please desert rat, this ain't a bad way to go. 

Update: Karen Berry, Pendleton's social media maven, corrected me on the identity of my blanket. It's a Peñasco, named after a small town near Taos, New Mexico.  Thanks. Karen!