Greetings once again and happy January to all you B&C’ers out there with the sincere hope that we are all still sticking with our New Year’s resolutions and can continue to see positive change around the corner in our personal lives! Yeah, I know. I know that it’s already the 12^th of the month and that half of us have already knocked out a dozen bacon and mayonnaise sandwiches, left over holiday pies and all of those chocolate stocking stuffers have been consumed, but hey, don’t fret! Today, as some brilliant mind once said, is the first day of the rest of your life so finish the bag of kettle-cooked chips with your liverwurst sandwich and start counting calories and fat grams tomorrow!

After all, it’s all about you right? Totally!

Now speaking of it already being January 12^th, all of us here in the kitchens of TRR are a bit behind, (as usual), and have completely switched gears as the calendar continues to flip and the hardest working on-line publication in America increases its reach from sea to shining sea!

So, saying that, are any of you paying any attention to the race for the Republican nomination for President? Do you care about whom the GOP will put in the ring to go twelve rounds with the reigning champ and current resident of the Oval Office? Yes? No? Maybe?

Well we are paying very close attention to caucus and primary season because as you all know, we are at a pivotal point in this country’s existence from a national, international, economical, cultural and most importantly, a culinary standpoint. So while some of us turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the “meat and potatoes” of who our presidential candidates are and how our fellow citizens slice and dice them up into delectable elect-able representatives, we choose to take these weeks and months leading up to the general conventions and that first Tuesday in November very seriously.

Well, at least until pitchers and catchers report in mid February, March Madness kicks off or the International Food & Wine Show hits our area!

Kidding! Totally kidding!

Yeah, so what does that mean? Well I’ll tell you exactly what that means, “Mr. or Ms. American Citizen”! It means that the magic hopper, which bears the fruits of everything that is yummy and seasonal, will be packing its bags and joining the entire Basil & Chocolate staff (me and the Pastry Chef), on the B&C motor coach as we embark on a nationwide tour of Small Town, America and attend the state caucuses and primaries throughout the United States.

It also means that we will be paying close attention to how these fat cat candidates feel about many issues that affect every citizen throughout the country and who will survive the politics of it. After all, what matters in a lobster town in the state of Maine doesn’t necessarily mean a taco salad to anyone basking in New Mexico sunshine.

Oh, and we’re going to eat a bunch of local fare and completely blow our New Year’s resolutions through the tailpipes of the B&C tour bus. So, tell your friends and family all about it, put your vacation time in NOW with your boss and grab your knife and fork because this will be the tastiest trip you will ever take and we have plenty of room on the bus, baby!

So welcome to Iowa and the first leg of the tour- The Iowa Caucus! For the record, the differences between a caucus and a primary can get complex and arguments can easily breakout at any moment over which is better and who benefits as a result. With that said, as a rule of thumb, a primary directly elects national delegates to candidates by going to polls and casting ballots, while a caucus is a gathering of friends and neighbors of communities, counties and voting districts in order to hold meetings at schools, halls and in some cases people’s homes in order to elect delegates who will attend that party’s convention.

Easy enough, right?

Whatever, just pass the cornbread and if I hear “Build it and they will come” one more time, I’m so out of here!

According to our friends at “Taste of States, A Food History of America,” the cultivation of corn in Iowa is at least 2,000 years old. Native Americans had developed many varieties of it before the white man came to the prairies at swindled them of all of their land.

Ron Paul will mention this at some point, Rick Perry is looking up the word swindled and Mitt Romney is waiting to see where the majority lies before taking a stance on this one.

The introduction of soybeans from the Orient added another important crop to Iowa’s agriculture as they became a source of oil and a high-protein food during World War II.

Iowa, just in case you didn’t know, is a major hog producer and that has nothing to do with politics…or does it? Evidently, hogs and corn go together like Rick Santorum and the Hawkeye state’s evangelicals since swine consume a great amount of corn and Rick Santorum consumes at lot of Catholicism. Wait a minute, that makes little sense.

What’s more American than the apple? Right, nothing! One of the nation’s most famous apples was first discovered in Iowa by a Madison County farmer named Jesse Hiatt. The legend states that in the late 1860’s, Hiatt found an unknown apple seedling in his orchard and cut it down only to find it had grown again the following year stronger than before. Hiatt decided that if the tree was so determined to live, he would nurture it and when the tree began to bear its fruit, the apples did not resemble any other variety he had ever seen so he took samples of his mysterious apples, which he called Hawkeyes, to various horticultural shows and did so for years. In 1893, Hiatt entered four Hawkeye apples in a competition, came away with first prize and subsequently negotiated a deal with Stark Nurseries for the propagating rights for the trees which they promptly renamed “Red Delicious.” Sounds like Mitt Romney had ancestors from Iowa doesn’t it?

We found all sorts of great native fare throughout our visit in Iowa including “loose meat sandwiches”, all sorts of recipes containing Quaker Oats and of course corn bread, corn pudding, corn cakes, corn muffins, candy corn, Children of the Corn and tons and tons of cornmeal, corn relish and cornstarch. Did you know that John Wayne was born in Iowa? What about Ashton Kutcher and Elijah Wood? Me neither, I ran into all three of them lost in a corn maze the other night!

We also came across a great book of recipes written by Susan Puckett, titled, “A Cook’s Tour of Iowa” and we prepared what Susan refers to as “Bonnie’s Zucchini Casserole.”

We took one medium zucchini, sliced it, parboiled it and drained it along with one large diced whole tomato, half a medium onion, chopped and sautéed in one tablespoon of butter, half a green pepper, (chopped) and a half dozen strips of crumbled bacon and spread alternate layers of zucchini, tomato, onion, green pepper, and bacon in a greased one-quart casserole dish. Banged it for twenty minutes at 350 degrees, removed it and sprinkled it with grated cheddar cheese, some breadcrumbs and BLAMO!

We thought about changing the name of it to “Jon Huntsman’s Zucchini Casserole” because it did look and sound so good and it only served four people but we decided that Ms. Puckett had her reasons so we left it alone. Cheap shot, sorry Jon.

So as the first caucus of 2012 came to an end and our new friends from the great state of Iowa celebrated the results of one of the closest races in the forty years of the event, we said good-bye to Michele Bachmann, who ended her quest to be President and who was ironically born in Waterloo, Iowa but unfortunately only grabbed five percent of caucus goers’ hearts, minds and appetites. We also saw many surprises with poor showings from Rick “See You in South Carolina” Perry and the self-proclaimed messiah of the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich. The big surprise of course was the late surge that brought sweater vest wearing Rick Santorum to within eight votes of defeating GOP front-runner and fund-raising champion Mitt Romney!

This could make things interesting!

Comments? Ideas? Think you have the recipe that ends all recipes? Get it in a cornhusk, a cornball or a corn dog and get it to New Hampshire fast because we are still behind and by the time this gets to print South Carolina will be on deck! Besides New Hampshire is all about who finishes second anyway with handsome Mitt way ahead and we can’t wait to eat some of that “Live Free or Die” grub, so get it to us at [email protected]. You’ll be glad you did and we may just make you famous. Well, for a few seconds anyway.

The B&C motor coach is blazing a trail towards The Granite State so keep your eyes open for our next update in just a few days from the New Hampshire primary and then we’ll be caught up and coming to you LIVE from South Carolina where the food is fine and the candidate pool may be one or two lighter when it’s all over!

Until then, do great things, eat well and get out there and support your state’s caucus or primary.

Food…. It’s Why We Live