Eat Your Heart Out

Berry lust. . .

Go into the Divine meadow, look at the fat blackberries shining like patent leather and multi-chambered, ripe and free of charge, and try not to pick them even though they're on briars that gaily hook and rip your flesh. Berry-picking is one of my greatest pleasures because a pie is inevitable. I now pick wearing long sleeves, long pants, and a glove on the picking hand. I have always liked pies: custard, peach, chess, pecan, cherry, key lime, coconut; also savory pies, and I can't get spiritually close to  people who don't like pie. There's nothing more Midwestern than a homemade wild-blackberry pie which I made this morning -- unless it's serving that pie to a friend.

Where to find blackberry briars? Look in sunny, grassy meadows on the edge of a Missouri woods. National Pie Day aptly falls on my birthday in the winter, and  I look for pie wherever I go (black bottom pie, chocolate cream, banana cream, lemon meringue, orange chiffon, apple, pumpkin) and have made piecrust expertly so many times -- the secret is, DON'T roll it out, merely press it into the pan -- I developed permanent muscle memory. The secret to a great berry pie slice is to avoid cornstarch and use Minute Tapioca instead. You'd never know it was in there, and the slices hold their shape. Also, use a cup more berries than the recipe calls for, and instead of dotting the top with butter, use small bits of coconut oil. My guest wanted to see the berry vines, so we went out and was surprised to see -- after picking them clean yesterday -- so many patent-leather blackberries just begging to be harvested again today.

Wonder

One bright autumn morning back in the old days when kids walked to school, at the corner of Marquette Street and Washington Avenue a tree I had never noticed before stood chrome-yellow and sunlit and beneath it on the leaf-covered sidewalk were glowing dark warm chocolate-brown nuts or pods, glossy like Hershey bars and finely oiled. Marveling, I lost track of time. It was my first experience of wonder. At last I pocketed one, crossed Washington Avenue, and half a block from school the bell rang and I ran so as not to be late to my first-grade class, because nobody then was late for school. All day I felt and gazed at this marvel I now know as a horse chestnut or a "buckeye," not edible but beautiful. The glossiness faded, but the wonder of that discovery is still with me and is part of why I live here today.

Well, today after too much work and no fun I came home and noticed that last night's little rainstorm had knocked some nuts and branches out of the shagbark hickory next to the house. I'd picked some nuts back in August, but now their outer shells had darkened and dried enough to fall to earth, split open and show, or fling to the winds, the ivory-shelled seed shaped like an acorn with pleats and no cap, containing the prized wild hickory nut.

So I began to gather them, and, getting my basket, poked around beneath the other shagbark hickories in my yard, gleaning dozens and then a couple of hundred hickory nuts, some still in their tailored casings. This was the most fun I had all day, and early tomorrow I'm off to the Divine woods with my basket to see if I can't gather a couple more pounds of wild hickory nuts to dry and then crack and eat, or stir into chocolate fudge, and to give away at Christmas, as the trees have given them to any creature who will stop and notice the bountiful earth beneath their feet.

Pickin' Up Paw Paws, and Eating Them

Paw paw fruits, a real treat right off the tree, are in season, and you can't buy them in stores; you'll find them--if the wildlife haven't got to them first--in short-ish trees in the forest understory. They look like pears but act like bananas and their sweet custardy centers taste like banana cream. If you get hard green ones, put 'em in a paper sack until they blush yellow, just like bananas; the blackened ones will be very very sweet. The pulp can be separated from the seeds, and made into pie, but more simply, cut them in half spoon up the flesh. They're Midwestern -- one of their nicknames is "Indiana Banana". A gatherer brought them to an outdoor lunch and then gave me three whole ones to take home. I did indeed have pockets full of paw paws, just as the song says.

Free Food

A shagbark hickory tree has a three-year cycle, producing lots of nuts, then some, then squat, and I didn't know that, so last year when the shade tree had squat I blamed drought, or squirrels, or myself somehow, and was a sad sack until I heard this year's nuts pinging on my roof and smacking the pump-house roof, and  beheld a whole darned treefull to harvest.

They cluster in twos and sometimes threes. I pick only those I can reach from terra firma or by standing on top of the pump house, the only time I ever do anything so foolish. Still I filled a basket.

Within the spicy-fragrant (like Old Spice shaving lotion) green husk is a small brown husk hiding the nut. The green husk dries to brown, splits, and must be removed, and then the tight-as-a-leotard inner husk must dry; by that time, it's Christmas. Needing a drying rack and loath to buy one I raided the garage and made a duplex drying rack out of a plastic organizer that just never fit anywhere in the house and a screen that no longer has a window to match.

Ultimately I will have about a pound of nuts to look forward to. Cracking my own hickory nuts at Christmas is divine.

Meadow Mushroom

Mushrooms are not animal, vegetable or mineral, but alone among all things in nature are in a class of their own. This year's soggy pre-summer weather, with thunderstorms afoot every evening, is great only for fungi, and a sprinkling of these, Meadow Mushrooms (Agaricus campestris), popped up in my lawn overnight, full-sized, four inches across with solid, inch-thick stems (which I removed for the photo) and fresh pinkish gills. I love wild foods that I don't have to hunt for but instead come to me. As much as I'd love to taste these (with bacon), and they're said to be edible (especially with bacon), glamour photos is as far as I'll go.

Morel Hunting Tip #2: Proper Gear and Dress

Mushroom hunters, not just morel hunters, carry wicker or balsawood baskets for their finds. As they carry the woven basket through the woods, spores from the harvested mushrooms are free to leak through the gaps in the basket and settle in the earth in order to make more mushrooms. Clever, eh?

This hunter is dressed for the early morning during spring turkey season, in a hunter orange jacket. He is also tick-aware and uses duct tape (what else!?!?) to seal his pant legs all the way to his shoes. Along with his basket he carries a stick -- just one -- to poke at the forest floor, especially around dead or fallen trees.

Morel Hunting Tip #1: Find Your Own Ash

Morel mushrooms love to grow around fallen and dead ash trees, and an ash tree can be identified by the striking "X" pattern in its bark. This is a fallen ash tree, so you see a horizontal version of the pattern. No, there weren't any morels here--yet. Morels like the soil to be warmed to about 50 degrees before they "fruit," and it's been too chilly. So if you like morels, go locate your ash trees (especially on a south-facing slope), and poke with a stick in the leafmeal around their trunks and roots every day for the next week, provided the temperatures warm up a bit.

Cress in Spring Water

At the end of a rocky 3-1/2-mile hike today, with patches of snow still on the ground, I came to a dark little spring with stepping stones across it, and its whole downstream was paved with fresh watercress. Stunned to see such green wealth amid the blue and gray I got excited, and wanted instinctively to grab some for salad but didn't have a bag or nothin', and wasn't sure if it was legal -- so all I took was a photo. And I thought about the people before me subsisting during the winters on dried corn, dried meat, and dried beans and how thrilled they must have been to see and get the first fresh greens: always watercress -- leaves both bitter and sweet.

Berry Lust

Picked a bowlful of wild blackberries today for the first time this summer from the thousands of blackberry briars in the meadow. One ripe shiny juicy blue-black one leads to another,  bigger, sweeter, riper -- berry lust fills me...the more I see, the more I want. Thorns rip my skin and clothes; mosquitoes halo me, poison ivy leaves molest me; but there the berries are for the taking! Irresistible! Divine! Enjoy thinking of the thousands who have done this before me through all time, happy to see sweet berries, picking the finest ripest ones to feed their families.

Love them in cornflakes and milk. Love baking berry scones (pictured) with blackberries just picked and warm from the sun. What berry-picking teaches: 1) Wait until it's ripe. It's no good until it's ripe. 2) You can't have it all. You can only have some. 3) Live in the now. 4) The free things in life are best.

As The Sun Slowly Sinks into the Mud. . .

I aint complaining! It's the January thaw about three weeks late; 74 degrees today. Holy to hear the rush of water through the property's waterfalls Number 1, 2, and 3 (there are five). Yesterday in the woods, the snow parted to reveal patches of chives on a north-facing slope. To me they are the second real sign of spring. So today, slipping and sliding in inch-deep mud, I harvested some chives and scissored them into a bowl of carrot soup dolloped with yogurt and eaten with homemade rye bread.

Even better news: A bluebird pair has inspected and approved my bluebird box. I saw them this morning for the first time and my heart became a big bouquet of roses.

And at 5:30 p.m., as I turned away from photographing this mango-colored sunset, I saw in the east a big beautiful pearly full moon. What a wonderful world.

Scent of Sassafrass

Sassafrass (sassafrass albidum) runs wild on this property and friend of mine unearthed a root so we could inhale its fabulous, characteristic fragrance: rootbeer plus anise. The wild foods book says that sassafrass has been found to cause liver cancer in lab animals, and we aren't supposed to steep the bark and drink sassafrass tea like great-grandparents did, for a tonic, back in the day; but just to ID it and sniff it and dream of being back in the day is fun on a July afternoon.
"Sassafrass" is a corruption of the word "saxifrage," which ultimately means "to break rocks." To ID it -- it's common --look for distinctive "mitten"-shaped leaves. Sometimes they're three-lobed and rounded, like Casper the Ghost throwing up his hands. This is a plant you won't forget.

Wald Hickory Nuts is Good Eatin'

Christmas is the day to crack nuts and eat 'em. The hickory-nut crop collected in October I kept out on the porch until they were nice & dry and the shell gives up the nut easily -- or as easily as it can considering I crack 'em open with a meat mallet -- you know, one of them you use to flatten chicken breasts, or beef for what they call tornadoes in the restaurants. The nut is sweet and tasty. Rather eat those than candy. Although if you got candy I'll force myself. And I'll thank you to hand me off that turkey leg. Merry Christmas.

Hen of the Woods

At the base of an oak tree, far into the woods, I found this "choice"-grade edible mushroom, Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa), my first ever. Was I thrilled! Recognized it at once from studying fungi manuals. Got the scale and weighed it in at 24+ ounces. Beautiful.

Wald Hick'ry Nuts

Today I hauled myself up to the pump house roof and picked shagbark hickory nuts, and here's the basketful, in their green husks. Some hickories' nuts are bitter, but shagbark is the one for eatin'. When the husk dries and splits, the kernel shows, a light beige. It dries out and turns brown. Inside the kernel is the edible sweet nut. (See the second picture.) Lots of folks say it's such a trial to get the kernel off it ain't worth it. But this ain't the year to waste food!

If you won't take that trouble for the nuts, at least gather the split husks and dry them out and throw a load of 'em on your fire next time you smoke or grill.

Usually I leave the hickory nuts for the turkeys and the squirrels (they throw the husks down from the tree at me), but how often in life are you gonna pick and dry out and crack and eat wild hickory nuts? And the real trick to cracking 'em is patiently wait till November when the kernels will be really dry and crackable. All in its own good time.