Wild Food

It's alive. No really.

You already know that when I'm under stress I fantasize about baking. It's a little vacation in my mind. Specifically, I'm on a crazy mushroom hunting trips, with rented pigs, in France. I gather delectable wild fungi and craft them into truffled soufflés and such. Note: the gathering and wildness are important details.

Now that I have kids, especially TJ my little nature lover, I have rediscovered the delights of foraging. Back in May, I spent a weekend at my parents' house in Wisconsin, and hunted for wild asparagus. It was really hard to find, but once we did find some, oh heavens was it delicious. This weekend, I was back at their house, and the asparagus plants were all feathery-bushy and easy to spot. So I drew a map of their neighborhood, with wild asparagus patches clearly marked, and next spring when they are sprouting they cannot elude me again. Ha! I will feast!

I also brought home a bucket of wild hickory nuts, and I thought about bringing home grapes to make jam, but in the end I just ate a handful off the vine. Is this level of excitement about found food weird? Maybe I watched too much Little House on the Prairie when I was younger.

Now I’m experimenting with sourdough. I have this seething jar of yeastiness on my counter and when you stick your nose in there it smells just like San Francisco, but you’re afraid to get too close to it because IT IS ALIVE. I mean it really is. There are little yeast organisms in there eating flour and farting out bubbles. Which utterly fascinates me. In fact, I am making sourdough pancakes for dinner tonight, and I had to remove some starter for the recipe and then feed what remained. That's what you call it: feeding.

Timothy's preschool class has been observing the seasonal changes, particularly how the animals are behaving. They discussed at length what it means to act "squirrelly." Maybe that's all I'm doing. With the government shut down, and a new era beginning with two kids in school, and a whole lot of decisions to make on limited data...maybe I'm acting just a bit frenetic, storing up comforts and following my deepest instincts for coping with change and uncertainty ahead.
--

This blog post courtesy of DawnMarie, who appreciates a good pizza on the farm, but does not do her own hunting and gathering as far as I know.