Meals Made with Focaccia

Meals Made with Focaccia

Dennis Weaver Dennis Weaver Jun 10, 2024

We love focaccia! It's flavored Italian bread--flavored with olive oil and Italian spices or anything else you want to add.

We're building a "focaccia library"--a listing of meals that you can make with focaccia bread. The goal is to find 100 meals that we can make with focaccia.  That's a big project but that's okay; we have lots focaccia recipes and ideas stashed in the archives.  

See "The Focaccia Library." 

 

focaccia

 

Why are we building a focaccia library?  Three reasons:

  • Focaccia is fun and there's so much for you explore and build.  We want to share what we've found.
  • Focaccia is a  great summertime bread and often lends itself to quick and easy meals.
  • It's affordable. The mixes cost only a few dollars and include a spice packet. It's easy on the food budget.

 

focaccia

 

But Merri Ann and I needed a break--a respite from writing about bread.  So we took a hike.

Medicine Lodge Creek, the Idaho Medicine Lodge Creek, is only an hour and half from home. That's it in the top picture. See the green mountain in the center--there's a canyon between the green mountain and the red rock mountain behind it. That's where we went hiking Saturday. The red rock mountain is part of the Continental Divide. We didn't get far--the trail ran out and bushwhacking is too hard.

A couple of weeks ago, when the snow was still clinging to the mountains, we drove up the Montana Medicine Lodge Creek. The Idaho Medicine Lodge Creek flows south, headed for the Pacific Ocean, but gets lost and disappears in the dessert below.  

montana medicine lodge

The Montana Medicine Lodge Creek Drainage, May 2024

The Montana Medicine Lodge Creek flows north and east and finds its way into the Missouri River and finally, the Gulf of Mexico. It's strange to have two streams back-to-back in two states and with the same name.

Bannock Pass connects the two and if you have a four-wheel-drive, you can drive over the Continental Drive and down the drainage on the side. (Take lots of gas.)  But take the right Bannock Pass. There's another Bannock Pass up the road at Leadore. That one you can drive in a passenger car.

Strange geography--two Bannock Passes and two Medicine Lodge Creeks..

 

Saturday, we drove out past Edie on the Idaho side.  The Edie school is obviously abandoned. I have no idea where the children in the area go to school--or if they do.
Edie school medicine lodge canyon
Edie School House (Abandoned), June 2024

This is lonely country. There are only a few hundred people in a large county. The census says there are 790 people with over half of them living in the county seat, in Dubois.

 

(Merri Ann's father was raised on a homestead one drainage to the east. When he went to school, he walked the railroad track 10 miles to Dubois.)

Medicine Lodge Valley

On Saturday, we exited at Edie and drove west over the ridge to Warm Spring Creek on the Idaho side.  Merri Ann's uncle had a ranch on Warm Springs Creek. This is the road going from Medicine Lodge Creek to Warm Springs Creek. 

This picture was taken almost on the ridge between the two drainages.  The road forks over the ridge with a weathered old sign pointing left that says, "Small 18 miles."

I asked Merri Ann, "Small is a town isn't it?"

She laughed, "It's more of a family." "She continued, "Big-time cowboys. Big into rodeos."

The road going down the ridge to Warm Springs Creek was rough--deep ruts and washouts.  I wouldn't drive it without four-wheel drive. 

We got home before dark. I still had time to work on the focaccia library.

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