I had a non-recipe beef stew I’ve made for years, but this past summer I came by a recipe that was so delicious I kicked the other method to the curb. It really is all about the gravy and personally I think the combination of browning the meat and the wine is the key.  As soon as the September weather arrived, I made this for dinner.  It’s a hit for the whole family.  So without further ado:

BEEF STEW

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp celery salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 lbs stewing beef

1/4 cup oil.

Mix the flour, celery salt and pepper, dredge the beef in flour and brown in the oil in a stock/soup pot.

Add 1/4 cup chopped onion and 1 clove minced garlic and cook another five minutes. Then add the following ingredients and cook for 1 1/2 hours on low:

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp marjoram

3 cups beef broth

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

1/2 cup red wine.

After an hour and a half, add vegetables and cook until vegetables are tender.  I add 1 cup chopped cabbage, 2 large diced potatoes, 2 cups chopped carrots, and 1-2 cups chopped turnip.

Serve either with dumplings or our family favourite – fresh rolls.

2 medium onions chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 (4 ounce) cans chopped mild green chilies

2 teaspoons ground cumin

3 (16 ounce) cans great northern beans, undrained

6 cups chicken stock or 6 cups canned chicken broth

4 cups chopped cooked chicken, to taste (Use canned chicken for speed)

Throw it all in a pot. Simmer until the onions and garlic are tender. Serve. I am alllllllllll about fast and easy. Add Cayenne pepper if you like some heat and a can of diced tomatoes if you’re not afraid to turn it a bit red.

Garnish with Monterey Jack cheese

Mary Connealy

Cowboys in the old West loved their homemade biscuits. Nothing completed a meal better and the lighter and fluffier the more they piled them on their plates. They even stuck some in their saddlebags to munch on later. Biscuits went with everything or just to eat by themselves, depending on the circumstances.

• 5 cups flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1 teaspoon soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 pkg of yeast
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1/2 cup oil

Add yeast to warm water and let sit for 10 minutes. Mix dry ingredients and add liquid ingredients to mixture. Mix well. At this point you can cover and store in fridge for up to 2 weeks and take out however much you desire when you want it. When you want to make biscuits, you don’t have to knead. Just roll on a floured surface, cut out the biscuits, plop in a pan, and set on top of a warm stove for about 10 minutes. They’ll rise a little there and a little more as they bake in a 375-400 degree oven. Cook for 10-15 minutes or when brown.

These will melt in your mouth! Nothing better with a big bowl of chili or stew.

In case your mind has slipped a cog since Friday, here’s a reminder about our Great Soup Round-Up. We sure don’t want you to miss it.

Each day from Monday, Sept. 27th to Friday, October 1st the Fillies will post two or three recipes that feature all the fall weather things that warm your bellies–soups, chili, bread, and side dishes galore. Ah guarantee we’ll have your mouth watering.

So if you’re not sure what to feed  your big strapping cowpoke or little buckeroo, head over to the Junction. This is your chance to get some new ideas or remember some old ones you’ve forgotten.

And don’t forget….the Fillies will be back to their usual blog schedules come Monday, October 4th.

Thanks to everybody for making my favorite wagonmaster Jeff Warburton so welcome this weekend!  Rebecca Booth’s name got drawn for a pdf. copy of my inspirational wagon-train novella,  Hearts Crossing Ranch.

Please  e-mail me at tanhanson@aol.com so I can get your copy off to you.    Thanks again to all of you.              

Tanya Hanson says:  Our Teton wagon train adventure last month was perfect from start to finish, and much of the wonder came from wagonmaster Jeff Warburton, a real-life cowboy, a hard-working host,  and a true gentleman. I couldn’t wait to invite him to Wildflower Junction to meet you all. Please make him welcome. I’ll draw one name from this weekend’s commenters for a pdf. copy of my city-slicker wagon train novella, Hearts Crossing Ranch.                          

Jeff, tell us about yourself.

I was raised on a large family owned cattle ranch in northwestern Utah.  We ran cattle in Utah and Nevada on purpose and sometimes in Idaho when the wrong gate was left open.  We spent the spring and fall working cattle, summer raising hay to feed the cattle and winter feeding the hay to the cattle.  

  The town we lived close to was small.  It had a post office, a school, a church and a little gas station.  There were about 100 residents in or around this town counting my family.  It was 2 to 2 ½ hours to a town where there were grocery, clothing, hardware stores, etc The school was a two room schoolhouse taught by a husband/wife team.  Most of the time I was there, there were about 36 kids from kindergarten to tenth grade.  After tenth grade, we had to move away from home to finish the last two years of high school. 

After high school, I went to Utah State University in Logan, Utah, where I obtained a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree.  While at USU, I taught in the horsemanship classes for 7 years and spent 5 summers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming working on the outfit we now own.  That was where I met my wife, Cindy. 

After college, I went to work with my wife’s family in the saddle making business.  The business was called Sawtooth Saddle Company.  I spent 3 years learning to build saddles but then realized my skill lay in business management and sales not saddle making.  I traveled all over the West and Midwest selling saddles and promoting our products. 

In 1997, we had the opportunity to buy Teton Wagon Train and Horse Adventure, part of the outfit we worked on in Jackson Hole, Wyoming while we were in school.  We teamed up with my brother, Chris, and his wife, Audra, to make it all work.  In 2007, we bought the Bar T 5 Covered Wagon Cookout.  In 2008, we were awarded the contract for the National Elk Refuge Sleigh Rides. 

Cindy and I have 5 kids:  Michael, 19, Jessica, 16, Jordan, 14, Brenden, 11, and Treven, 9. They all work in all aspects of  the business as well but their first love is the wagon train.  They are all very outdoor and horse oriented. 

What did you want to be when you were a little boy?

I always wanted to be a cowboy. 

How old were you when you rode a horse for the first time?

I don’t know for sure.  Some of my first memories are riding with my Grandpa and with him leading the horse. He died when I was two.

 How do you and your crew learn everybody’s names so fast?  I mean, it took y’all about ten minutes.  And you have roughly 300 guests a year in a ten-week summer!

I am glad that we looked that smooth when we were learning everyone’s names, but I am,  pretty sure it took us longer than ten minutes..  Our employees are mostly college students as we can only offer most of our employees seasonal employment.    We definitely had an exceptional crew on the wagon this summer.  That crew wanted to be there and liked to interact with our guests so it came natural for them to learn everyone’s names.  The crew definitely cared and were concerned with each guest as an individual. 

Other than Peggy, the 81-year old “moose killer” on our trip, who is another amazing city-slicker that you recall from your years of wagon train adventures?  (All right, readers.  No animals were harmed on our trip.)

There are so many I could mention.  Of course, there were you & Tim and Roberta & Tim.  You guys are pretty amazing.    We have been so very blessed by the association we have had with folks who come on this trip. 

We have a lady that has been on our trip for 36 consecutive years.  She is such a sweet lady.  She is now afraid that this year was her last trip.  It won’t be the same without her. 

We had a gentleman and his wife that came 6 or 7 years. The practical jokes he has played on our crew and us, on and off the wagon train, are the stuff of legend.  They have become close friends of ours and he has even been on the trip as a crew member.  He has also provided many high quality pictures for articles on our trip.

Jeff, we’re a bunch of romance readers and writers here in Wildflower Junction.  So I gotta ask: was it love at first sight for you and Cindy?

I saw Cindy for the first time in June of 1988.  It was her first year and my second working in Jackson Hole (on the outfit we now own).  Cindy got there that summer before I did.  Just after I got there with another employee,  we were checking in with the boss and his wife.  As we were taking to them, I saw Cindy walking by.  I thought I was discretely watching her go by and no one would notice my interest.  I thought, “Wow!  This is going to be an interesting summer!”  

When I turned back to the boss, he was pointing his finger at me and he had a very stern look on his face.  He said, “Jeff, you leave her alone.  She is barely eighteen years old and I told her folks I would protect her from cowboys like you.”  Then he laughed and laughed. 

I was 24 years old at the time and when I heard she was 18 years old.  I decided that she was too young for me.  For the next couple of weeks, I liked what I saw when I was around her but I kept telling myself that she was too young for me.  I even took her roommate out on a date. 

I then left for the wagon train and stayed on the mountain for 2 weeks.  When I got back, I was supposed to have another date with her roommate.  In the interim, her roommate had decided to exclusively date one of the other hands. 

Cindy was very patient with me.  She didn’t push me at all.  She was just around me being herself.  From this point on, I was in Jackson for four days and in the Tetons on the wagon train for ten days.  The four days I was around her, I would start thinking that maybe she wasn’t too young for me after all.  Then, when I was away from her, I would talk myself out of the whole thing.  

At that time, our outfit participated in the rodeo in the wild horse race with many of the other outfitters in Jackson Hole.  I was on the team of three when I was not on the wagon train.  I got kicked by the wild horse we were trying to saddle during the event and ended up with a broken ankle.  I had to have surgery to pin the bones back in place in my ankle and couldn’t go back on the wagon train and ended up working in the office for the rest of the season. 

Cindy was very attentive and helpful.  She was there when I got back to my hospital room after surgery.  (That was when she met my parents.  They were impressed with how she helped take care of me.)  After I got out of the hospital, I couldn’t bend it far enough to change the bandages  by myself, so she helped.  It wasn’t long before we were officially a couple. 

I’ve told her for years that if I hadn’t been so bull headed about the whole age thing, I wouldn’t have had to break my ankle. 

What’d you guys do for your first date?

I don’t know what to consider our first date.  The night I broke my ankle, she went with me to the rodeo and was with me behind the chutes.  If I remember right, we had talked about going for ice cream with the rest of the crew after the rodeo, but I went to the hospital instead. 

 What’s your “happily-ever-after” with her going to be like, in your golden years?

 “Happily-ever-after” for me is to continue doing what we are doing now.

 What kinds of things do you like to read?

I read lots of Louis L’Amour books.  I think I have read them all but I continue to read them over and over.  I like to read histories and mysteries as well.

 What’s your favorite activity with that lovely family of yours?

Horseback riding and working with the horses.  When the horses are in the pasture between seasons, we like to go walk through the herd and watch them.

 What’s your favorite of the chuck wagon recipes the chuck cooks make for the wagon-riders?

I like all of it (except the green beans).  My favorites, though, are the baked beans, the barbequed chicken and the biscuits and gravy.  

What’s life like the rest of the year, after the wagon train summers are over?

We have the Bar T 5 Covered Wagon Cookout that starts the middle of May and runs until the end of September.  We have shows six nights a week.  My brother, Chris, his wife, Audra, their kids and Cindy work there all the time.   The rest of my family works there when we are not on the wagon train. 

The  first part of October is when we tear down and clean up the Bar T 5.  The rest of October, November and the first part of December we take care of our horses and fences, prepare for winter and get ready for the National Elk Refuge Sleigh Rides.  The sleigh rides start in the middle of December and run every day except for Christmas Day until the first Saturday in April.

 In April, we tear down and clean up the sleigh rides and get ready for the Bar T 5 to start again.  Our crew starts showing up for the summer around May 1.  It takes us about two weeks to get the Bar T 5 set up.  Then it is time to start the wagon train all over again.

 Tell us about the elk refuge adventures.

The National Elk Refuge borders the town of Jackson here in Jackson Hole.  .  Last year we had approximately 7500 head of elk wintering on the Refuge.  We take visitors for an hour long ride out on the Refuge among the elk in sleighs  drawn by a team of draft horses.  It is awe inspiring to be out with the large numbers of elk that are there with the beautiful Tetons and Gros Ventre Mountains as backdrops.  Other animals such as eagles, hawks, swans, coyotes, ducks, geese and sometimes wolves are also on the Refuge. 

Looks like an ancestor helped rescue the ill-fated Donnor Party.  Who is your favorite historical Western figure? 

My favorite historical Western figure is probably the trail driving cowboy.  The boys that brought the herds out of Texas to the railroad. 

 If you could have dinner with three Western legends who would they be? What would you like to ask them?

Chief Washakie – Chief of the Shoshoni – I would like to ask him what it was like before all the settlers showed up.

Broken Hand Fitzpatrick – Mountain Man and Wagon Master – I would like to ask him what it was like to be a mountain man and wagon master.

John Slaughter – 17 year old Trail Boss and cowboy – I would like to ask him about the trail driving days.

I think you did a bit of everything during our trip, even teaching me how to rope a steer. What is your favorite task? What is the least?

My favorite task is getting the new guests off the bus on Monday.  My least favorite task is having to load the guests on the bus on Thursday. 

What three cowboy ethics fit you best?  

I think the three that fit me the best are:  Take pride in your work, Ride for the brand and Remember that some things aren’t for sale.

You’re right, Jeff. Those fit you best. Thanks so much for spending the weekend with us here in Wildflower Junction. And don’t be a stranger, ya hear?

Ah swear to my time, the Fillies are taking a week off again! No matter how much ah work to keep their noses to the grindstone, they still manage to rule the roost. But ah guess there’s no use in complaining. We’re not going to leave all you little darlins in a lurch.

The Great Soup Round-up runs from Monday, Sept. 27 thru Friday Oct. 1st. Each day we’ll post two or three recipes.

SOUPS

CHILI

BREAD

SIDE DISHES

Yes siree,  these larrupin’ recipes will have your mouth watering in nothing flat. And what better for cool fall weather than a big pot of something that’ll stick to your ribs and warm your bellies, not to mention the cockles of your heart. I kid you not. We’ll have you reaching for your mixing bowls and pots and getting down to business!

These recipes will give you a passel of ideas about what to feed those cowpokes of yours. So, drop by every day to see what’s featured.

You won’t be disappointed!

Colonel Jean Alexandre François Le Mat was a Paris-born aristocrat–and Creole physician–who designed firearms in his spare time. On October 21, 1856, he was granted United States Patent No. 15,925 for a unique design of the first multi-shot percussion revolver with an 18-gauge grapeshot barrel fixed beneath it. The lower barrel was 5 inches long, and an extension could be attached to it to form a true shotgun. The shooter could fire nine cartridges then, with just a flick of the thumb, hit his target with a single blast of buckshot.

It still wasn’t a fast-loading or easily transported weapon. The LeMat was designed as a single-action weapon. Shell casings were removed with a slide rod ejector. That means no flipping open the cylinder and flinging out the empty cartridge casings like you see on TV.

The pistol was mostly a novelty until the start of the Civil War, when Col. Le Mat, a longtime Southern sympathizer, offered his invention to the newly formed Confederate government, who placed an order for 5,000 of his pistols. When he couldn’t find an acceptable manufacturing facility in the South, he traveled to France in hopes of having the weapon manufactured there.

The journey almost ended before it began. He booked passage on the British mail packet Trent, which was stopped and boarded by the Federal warship San Jacinto. The two Confederate officials traveling with LeMat were arrested. Despite his Confederate ties, Le Mat was not detained.

After a couple of false starts, the Birmingham Small Arms Company in England ended up producing the guns, which were given to Confederate officials in Britain and France, who then had them slipped through the Union naval blockade that barricaded the Confederate coasts.

It wasn’t necessarily an ideal weapon for an army. The LeMat Revolver didn’t take the Confederate standard .44 caliber percussion (and later centerfire) cartridge that was the standard for Confederate handguns. That meant anyone who carried a LeMat that hadn’t been converted to use the standard ammunition also carried specialized cartridges. Since the unloaded gun weighed 3.1 pounds, all that brass was a lot of extra weight to haul around.

The original .40 caliber above 18 gauge model was used by the Confederate Army until the end of the war. When the Confederate Navy saw the Army’s new weapon, they ordered a lighter .35-caliber pistol equipped with a 28-gauge (.50 caliber) shotgun barrel. But the contract was soon canceled.

Famous Confederate officers like Major Generals Braxton Bragg, J.E.B. Stuart and Richard H. Anderson carried a LeMat.

Le Mat’s guns continued to be popular until the late 1870s, when they suddenly and unexpectedly went out of fashion. Le Mat died shortly afterward, in 1883. But that doesn’t mean you’ve never seen one. Since reproductions are still being made, the LeMat has appeared often in Hollywood.

• TV Gunslinger turned Sheriff Johnny Ringo, carried a LeMat revolver. Played by Don Durant, Johnny Ringo aired for one season (38 episodes) in 1959-60.
• Jayne Cobb, a character from the television series Firefly and the movie Serenity, uses a handgun based on the LeMat Revolver.
• Dr. Theophilus “Doc” Algernon Tanner in the Deathlands series of novels has carried two different LeMat revolvers.
• Bruce Willis’ character in the movie 12 Monkeys was equipped with a LeMat for a time-traveling mission into the past to assassinate a bioterrorist.
• Swede Gutzon is armed with a LeMat in the film The Quick and the Dead.
• Inman, the main character in the novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, carries and uses a LeMat.
• Bufe Coker, a character in both the novel and miniseries Centennial carries a LeMat revolver.
• Ezra Justice in the novel “The Justice Riders” written by Chuck Norris uses a LeMat revolver.
• Red Dead Redemption, a video game set in the dying days of the old west, includes the LeMat revolver as an available weapon in the later part of the game.
• Jonah Hex, a film based on the comic, with Josh Brolin playing the title character, uses a pair of LeMats in the film.

If you want more information, here are some of my sources:

     > The LeMat Revolver by Floyd Largen – originally published in the October 1996 Military History magazine

     >Civil War Revolvers Of The North And South by Robert Niepert

Giving credit where it is due, the Johnny Ringo pictures are from Don Durant or FOUR STAR Entertainment Corp. The Jonah Hex picture was from FirstShowing.net.

Hello Darlings,

You’re going to get a special treat on Saturday.

Mr. Jeff Warburton, a bona fide wagon master, will pay us a visit. Miss Tanya met him last month when she and her husband signed up for their own wagon train adventure around the Teton Mountain Range of Wyoming.

Mr. Jeff brims with good stories, tall tales, beautiful manners, quick wit, and amazing outdoor skills. He’s all things a good cowboy should be. Miss Tanya reckoned y’all would like to meet this real-life cowboy and gentleman up close and personal so she arranged for him to ride over for a visit. Wasn’t that real nice of her?

If you agree, saddle up and come along. Follow the trail to the Junction. Put up your feet and sit a spell.

We won’t even ask you to do any work. Ah promise.

In just a few week Wyoming Lawman will be on the shelves. I thought it might be fun to do a blog on the “story behind the story.”  Some books have deep historical roots. They’re based on the life of a real person, or maybe the story comes out of a real event and a “what if” question.  That’s not the case with Wyoming Lawman. The historical elements that make this book unique are all small, but they still came straight from historical research.

I ran into my first historical roadblock in Chapter Two.  I wanted my hero, Deputy Matt Wiley, to give flowers to the heroine.  The book is set in 1875 Wyoming in October. The Union Pacific had a huge presence in Cheyenne, and flowers could have been shipped in . . . but this is October. And I wanted her to get a big, beautiful bouquet. That led to research on greenhouses. The earliest greenhouse I could find was later in the decade, and it was in Missouri.

If this book had been set a few years later, flowers would have made perfect sense. But in 1875, I thought it was too much of a stretch. What else could he give her as a token of his appreciation?  A fellow writer suggested hair ribbons and I went with it.  Those ribbons worked perfectly. Not only were they a fitting gift, they show up throughout the book. If I’d cheated on the history, I’d have missed a great opportunity for a recurring motif.  

Another historical tidbit is Pearl’s name. She started off as a secondary character in The Maverick Preacher. When I name secondary characters, I go to the Social Security website where it lists the most common baby names for a year. I enter 1882 or whatever year fits, then mentally pick a number between 1-50. Bingo! That’s the name I use unless it rubs me the wrong way.  Pearl’s name was that random. Already I’ve gotten comments from readers about how much they like a name that’s so old fashioned.

And wouldn’t you know it? The imagery is perfect for her character. Just as real pearls are formed from a grain of sand, a wound of sorts, my heroine is recovering from an act of violence in the past. 

The last serendipity involves the Texas Rangers. I made the hero a former Ranger before I did a lick of research for this book.  He’s an honorable guy, a defender of justice. Being a Ranger fit his personality. When I started researching, I discovered that in the time Matt would have worn the badge, the department had corruption issues. For a while they were the Texas State Police.

My conception and the history didn’t match at all, but this is where history–if respected–gives a fictional character more depth.  Not only is Matt a former Texas Ranger, he’s a man who took grave exception to the corruption and fought it. That fight gave him yet another reason to go to Wyoming with his little girl.

So that’s some of the “behind the scenes” stuff for Wyoming Lawman. Here’s the back cover blurb:

Matrimony? Never again for deputy sheriff Matt Wiley. The only good thing from his first marriage is his daughter. His little girl might want a mother, but Matt knows that no woman should have to deal with his guilty secret, or his anger at God. He’ll do his duty, serve the town of Cheyenne and keep his distance. Yet when courageous single mother Pearl Oliver comes to town, watching from the sidelines isn’t an option–especially when Pearl lands herself in danger. His heart, Pearl’s life and the safety of their town are all at risk. Only the love and faith he thought he’d left behind can help him win his way to happily ever after.

Available for pre-order at Amazon…