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Tuesday, April 19, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Sticky Malaysian Chicken with Pineapple Salad, Wednesday,
March 16, 2022.
Break the fast
with class
By DANIEL NEMAN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chocolate-dipped strawberries.
Keep it Sweet
Easter’s gone, but that’s no reason to
shelve candy recipes
By DANIEL NEMAN
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
I
t is a fact universally
acknowledged that
chocolate Easter
bunnies taste best when you
start by eating their ears.
It’s part of the whole choc-
olate-for-Easter thing, a long-
standing tradition that no one
seems to know how it began. My
own personal guess, based on no
specialized knowledge of the sub-
ject whatsoever, is that people
eat chocolate for Easter because
chocolate tastes good.
It’s as ﬁ ne a reason as any, and
better than most. Pretty much any
reasoning involving chocolate is
better than most.
This Easter, I resolved to make
four types of chocolate candies
to give as Easter gifts to family,
friends and loved ones, or just
to serve at your own home. And
I also made caramels, because
some people actually prefer cara-
mels to chocolate.
I know. I don’t understand it,
either. And I can’t ﬁ gure out how
I married one.
I began with chocolate-cov-
ered orange peels. Whenever I
have chocolate-covered candied
orange peels, which isn’t nearly
often enough, I think of my
friend Skip.
Skip is a real-estate agent who
showed me around Toledo, Ohio,
when I ﬁ rst moved there. Before
taking me to available houses,
he stopped oﬀ at a local confec-
tionary and bought a bag of choc-
olate-covered orange peels.
I knew then that we were going
to be friends.
Chocolate-covered orange
peels have always struck me as
sophisticated and elegant, the
kind of treat that only appeals to
a reﬁ ned palate. That is not what
they are like at all in actuality —
you should see Skip and me —
but it is a pleasant thought when
you are cramming them indeli-
cately into your mouth.
See, Candy/Page B3
I am not Muslim. So
when I thought about Iftar,
I’m afraid I had some
misconceptions.
Iftar is the evening
meal that breaks the daily
fast during the month
of Ramadan. The ninth
month of the Muslim cal-
endar, Ramadan is a time
of prayer and reﬂ ection and
restraint from sin and plea-
sures of the ﬂ esh. The holy
month begins with the ﬁ rst
sighting of the crescent
moon, around April 2, and
ends around May 2.
Those Muslims who are
able are obligated to refrain
from eating and drinking
between dawn and sundown
every day throughout the
month. The predawn meal,
called suhur, is counted on
to provide energy to get
through the day. The eve-
ning meal, iftar, is meant to
satisfy the day’s hunger.
I had assumed that a cer-
tain group of dishes would
be served for iftar, at least
for cultural reasons if not
speciﬁ cally religious ones.
This is why assuming is
generally a bad idea. It
turns out that for iftar you
can serve basically what-
ever you feel like eating.
And now that I think
about it, that makes sense.
Ramadan is 29 or 30 days
long, depending on the
year. No one wants to eat
the same few prescribed
meals for that long. You
could serve cheeseburgers
for iftar, or a bucket of
fried chicken.
Still, many families
serve food from their cul-
tural backgrounds for at
least some meals during
Ramadan. It’s the food they
grew up with. It’s comfort
food. It tastes like home.
Most of the Muslim fam-
ilies in the United States
came from the Middle East
and Southeast Asia. For my
iftar meals, I focused on
recipes from those regions.
I began with the familiar
baba ghanoush, a smoky
eggplant dip beloved
throughout the Middle East
— and in more recent years,
throughout the world. More
complex in ﬂ avors than
hummus, it is served in
much the same ways: with
wedges of pita, as a dip
for vegetables or, frankly,
licked oﬀ the ﬁ nger you just
dunked into it.
Don’t be embarrassed.
Everybody does it. The
ﬁ nger adds ﬂ avor.
Eggplant is the pri-
mary ingredient in baba
ghanoush, of course, but
what makes it so silky
and addictive are the
other ingredients that are
blended into it: yogurt, but
not too much, garlic, tahini
and lemon juice.
I made it two ways, by
running the eggplant under
a broiler and by cooking
it on a grill. If you have
one, the grill is deﬁ nitely
the way to go — the actual
smoke from the ﬁ re is far
more pungent than the
vaguely smoky taste that
comes from charring the
eggplant skin in the broiler.
See, Ramadan/Page B2
On the big screen: A history of La Grande’s Erickson Building
GINNY
MAMMEN
OUT AND ABOUT
The Erickson Building at 1311-
1313 Adams Ave. in downtown
La Grande has held tightly to its
origin and to the identity of Mr.
Erickson, but the following bits
and pieces seem to unravel at least
some of the mystery.
The name and address of the
building appeared in the 1905
City Directory and again in 1915
in The Observer. Further research
located a William Ericson, born in
Sweden in 1848, who had come to
the United States with his family
in 1876. He was living in Iowa
in 1880 working as a railroad
brakeman. Another source told of
him coming to La Grande when
the railroad was being constructed
and then remaining here with his
wife, Lydia. After leaving the rail-
road, William and Lydia became
proprietors of the hardware store
located on the corner of Elm and
Adams mentioned in the Bohnen-
kamp article, while also farming a
large acreage.
(Note: Ericson appeared
in some records and Erickson
in others, but the information
was obviously referring to the
same man.)
Not only were the two men
competitors in business, they were
Fred Hill Collection
This photo, from around 1906-7, shows the Erickson Building, 1311-13 Adams Ave.,
which initially housed a department store and, since 1917, has been a movie theater.
related by marriage. Mr. Ericson
was a brother-in-law to Mrs. W.
H. Bohnenkamp. Like many of
the other entrepreneurs in the late
1890s Ericson decided to invest
in Adams Avenue real estate and
constructed the one story building
at 1311-1313 Adams. The ornate
brick front wasn’t added until
1902. According to La Grande’s
application for the National Reg-
ister of Historic Places, the “struc-
ture was one story, in a Gothic
Revival style, with a center gabled
pediment ﬂ anked by three pin-
nacles on each side.” Although
this later remodel was a more
ornate building than others on
Adams it still featured the street
level glass display windows for
commercial use.
The Fair was the ﬁ rst business
known to have been located in the
building. In 1897 Fred Geible was
the proprietor of this department
store, selling notions and various
clothing items. He remained here
for 18 years until, in 1915, when
Fred moved the business to the
Steward Block, in the location
previously occupied by the Peo-
ple’s Store.
Ericson moved to Spokane
and by November of 1915 it
was announced that Fredrick D.
Haisten, owner of the property at
1311-1313 Adams, was moving
into the building. By December of
that year, F.D. Haisten Furniture
Store appeared at this location.
Haisten was a good busi-
nessman, however, and when he
saw an opportunity for a better use
for his building, the furniture store
closed its doors. This was on Dec.
16, 1916, and soon the Colonial
Theatre occupied this location.
During the 1910s moving pictures
were becoming quite popular and
most probably he had heard an ear-
lier rumor that Meyers and Leiter,
president and vice-president of the
La Grande Evening Observer, who
had leased the Arcade Theatre,
were looking at building a new
structure in La Grande especially
designed for the moving pictures.
On Saturday, July 28, 1917,
The Observer reported that the
Colonial was closing for a month
for repairs. It seems that Meyers
and Leiter were going to “install
a new screen and motor generator
and make a thorough overhauling
of the theatre.” By September, Tri-
angle Film Distributing Corpo-
ration had closed a contract with
Myers and Leiter for their pic-
tures to be shown at the newly
renovated Star Theatre. The Star’s
opening night on Saturday, Sept.
14, 1917, featured Bill Hart in the
movie “The Square Deal Man.”
After the furniture store closed
its doors, the ownership of the
building and the theater changed
numerous times. Whether Haisten
sold the building in December of
1916 or months later, by August of
1917 the owners of the Star The-
atre were J.B. Sparks and his wife.
By 1920 Fred Haisten, no longer
owner of either the building or
theater, moved with his family to
Arizona. In 1921 the proprietors
of the Star were Joseph D. Meyers
and E.H. Ford and by 1928 Arthur
E. Bowen had replaced Ford.
See, Mammen/Page B2