hidden treasure

from our friends' house, you walk down past their garden, beyond the fire pit, through some high brush (stop to smell a may apple blossom), and turn right when you get to the clearing.



from there, you head down the hill, through the woods, where you'll find lots of wild edibles, in case you need a snack. sky is an expert forager, and he identified more plants than i can hope to name now.



cosmo and i especially enjoyed the trout lily leaves, and the lemony wood sorrel. in fact, cosmo abandoned his "cheesy crackers" for the tasty leafy greens, and that's saying a lot! at the creek, sky and cosmo turned over rocks to inspect salamanders, water lice, and some strange, gray water worm that only eyes as keen as sky's could spot.



after crossing the creek, we wound around another hill (stop to try on some velcro plant),



past a cow pasture, where (legend has it) one cranky cow hangs out, and she could decide to charge, so we had to be careful. we clung close to the tree line, passed through a wire gate, when suddenly, a small green building appeared--our destination: the children's library in the woods.



the door was unlocked, and we stepped into an utterly charming one room cabin, lined with old children's books. there were a couple of desks, some comfy chairs, and a wood stove. one wall was mostly windows, perfect light for reading. cosmo had selected a few books to donate, from his collection, so we wrote a note to that effect, and left it with our books on the checkout desk. cosmo cruised the shelves, found some familiar titles, and we nestled down to read some dr. suess that we hadn't seen before.



a rain shower made a lovely pattering sound on the tin roof, and we were happy to be sheltered in that magical space. when the rain let up, we checked out a few books, donned the paper rain hats that sky had crafted, and headed back down the trail. checking out books means we will for sure get to come back sometime.



cosmo rode in the back pack, for most of the walk back, but wanted to get down at the creek, and snacked on more sorrel on the hill. he also got to pick up a beautiful turtle in the meadow. by that point, the rain had picked up, and we needed to walk back quickly.



i'm still wondering if it was all just a dream.

one piece of evidence we brought home with us was this single morel specimen. i fried it up almost immediately, and we enjoyed it's wild and meaty flavor as an appetizer to this couscous dish, topped with freshly snipped pea shoots.



i can't share all my secrets, but i can offer this recipe:

Couscous with Raisins and Pine Nuts
from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

2 1/4 cups Vegetable Stock, store-bought vegetable broth, or water
1 cinnamon stick
5 cardamom pods (or more)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/3 cup raisins or minced dried fruit such as apricots or figs, or a combination (currants are nice)
1/3 cup hot water or stock
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1/2 cup pine nuts
1 1/2 cups couscous (i like to use the israeli kind, or "fat couscous" as we call it)
Minced fresh parsley or cilantro leaves for garnish (or, barely cooked pea shoots, if ya got 'em)

1. In a small saucepan, warm the 2 1/4 cups stock with the cinnamon, cardamom, salt, and pepper while you prepare the other ingredients. Soak the raisins in the 1/3 cup hot water or stock.

2. Place 1 tablespoon butter in a small skillet and turn the heat to medium. When it melts, add the pine nuts and cook, stirring occasionally, until they brown lightly, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

3. Place 2 tablespoons butter in a medium saucepan and turn the heat to medium-low. When it melts, add the couscous and cook, stirring, until it is coated with butter, about 1 minute. Strain the stock or water and add it all at once. Bring to a boil,then turn the heat down to its minimum. Cover and cook until all the liquid is absorbed, 5 to 8 minutes. Drain the raisins and gently stir them in, along with the pine nuts and remaining butter. Fluff with a fork to break up any lumps. Garnish and serve.

treasure hunting

fungal fever, morel madness, whatever you want to call it, we've got it! some of you may recall how i stumbled upon one solitary morel, at the end of mushroom season last year. that is the only morel i had ever found, and only the second time i've ever tasted one. the first one doesn't exactly count. my mom and stepfather gave me a bite of some they had found when i was about 13 or so. i wasn't sure i liked it, and they didn't exactly want me too, since they had found so few.

yesterday, cosmo took us out into the woods where his montessori class had taken their annual wildflower walk. he wanted to find a treasure hidden under a board in a bridge, that one of the kindergartners had told him about.



turns out it was a letterbox, and the first i'd heard of this charming pastime. after we checked that out, we continued walking on the trail, and i started thinking about morels, and mentioned to carl that sky had told me that the deer eat them. "sad, isn't it?" carl mused on the notion of the opposite of do animals feel pain? --can animals appreciate such distinguished culinary delights as morel mushrooms? approximately 2.5 minutes later, i saw one, right there, white stem glowing in the dappled sunlight, just on the edge of the trail! so, we wondered off the trail, looking for more (they say you never see just one).

i found a couple more, then carl found some. we gathered 16 total! it was all very exciting, though i wasn't completely sure they were morels. later, when we were enjoying our picnic lunch



(gawd! how i love purple sauerkraut on a sandwich!) we saw a couple of other folks exiting the woods with laden bags. carl stopped one of them and confirmed that what we had was indeed edible. a variety of morel commonly called "peckerheads" (lovely).

at home on the innernets, i found what i needed to reassure me that these were not false morels, and were known as some of the earliest morels of the season. sometimes they are called half-frees due to the way in which the cap attaches to the stem.

we had just seasoned our new wok, to a stunning shade of bronze, and decided the morels should be the inaugural dish prepared in the wok, even though cooking them required more of a saute than a stir fry.



it did the job beautifully, and we enjoyed our melt-in-your-mouth foraged feast with a gingered cauliflower dish (also prepared smashingly in the wok).

who would have guessed that the best woks (hand hammered, carbon steel) can also be among the least expensive. our dear friend, mr. kelty, tipped us off to that (thanks chris).

weirdest thing happened the next day...i was walking home from work, up an alley, off a busy street, and spotted a perfect specimen, of a different variety (one of the yellows, or creams?).



this one had popped up in the unlikely medium of of grass, weeds and gravel. i only found the one, then heard a few hours later that a neighbor had found one in her backyard! we headed back out to the woods that night and brought home 14 more!

what came to mind, when i was looking for them the second time, is that it seems i've been training my whole life for mushroom hunting. as a child, i looked down when walking, not because of low self esteem, i've just always been one to visually scour the ground, searching for overlooked treasures. I have been rewarded amply for this habit over the years; i've found cash, earrings, fossils, sea shells, beads, toys and various sorts of paraphernalia. my eyes want to scan a dappled landscape and find a slightly distinct dappled thing, camouflaged within that landscape. it is a great thrill, and i'm good at it.

i hear it's a good year for mushrooms. and a great year for amateurs.

p.s. even cosmo likes the taste of morels.