Shopping My Lawn

It's no longer smart to buy fresh greens at the store twice a week, so I hunt the lawn and surrounds for dandelion greens -- strong-tasting but palatable if "massaged" with oil and then vinegar; thanks to friend Jody for the tip. And while hunting -- needing about 3 ounces for a serving, because the greens break down radically -- I stop and see: a morel.

Haven't seen morels on this land for years, despite scouring the deep woods for 'em every April, and here on the side of the lane was one insolent little perfectly formed morel, and then I saw another, and another, a total of six, and then after getting scissors from the house and cutting them I looked again and found two more. I'd have missed them entirely had I not been hunting dandelions and spring onions that very day and hour.

The romantic cliche about finding morels in the woods had over the years displaced in my mind the fact that morels, being sociable, liking disturbed earth, prefer to pop up next to a well-traveled path. These occupied an area about four feet square alongside the gravel driveway.

I told a friend and she said I had been aligned with God. For the next five days, I cased the spot for more. Morels don't regrow. They decide when, where, and how they'll pop up, they're all up at once, and either you're in their moment or you're not. Sliced and sauteed them.

Herbs in January

In January, hunting green herbs seems like an oddity and luxury, but every winter here the land grants me free chives -- unfailingly, and as much as I can scissor. Often the clumps are sticking up through snow, the only greenery in a black-and-white landscape. Today there's no snow, and hunting (I needed two ounces) felt like heaven.

They grow wild mainly in areas where the soil is disturbed by mowing, and seem to like slopes, the wetter the better.

How generous these onion-grass plants are! In winter this grass enhances a butter sauce for fish or gets sprinkled on carrot soup. By mid-March, pinkish-white bulbs have formed underground: spring onions, which I pull and use like scallions, both the green and the white, and while I do that I awaken worms and nightcrawlers whom I'm delighted to have as company. In early autumn when the onion "heads" are formed, I can harvest their tendrils, which are garlicky.

Some people want to, and fight to, clear their yards of onion grass! Why?

Gift Wrapped

A full inch of rain had barely woken or greened anything because it's been so dry. Dry means no mushrooms, not since late April, and no chanterelles for sure -- normally the woods is paved with big ruffly yellow ones, and my lawn, when soaked in summer, is host to as many as 17 different fascinating Missouri fungi. Today I saw for the first time that the juniper bush under which grew, annually in autumn, 20 pounds of rare Hen of the Woods 'shroom has been pulled out: sigh.

The walk led me to the former mushroom capital of my woods where there wasn't even an LBM ("little brown mushroom," as in "Never eat little brown mushrooms") to be seen; it simply hasn't been wet enough. As for any hunter, some years are plentiful and some not. I turned to retrace my steps and saw these Dreamsicle heads of Chicken of the Woods, beautifully fresh, ribboned with orange, yellow and white. I took the smaller head, about the size of a cabbage (see the glove, at the very bottom, I put in the photo, for scale) and within half an hour the fronds were roasting to a crisp in my toaster oven preparing for my Sunday guest.

Why didn't I take the big Chicken, or both? Didn't need it, and conservation means don't rip everything up out of the earth. Why not take the big Chicken and freeze it for later? Freezing fungi dehydrates the best out of it.

The Smiling Bowl

Early, early, early, between first light and 7 a.m., or the humidity is oppressive, and you must wear long pants and a long-sleeved high-necked shirt and boots, plus gloves, to pick blackberries from the briar bushes. And you wait all year to pluck them gently (because only the ripe berries are really worth eating) from the thorny twigs, as many as are ripe. It's an annual ritual around July 15 and it's one reason life is worth living.

Even more so if Patrick, who mows the lawn, comes by with a bowl he got at a yard sale. It's a Buffalo China restaurant-ware bowl, the classic with the green stripe around it that looks like an endless smile (it looks like that to me, but I am not normal), and he said when he turned it over and saw the stamp he remembered I like Buffalo china, and here is the whole day of July 15 in a bowl.

Free Chives

Nobody likes carrots for Christmas. Nonetheless we have them in the fridge anyway. Often one or two bags of peeled baby carrots. Given all the other holiday treats, raw carrots take last place. Yes, we had good intentions, but still have carrots nobody is eating. What to do?

Make carrot soup, of course. Chop em up, cook 'em down, add spices and cream, and puree.

But a bowlful isn't quite appetizing enough because it's carrots after all, so maybe a dollop of plain yogurt goes on top. Not inspired to eat it yet.

Then I remember, during gray winter days, the one surefire greenery in the woods (often in the border of the woods): chives. You'd never see them in a Wisconsin winter, but they grow freely in beautiful green clumps in Missouri. Scissor the tops as if giving a haircut, and more will grow. Free chives, an endless supply! Maybe there are some near you!

Cut them up, sprinkle them over the soup. Now you have carrot soup fit for the holidays.

Winter Weather Forecasting with Persimmons

I stole these wild persimmons, but I agreed with myself, and don't you, that whoever makes the most effort to get them deserves them? It was only a few and for a good cause: cutting them open, then halving their brown, almond-like seeds to get a forecast of winter weather.

Last year I cut wild persimmons open expecting to see a knife, fork, or spoon shape and saw nothing like that, only seeds parked in their centers. This year I did more homework, finding that folklore enshrined in The Farmer's Almanac says the insides of persimmon seeds show either a knife, fork, or spoon. The knife shape indicates a winter with cold, knife-like winds ahead. The fork indicates a mild winter. The spoon indicates a winter with heavy, wet snow (the spoon resembles a snow shovel).

Slicing vertically in half a one-half-inch persimmon seed required a clamp and a very sharp knife, but I got the answer. Used a special lens to take the photo close-up so there'd be no mistaking it:

A First Time for Everything

This is not a Hostess Snowball; it's a mushroom, a Bearded Tooth (Hericium erinaceus) and for a couple of years I've been reading that Bearded Tooth tastes real good, ranking up there with morels and chanterelles as "choice" eating. Found it in my woods on a fallen log along with several others, but took only this one and a smaller one about an inch and a half in diameter. I'd read that they tasted good only when extremely fresh, and turn sour as they age.

So in the kitchen I brushed off the bits of dirt and took a knife to it. The "teeth" are very soft, softer than coconut, and the inner part about as firm as a button mushroom's interior, except it's branched, like the interior of a cauliflower. It smelled good, like mushrooms. Not knowing what else to do--I'd never eaten one or been served one--I sliced it into little steaks.

Bearded Tooth in the pan.

Next I threw butter in a pan and let it sizzle, laid the mushroom slices in, and cooked them through. Never, never eat raw mushrooms, especially wild mushrooms. Many contain toxins that evaporate when they are thoroughly cooked. Sauteed in butter is my favorite. Added a little salt. The Bearded Tooth slices gave off a lot of water before they browned.

Next, the test phase. Before eating any wild mushroom or serving any I always taste a tiny, tiny bit. I'm not allergic to any mushrooms I know of, but a taste is enough to cause a reaction if one's going to happen. My guests do the same test. I swallowed and then waited a few minutes. When I did not choke, vomit,  or die, I ate some more.

Bearded Tooth is the most delicious mushroom I have ever eaten. It's sweet, in the way lobster meat is sweet. I'd rather eat Bearded Tooth than morels or even the chanterelles I like better than morels. I'd rather eat Bearded Tooth than Chicken of the Woods, or Hen of the Woods, or oyster mushrooms. I love first-time experiences!

Or I love most of them. On my way out of the woods with my basket of shrooms a buzzing wasp somehow got caught in the shiny hoop earring I was wearing in my left ear. It struggled and couldn't find its way out. I swatted at it and then pulled the earring out. By then it had stung my earlobe. It swelled and hurt like an s.o.b. and I prepared to transmit my GPS position and die like people on Mt. Everest do. When it didn't happen I kept mushroom hunting, forced by the swelling to remove a stud earring (I wear four in each ear). It hurt for two hours. Now I'm fine. If you love the woods, got to take the rough stuff with the good.

"Tastes Like Wald Hick'ry Nuts"

Come a certain week in autumn it's World War One around here with "Bang! Bang!" on the cabin roof and people jumping out of their skins, but it's hickory nuts raining down from the shagbark tree. Can't help but think of Euell Gibbons, a famous wild-foods expert who late in life did commercials for Post Grape-Nuts cereal and, in his Texas accent, bawled the immortal lines, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible," and "Tastes like wald hick'ry nuts." He'd be proud that I finally tasted wild hickory nuts from my own tree. They tasted not at all like Grape-Nuts. Furthermore, Gibbons did not die, as was rumored, of stomach cancer but from a ruptured aorta.

Two autumns ago in a trance of delight that lasted two weeks I gathered in a basket several pounds of hickory nuts such as you see here, most from the shagbark just outside but also from hickories in the woods, where I found nuts walnut-sized and walnut-shaped -- every tree's fruit sculptured a little differently. Left them to dry in a basket until Christmastime when they agreed to be cracked -- a little. It took hammers and dental tools to get the tiny, brain-shaped meats out, spraying shards of shell all over and me stepping on them, and about 3 pounds through the pile I gave up and tossed the other nuts out the door for the varmints. In winter now, my favorite wild food is the chives that grow in snow.

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.