A Conjunction of Planets, Friends and Flavors
The first day of winter 2020 arrived with promise. Venus and Mars twinkled over our neighbor’s cow pasture as the flock still dozed, eagerly awaiting the approach of a four-wheeler with pre-dawn lights on—their sign that hay would soon arrive and be spread out in a tidy line from a roller on the back of their farmer’s bovine breakfast wagon. From habit, they lumbered over and lined up along the neatly distributed row of hay and munched their way into awakeness.
That day was many things. It was the winter solstice astronomically marking the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter. Contrails appeared across the sky, again and again, putting my father in mind. His birthday was December 21st, and it’s been twenty-one years since he passed. A pilot, I imagine him now flying high overhead as the world awaits the much-anticipated conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. On that winter solstice day, this alignment forming a ‘Christmas star’ would be visible at twilight.
It was also our wedding anniversary—a date chosen because my mother had always wanted one of her four daughters to have a winter wedding. Recipes shared by two friends inspired the dinner I prepared for our celebration. Both involved a chuck roast—nothing fancier. The initial idea came from our Hartsburg friends Orion and Barbara Beckmeyer. They score the chuck steak, add Lea & Perrin’s sauce, and pat it down with a colorfully named steak seasoning they purchase from the Big C Ranch in Texas. The company’s seasonings have names like ‘Aw ….’, ‘Special ….’, and ‘Bull ….’ that is reputed to “send your taste buds reeling.” Once seasoned, the chuck steak is browned and left to simmer in the broth for 2-3 hours to fall-apart tenderness.
Suzanne Dunaway
Friends Suzanne and Don Dunaway who live in southwest France as well as Rome have their own recipe for a chuck roast dinner. Suzanne—a baker, cookbook writer, and illustrator—writes “We are crazy over Peposo, a slow-cooked Florentine stew that is peppery and winey.
Suzanne’s Recipe | Chuck Roast Dinner
Ingredients:
1.5 pounds chuck, flank, whatever is NOT expensive (no filet mignon as it has no flavor in this dish) cut into cubes and tossed with flour, salt, and sweet paprika
1 big sweet onion chopped fine
1 big carrot chopped fine
6 or 7 cloves garlic (it cooks away leaving a fantastic taste)
1 bottle of red wine
1/2 cup homemade tomato sauce
2 heaping spoons of fresh ground pepper
Broth if needed to top up stew as it simmers in the oven. Often not needed at all.
Directions:
In a large casserole dish, sauté vegetables until soft, add meat and brown quickly, add wine and tomato sauce, cover, and cook at 150 degrees for 2-3 hours.
Serve with soft or grilled polenta...even grits, ha-ha, and it’s great over fettucine.”
In the spirit of the night’s anticipated conjunction of two distant planets, I combined the two recipes, added a whole bottle of Merlot wine, and simmered the chuck roast in a large copper pot rather than bake it in our oven. As it simmered, I turned it every 30 minutes until it had properly stewed in its winey sauce.
Forty minutes before the meal was to be plated, I brought 4 cups of lightly salted water to a roiling boil and whisked in a cup of Braggadocio Organic Popcorn Polenta from the McKaskle Family Farm in the Missouri Bootheel. When it began to thicken, I turned the heat to low and continued to stir it. Finally, I added 3 tablespoons of butter and a cup of Yancey’s Garlic Cheddar Cheese (both optional).
When the meal was about ready to be plated, I realized that it was time to begin checking on Jupiter and Saturn. The window of time to observe them was critical because the conjunction in the southwest sky was low on the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere. With the stew and polenta on low, I walked out to the highest corner of our pasture, looked up at a bright crescent moon, and spotted a brilliant light to the west.
At that moment, Kit approached with a flashlight and reported that our neighbors Fran and Frank Thompson had just called to invite us to meet them at the end of our driveway where they had set up a tripod and scope for viewing the celestial event. So, across the grassy pasture, down our steep gravel driveway, over our boomeranging creek, and up to our country road we went. As promised, there they were, ready to share what their scope had captured.
‘The Christmas star’ seen around the world by stargazers was at this moment both otherworldly and unifying. The sighting instilled hope that after nine months of pandemic darkness, political bitterness, racial division, economic hardship, and food insecurity, help might soon be on the way. As Covid-19 vaccinations become more readily become available in the weeks and months ahead, the world might have a chance to heal in 2021. In my 75 years on planet Earth, I’ve gazed into the heavens at the stars from places as distant as a desert oasis along the Silk Road in western China and as close by as our Missouri country road. But I’d never before seen Jupiter’s moons or Saturn’s rings with my own eyes.
Like our December 21st anniversary dinner that combined recipes and flavors shared by good friends, my witnessing of this once-in-a-lifetime planetary conjunction was truly awesome.