Reprize

Whenever we embark on a new endeavor it seems a little crazy. We never do quite as good of job as we want on keeping up with the basic details of home, work, school and parenting, so adding something new always seems a bit illogical. But setting logic aside and going for it can be pretty rewarding.

This project, and the blog associated with it, has been a lot of fun. By collecting for all the recipes in a year, we were pushed to do things we otherwise wouldn’t have done, practically every step of the way.

One of our very first endeavors was collecting elderberries on the MKT trail, on our bikes, right after church, on a blazing hot day. We wouldn’t have done it that day normally, but we made time to do it because elderberries were almost out of season, and we needed it for the recipe. The same story was repeated time and time again throughout the year – for rabbits, squirrels, mushrooms, fish, nuts, berries – we forced ourselves to take time to do things when we were otherwise busy because we had our deadline.

While this typically turned into a positive on the hunting and gathering things, it wasn’t always so for the cook. Many times Ann found herself cooking a weekday night after school, after work meal that was too gourmet for our schedule. But she’s fast in the kitchen, and she made it through it. I felt sorry for her for the stress it was putting her under at times, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the meals. I think for next year we might want to give Ann a break, and take on a challenge like eating our way through everything in the frozen food isle at Schnucks.

When people ask me about the highlights, the biggest plus for me was doing things in the Missouri wild that I hadn’t done before. Duck hunting was a big one. I live about nine miles from what has to be one of the best duck hunting places in the state, and I had never even considered duck hunting before this. Trout fishing was also something new for us, and all of four of us enjoyed that together.

Having an excuse to make time for all the hunting and fishing that I haven’t been doing in recent years was also a huge benefit of doing the project. The pressure to be successful was a little trying, but when I take time to hunt or fish I usually put that pressure on myself anyway, whether or not we have specific meal plans depending on my success.

The downside about self-imposed challenges is the lack of a huge payoff at the end. The completion was a big anti-climatic for us – there wasn’t a final prize or reward. After a year interest had waned in the blog, in both the reading and writing of it. But when we consider everything that we experienced in the past year that we wouldn’t have, had we not had this project pushing us along, it renews my hope for going for it rather than just taking things as they come. There was no big prize at the end, but the payoff was in the process.

Crawfish Vol-Au-Vent, page 112

From Fred:

Things I learned from this recipe:

You can buy frozen crawdad tails in a flat package of the frozen fish section in our grocery store.

They cost $20 per pound.

I have a hard time paying $20 a pound for anything, even though I know the money I sink in pursuing fish or game usually results in spending far more than that.

This recipe put those tails to good use. I have no idea what it was like to make the recipe, as Ann did it while I was at work. But I can tell you that eating it was divine. The meal was better than you would get at any restaurant, even those with the $50 entrée. So the $20 per pound crawfish tails  were a real bargain.

As you can tell from the pictures, Ann put on an elegant spread for the final recipe. This was a good one to end on.

Swedish-style boiled crayfish (kokta kraftor), page 113

This recipe was even simpler than the previous one. There are only two ingredients: crayfish and dill (I’m not going to count water and salt as ingredients). We made it the day after the island party, after we put away all of our stuff.

The boys and I had collected enough crayfish to try out this recipe, but not really enough to make a big meal out of it. So we bought some more at Schnucks. The only way you can buy them there is fully cooked, so the Schnucks crayfish weren’t part of the recipe.

We never did make it down to Table Rock Lake in pursuit of the big crayfish, so we just had the small mid-Missouri ones to work with. They were tasty, and the boys and I consumed and enjoyed a few, but we were all a bit more drawn to the big ones from the store. They certainly weren’t better, but they were so much bigger it was hard to pay much attention to our catch. The ones we caught were so small, they were fun to try, but not really worth the shucking if you were trying to make a meal of them.

Summer Black-and-Blue Pudding, Page 150

It’s not a coincidence that this recipe was almost the last one made. Ann didn’t think it was going to be very good. I can’t blame her, it only has four ingredients, and one is a loaf of bread, if you can call that an ingredient. The other four are blackberries, blueberries, sugar and a teaspoon of lemon Juice. It only calls for a cup of sugar, which doesn’t sound like much if you’ve ever made a blackberry cobbler or cherry pie.

A Pringles can with a speaker hooked up to my Android
 rocks the island during the dessert course.

But we should have known by now to have confidence in any recipe in Cooking Wild in Missouri. Ann made the dessert Saturday morning, put it in the fridge, then the cooler, and brought it out at  the island party Saturday night. It was gorgeous, and well received by both the kids and the adults. Ann whipped cream and served the pudding with a ring of cream around it, which was the icing on the cake. There was no part of this dessert left over.

The Munos in the moonshine (supplemental lighting provided by campfire).

Jim Low's Beast Feast Gumbo, page 76

The gumbo was well received by the 25 people who joined us for dinner on the island in the Missouri River Saturday night. We cut the recipe way back and still had an ample amount for the crowd, and enough left over for the four of us to have it for dinner Sunday night.

Having it on the island worked well. I made it ahead of time, and we just reheated it on the camp stove when we got there. Ann made the rice right before we left, and then wrapped the pot in a couple of blankets, and it stayed hot until dinner time.

After-dinner campfire time.

The weather was perfect, mild enough so that the desert island didn’t get too hot, but warm enough to get in the water, which is important when you’re using a fiberglass boat with a inboard motor to ferry 25 people and camping gear across the Missouri River.

End of Blog Blowout

Beginning to load the boat.

We're heading to the Missouri River to bring our Woods to Food project to a celebratory close. We'll spend the night on California Island, which is near Katfish Katy's, which is near Huntsdale. As a faithful blog reader, you're welcome to join us, of course. Since the island is public, I don't think we could stop you from coming. As for food, we might lean more toward the realm of sample than ample, so you might want to bring something. We'll be eating no fewer than two recipes from Cooking Wild in Missouri. I'm happy to ferry you back across the river if you don't want to stay the night.

The Low Down

I've never met Jim Low. This is unusual, because my wife has worked for the Missouri Department of Conservation for more than 15 years, and he's an MDC guy. It's even more unusual, because I've been working with Jim for longer than I've been married.

Jim writes news releases for the Missouri Department of Conservation, and does a fine job at it. I used many of his releases verbatium, or used them as background for a story I would write myself, in newspapers in Belle, St. Joe, Hannibal and Columbia. I worked with a lot of people in Jim's line of work, particularly in my job with the St. Joseph News-Press, and he was the best in the business. As equally valuable as his press releases was Jim's role as the go-to guy for information. He could always put me in touch with an expert source on anything related to Missouri outdoors.

Last night I started cooking "Jim Low's Beast Feast Gumbo." I like cooking things like stews, chilli, soups and gumbo, probably because they usually don't require a lot of precision. I think Jim's recipe fits that bill, as most of the ingredient list calls for items in quantities such as cups, quarts or pounds.

The recipe also calls for tasso. Being the outdoorsman that I am, I could have bagged a nice tasso last season, but I wasn't sure it met the minimum size requirements. Fortunately Ann followed the tips on page 77 and made a connection with an obscure meat dealer at the local career center, so we had tasso in the freezer ready to go, along with large andouille that would have been suitable for mounting.

The gumbo now rests in preparation for the exciting conclusion to our Woods to Food project.

 

Clearance

When I first saw our boat setting on it's trailer outside of a condo in St. Charles, I thought, "Ann would love it, but it's too big to fit in the garage." But I took out my tape measure, and the notecard with my garage measurements, and measured every dimension very carefully. Twice.  This was a cash deal with someone 100 miles away who was going to vanish forever after I pulled out of the parking lot. I had to be sure. It would fit, but barely.

When I brought it home, it was love at first sight for Ann as I predicted, but she also said clearly it won't fit in the garage. Our truck just barely fits, she noted, and the boat is a lot bigger than the truck, much taller, for one thing. As the two sit hitched together in our driveway, it appeared obvious that she was right.

But I had measured carefully.

So after our initial unsuccessful test run, but before I shelled out the money for repairs at the marina, I wanted to make sure it would fit, because I've got nowhere to go with it besides my garage.

I backed it in - carefully. I unhooked it. I closed the door. It fit.

T

Trailer to garage door.

Back of boat to back wall.

Windshield to center I-beam.

Front, back and height have fractions of an inch to spare. I bungee cord in the guide-ons, and have a couple of inches extra for width when I back in.

As long as we live here, which may be rest of our lives, we will never upgrade to a bigger boat.

 

Sitting Sail Gets Moving

This has even less to do with Cooking Wild in Missouri than my previous two posts, but since I don't have a boat blog I have to post this here.

After years of being stationary, the aforementioned boat trailer that I built in high school has visited the water not once but twice in the past week. For round two Ann's parents took Henry and Oliver sailing. They went to a local lake just a couple miles from their home. Good thing. I'm not sure how old those tires were when I bought them from Vic's junkyard over 25 years ago.

My Life Aquatic

We’re back on the water. To explain how we got there, I’ll give you an account of my aquatic history.

My first boat was a 12-ft. Jon boat with a 3 h.p. Sears engine. I found this engine in the old smoke house on the farm. I have no idea how it came to be there, as I can’t imagine my father would have ever spent any money on something as frivolous as an outboard motor.

I knocked off a layer of dirt-dobber nests and general dirt, and employing all the mechanical acumen I could muster as a 13-year-old boy, a performed a thorough tune-up (meaning I cleaned the air-filter and changed the spark plug). Using a can of ether, the engine started, and ran.

The boat, which was hauled upside down in the back of my Dad’s pickup, was then christened for the Lion’s Club float trip from Paydown to Rollins Ferry. I was joined in my boat by my friends Troy and James. My friends Llans and Travis launched at the same time in a canoe. Right when the little Sears was running out of gas (it’s gas tank was built onto the motor and was the size of a coffee can, so this often), that 2-cycle engine would hit a bust of speed, and we could gain on the canoe. But at normal cruising speed, the canoe was faster.

The next year I acquired a 1956 Johnson Seahorse 10-hp motor. I paid $200 of my own money for it, but I don’t remember where exactly I got it. It often started, at least with the help of the can of ether, and had enough power to pass the canoe, and shear a lot of pins. This might motor could handle more boat, and more boat I gave it, via the purchase of a 14-ft. Jon boat from the Missouri Department of Conservation surplus auction for $140, a mere $10 per foot.

This boat served us well on the Lion’s Club float trip, and it was a substantial enough setup to give us great confidence. Once Llans and I decided to see what was downstream from Rollins Ferry. We found this previously unexplored part of the river to be a strange and wonderful place, but the return journey to our truck involved many broken shear pins, and eventually the loss of the nut the held on the prop. We finally made it back, and we never went downstream again.

The Johnson lacked the romantic appeal that a 1956 Chevy Bel-Air would have, but had somewhat worse dependability, so I decided to upgrade. I took the Johnson and the Sears to the marina at Rolla to trade them in on a better motor. The marina offered me 15 cents per pound, the going rate on aluminum. I walked out with a 1974 Mercury 9.8 h.p. that I paid $400, with the salesman saying, “It might blow up the first time you use it. If it does, don’t bring it back here.”

But it didn’t. We liked it better than the Johnson because it had a clutch instead of shear pins, and it always started, though it often took many pulls. The black rubber handle left skid marks across our chests as we furiously pulled the engine to life. We wore those skid marks as badges of honor.

I wasn’t real comfortable having  this much boat hanging out of the back of the truck, so I built a boat trailer in my high-school metal shop class, making up the design as I went along. I used hubs, wheels (and tires) I got off of a Volkswagen at Vic’s junkyard, and aside from those and the hitch and springs, the rest of it was from scratch. I think an engineering error resulted in the springs never really having any spring, but the trailer carried the boat to the Gasconade River many times, and even carried me into my relationship with Ann. We took the boat to Pomme De Terre Lake when we were dating. We caught a fish out of the boat that we had for dinner that night. The past several years the trailer has served as a stand rather than trailer (its been stationary) for Ann's parents sailbooat. More on that later.

I kept the boat at a cabin that I owned with my brother-in-law until around the time that he became my ex-brother-law, then I took it to the farm. It’s the one down there now that Ann likes to use to take out past the moss on the pond and catch bass. The little Mercury sat for a long time after we got the Basstracker, but a few years ago I got it out, and a friend got it running good enough to sell it for a few hundred dollars.

The Basstracker had given us years of service, but when we took it to Mark Twain Lake last year, it wouldn’t rev up. I employed all of my mechanical expertise from three decades of experience (I changed the sparkplugs and cleaned the air filter), to no avail. When I got it back from the marina a few weeks later with a $700 repair bill (the magnet had come off the flywheel), I decided that if I was going to be paying to maintain a boat, I wanted a bigger one.

I didn’t immediately miss the Basstracker when we sold it earlier this summer, and renting the pontoon at Mark Twain Lake worked out OK, but I didn’t like the feeling of no longer having the ability to access to the Missouri River. So I stepped up my boat shopping, looking for a the magic boat the could haul two families, but still fit in a garage 23 ½ feet long, with an 8-foot door and 6’5” of clearance at the door (6’ 3” of clearance under the I-beam in the middle). And I’d like to keep it under $4,000.

I found it on Craigslist in a 1979 17-foot Ozark openbow with a 140 h.p. Mercruiser. Our first inboard, our first fiberglass boat, and a 115 h.p. upgrade.

Buying it was exciting, but I had enough experience with boats to know that I wasn’t really buying a boat, but a boating starter kit that would require some work before I had a boat. In boat years, this girl should have retired several years ago.

The first time we fired it up, it ran… for a couple of seconds. Then we couldn’t start it again. But one week and $1,000+ at the marina later, we were off. And we love it. It’s already had us out on the Missouri River three times, and we’re not done this year yet.

Mark Twain Revisited

I failed to post about our recent trip to Mark Twain Lake, partially because its link to this blog is a loose one. But I haven’t been posting about anything else, either, so I might as well go with what we’ve got.

A few years ago we started doing an annual end-of-summer weekend at Mark Twain Lake, usually around the first weekend after school starts. Our family, Ann’s sister, and Ann’s cousin rent three cabins side-by-side at the state park, and we each have two kids, ages 8 – 11, and they all have a great time.

We started off our blog last year posting about the trashcan turkey, which had become a Mark Twain Lake tradition for us. But this year we rented a pontoon boat, and planned to be out and about on it during our usual turkey cooking time, so Ann’s sister stepped up the dinner plate and cooked us all up some fantastic fajitas instead.

I took along our fishing gear, but we never wet a line. The people camped next to us had a fishing boat and a rented pontoon, and they didn’t fish all weekend either. The pontoon was a big floating porch swing, and their fishing boat was busy tubing.

We tried tubing behind the pontoon. A 28-foot boat with a 50 hp engine was a little underpowered for this. The kids liked it, but kept asking me to go faster, even though I was already at full throttle. The boat was nice and roomy for the 12 of us, though.   

We did attempt to employ the crawdad traps again. We put them out on Saturday night, checked them once, then left them out for the rest of the night. We only caught one small fish, but I wasn’t surprised. The lake bottom was pretty muddy and unlevel from the shore. I think  crawdad would have had a hard time finding his way into one if he really wanted to get trapped.

So it was a great weekend in the outdoors, even if we didn’t do any hunting or gathering. Sometimes it can be nice to enjoy nature while you eat food from the grocery store.

Squirrel-the other white meat! Fried squirrel with mashed potatoes, page 49

We fried the two remaining squirrels in the freezer for supper tonight. There's a very loose interpretation of a recipe in the book that goes something like this: "Boil squirrel, fry it like you would a chicken and serve it with mashed potatoes." So that's precisely what I did--in a not very precise way.

I haven't boiled something before I fried it before. That's a good trick. It makes the meat nice and tender. Moreover, since it's been cooked to death you don't have to worry about actually cooking the meat in the frying process, just browning it nicely.

Henry and Fred's reaction was fantastic at dinner tonight. Henry came running up the stairs from school, spotted dinner in the making, and shouted enthusiastically, "Fried squirrel and apple pie!! Oh, boy!" And, when Fred came home from work and saw dinner a'brewin' he said, "This is exciting." That's music to a cook's ears. We all ate well and feel very satisfied now. Squirrel--I dare you to try it.

To Air is Humane

“It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a squirrel. You take away all that squirrel has got, and all he’s ever going to have.”  William Munny from Missouri, 1880 (paraphrase)

As I’ve said before, I grew up killing and eating squirrels. The place where I took the most was in old hog barn on the farm where we used to store corn in the loft. I’d quietly stalk up the stairs with my six-gun in hand, and usually right as I stepped into the loft one of possibly several squirrels would see me and make like lightning for an opening to get out of the loft while I fired away. After a flurry of gunfire the loft would once again fall quiet, and I’d have one or two squirrels to show for it. It had to be one of the most exciting single-action .22 handgun shooting experiences available anywhere in North America, and it was right there on my farm, just a short three-wheeler ride away. And I don’t think the old hog barn was much worse for wear from it. The pistol didn’t make very big holes in anything.  

This past year I’ve been hunting squirrels with an air rifle. The experience is less like a Clint Eastwood movie, and more like that sniper movie starring Tom Berenger. I usually tend more toward the maximum end of the spectrum on firepower, but the .22 caliber pellet fired from the Beeman puts a squirrel away just fine, so long as you make the shot in the upper back half of the cranium. And sometimes the relatively silent nature of the air rifle is important. To quote Forrest Gump, “That's all I have to say about that.” (I apologize that all of my pop-culture references seem to end in the early 1990s. I’ve been kind of busy since then.)

So the Beeman has yielded an adequate supply of squirrels for us, and unlike my less-than-precise six-gun shooting, all of the meat is entirely intact (unless you eat the brains, which we don’t.) At least it’s intact until I clean them, then it gets occasionally cut, and frequently fuzzy. I’m getting better at cleaning squirrels without taking forever and making a mess of them, but I’m far from proficient.

Search Youtube for squirrel cleaning videos, and you’ll find more than you will want to watch. Guys that are an old hand will show you how to simply “unzip them out of their little jackets.” Don’t be fooled, these guys are masters. I’d let them perform surgery on me if I needed it, so long as they promised to wash their hands first.

We’ve only got a couple of recipes left, and one of them is for squirrel. All four of us are looking forward to it.

Dave Urich's fried catfish, page 93

Henry, our 11 year old, thought this recipe was kind of a crack up. He is so used to the more gourmet, exotic dishes in the book, that a mess of fried catfish just seemed hilarious.

Here's the four ingredients listed for the recipe:

"a mess of catfish, yellow mustard for coating, yellow corn meal for rolling, peanut oil for frying".

That just about sums it up.

I used a dijon mustard because I didn't think Fred was too crazy about the canary yellow variety. I was a little sparing with using it, too, apparently. I used a tablespoon or two to coat 1/2 the fish and thought any more might be overpowering. The other half of the fish I did not coat in mustard at all for Oliver and anyone else who might find the mustard too much.

Turns out the mustard flavor really goes away in the frying process because not one of us could taste mustard in any of the pieces we had. Who knew?

We are really whittling away at the recipes now. According to my records, we have one squirrel, one blackberry and two crawdad recipes left and then a few straggler recipes that I don't quite know what to do with like a mustard recipe and such. Plus, I've got to try those anchovy mushroom pickles in the fridge that I made but haven't taken the opportunity to try.

What my camera was used for last night besides photographing catfish nuggets! Ah,  boys.

Fettuccine with chanterelles and smoked trout, page 1

OK. This is the last of the mushroom recipes. Shew. We did it! I worked a bit like a dog to get in all these mushroom recipes with the stash I nurtured from Portland. We made two mushroom recipes out there, and six recipes with the mushrooms I brought back, pretty much one after the other. It seems like I took one day off in that race-oh, yea. I made tuna patties one night just because they sounded wonderfully simple to make and light on the tummy, too. They were awesome!

OK. Back to this recipe. What can I say? Cream, onions, smoked salmon, wild mushrooms, herbs, lemon juice, pasta . . .it was wonderful. But, you've heard that before haven't you?

We all loved it. Boys ate it up, bla bla bla. Really, I found again that I enjoyed it more reheated at lunch. While these recipes are not terribly hard at all, it's sometimes a bit much to do on a week night. I often find myself frazzled after cooking these dishes, taking photos, trying to get the family to sit down to eat, etc. Lunch is a calmer time and I can enjoy what I've got in front of me.

See ya' Hearty "hen" soup, 192-193

Oliver chasing shore birds on the Oregon Coast.

Fred here. This recipe may call for Hungarian paprika, but I guar-en-tee you won't be "hungry" after you finish a big bowl of this soup.

So that's what this blog has come to after nearly a year: bad puns that are sure to offend our readers in Central Europe.

But like all puns, mine speaks the truth. This soup really is very filling, as could be expected since it has the word "Hearty" right in the title. And it is tasty. I'm sure we'll make it again, next time we find oursevles with an abundance of hen of the woods mushrooms. OK, it might be a while. But I hope not.

In an effort to use all of her precious Portland mushrooms before they turned Ann was cooking like crazy last week. The results were delicious but exhausting. I think we'll be able to ease up a little bit now that the perishables have been consumed. This is the last recipe in Cooking Wild in Missouri, but since we're not doing them in order it is not the last recipe in our blog. We're getting close, though.




Mama mia! Missouri chanterelle and prosciutto pizza, 184

OK. The recipe name says Missouri chanterelle, but we all know these chanterelles came from the farmer's market in Portland, Oregon. Who's counting, though, right?

It's amazing what great meals a person can make at home. Uprise Bakery here in Columbia makes these tasty whole wheat pizza crusts that are just great. It's hard to go wrong once you have those in the fridge. This pizza is topped with carmelized onions, garlic, chanterelles, prosciutto and parmesan cheese. Yep. It tastes as good as it sounds. It's really a rich, interesting, and deeply satisfying combination.

I wasn't sure if two of these small pizzas would do the four of us, and didn't have ingredients in to make either a third like the first two, or a more traditional pizza. Instead, I used some anchovies, green olives and spicy tomato sauce to make a putanesca style pizza. Survey says: good AND salty!

Who needs to be taken out when you can make a meal like this at home? Well, that's a bit of an overstatement. I do like a nice breakfast or dinner out on the weekends, too. Oh, and going out for ice cream . . . and coffee . . . and margaritas . . .

Spaghetti with grilled summer vegetables, chanterelles and hickory nuts, page 180-181

I've been looking forward to making this recipe for some time. I love mushrooms and Bernadette has taught me to love nuts in pasta, so this recipe seems like it's going to be right up my alley. The recipe calls for lots of summer veggies: peppers, onions, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, etc. so we bought a nice basket full at the farmer's market Saturday. It's nice to have a purpose at the farmer's market.

I hope this recipe lives up to my expectations tonight. We'll see.

Well, that was good. The veggies are all grilled outside, mushrooms and garlic sauteed, and the pasta mixed with all that plus nuts, parmesan cheese and herbs. I used some of the chanterelles from Portland and supplemented them with oyster and button mushrooms from the store. I want to keep the remaining chanterelles I have for the next two recipes.

So, today my family ate entirely vegetarian: muffins and fruit for breakfast, grilled peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and this pasta for dinner. Henry sometimes panics about making sure can can have meat. The boy loves his protein. He thinks he could never make it as a vegetarian. I reminded him, after his third large helping of this yummy and satisfying pasta, that he's gone all day without meat and hadn't even noticed. It's good to know you can mix things up and enjoy a variety of kinds of foods, I think.

Henry has a classmate who is diabetic and also has celiac disease, (which means he should not eat gluten). With such a restricted diet, wouldn't it be nice if the child liked a wide variety of foods? It would be so much easier to safisfy your cravings and stay healthy on a restricted diet if you had a wide palatte of foods you cared for. I feel so sorry for kids and their families when a child is faced with a dietary restriction, yet only likes a limited variety of food, like pizza and chicken strips. It looks really hard to keep them happy and healthy.

So, eat up kiddos. It's mushroom and veggie pasta tonight and chanterelle and proscuitto pizza tomorrow. Get used to it.

Pickled "hens"-Italian style, page 191

You should have seen my cousin's daughter's face when I told her about the pickles I just made. "Molly" I said. "I just made this jar of pickles. They are actually pickled mushrooms with peppers, onions, and anchovies."

Poor thing. She of course scrunched up her nose at the sound of the pickles, but then my tone was so excited and proud. You could see the turmoil on her face thinking the pickled wild mushrooms with anchovies sounded so bizzare (and likely nasty), but thinking she should compliment me on the dish I just made. I love to torture children!

I used the hen of the woods from Portland for the recipe and cut it down so I was just making 1/8 of the amount called for. I just didn't bring home enough mushrooms to cover the eight cups called for in this dish! One cup of mushrooms was enough to make one jar of pickled hens. These are supposed to rest in the fridge for a week before eating.

I should ask Molly over for dinner that night, don't you think? And speaking of dinner, what in the world is the best way to eat pickled mushrooms with anchovies? On a burger, straight up, on a ham sandwich? This is definitely new territory for me.

Barley and blewit salad, page 190

Ann here:

We used up all the chanterelles from the Waldport, Oregon farmer's market in the two recipes we made out there. But, I still had my woods to food thinking cap on during the finale of out trip. Fred came back from Oregon with the boys and I stayed in Portland a few more days for a conference. What I was hoping was that I could catch a Portland farmer's market on my last day, find someone selling wild mushrooms, and be able to bring them back with me on the plane. And, guess what? The far fetched plan worked like a dream. I took the city train  into the heart of Portland on my last day, found a farmer's market, one person was selling mushrooms, and I was able to buy a couple of pounds of chanterelles and hen of the woods. Wahoo! I spent the rest of the evening buying souvenirs with my bag full of mushrooms, a little worried about how in the world I was going to carry them home with the 84 other pounds of luggage I had to struggle with. Uncomfortably, I guessed. I didn't have any sort of hard-sided container to put the fragile 'shrooms in, so crushing and bruising them was a real possibility. And, my already full checked bag had to fit the gifts I'd bought plus a new tree climbing saddle, which is a bit heavy and bulky.

Anyway, I slipped the mushrooms in the fridge in the hotel, woke at 3:20 a.m. for my flight home, hoisted up the mound of carry on and check bags I had to get home, tucked the mushrooms in a shopping bag and was off!

Fourteen hours later, I was dropped of at home with all my luggage . . . and a bag of nearly bruise free mushrooms. I did it!

Cooking Wild in Missouri, here I come!

The first of the recipes I tried with our contraband mushrooms (OK, I'm jazzing up reality here a bit with likening the purchase of farmer's market mushrooms with contraband. My life is really so very legal. Please forgive me.) was barley and blewit salad. No blewit mushrooms so we substituted hen of the woods. We had my cousin and family over for dinner and boy did that feel great. It's no nice to get back together with friends and family! The recipe calls for tamari. Had to call my momma on that one and ask her if she knew what in the world that was. I didn't even know what part of the store to look in. Apparently tamari is similar to but more intense than soy sauce. Who knew? Apparently my cousins did, actually, because when they came over Ben knew exactly how much it cost at other stores in town.

Anyhow, the mushrooms are sauted, then mixed with baked barley, and a sauce of garlic, mustard, tamari, vinegar and olive oil, kind of like a pasta salad. Then, you mix in greens, herbs and sunflower seeds. We served the dish with corn and grilled chicken. I really enjoyed it. It's a robust, salt of the earth sort of grain and green salad. I'd make it again.

Next up, 'shrooms with pasta. I've got to make these recipes in rapid fire succession before they turn!

Chanterelle and smoked-salmon bruschette, page 183

 

Fred here. Finding mushrooms at a market still counts as finding mushrooms in our book, when you have to go to a Farmer’s Market in Oregon to find them. And this market in Waldport was different than your typical Missouri farmer’s market. There was an African woman selling jewelry, another African woman selling baked goods, several artists of various mediums, one small stand of fruit and berries, and our mushroom lady. We felt pretty fortunate, and Ann wasn’t going to let the opportunity get by.

Before I go on, I need to take a moment to describe our accommodations during our trip. Because we were flying to Portland, we opted not to tent camp. We didn’t want to have to pack a tent and sleeping pads on the plane. But we did want to camp, so I used www.reserveamerica.com and www.recreation.gov to seek out camping cabins. Oregon is full of them, with cabins and yurts at state parks, but even though I was planning the trip a few months in advance, most were full.

For the first two nights I did find an old U.S. Forest Service fire guard station for rent. It was built in the 1930s as a CCC project. It didn’t have electricity, but had built in propane lights in every room, a propane stove/oven, and even a propane refrigerator. It also had a spring-fed trout stream in its backyard and was very near Oregon’s volcanic areas that we wanted to see. It was great.

After that we headed to the coast. The only available options were cabins at a KOA campground. At Waldport our cabin did have a view of the bay, although you had to stretch to see it past the blackberry bramble. The aforementioned meal was cooked at this cabin.

After two nights at this campground, we drove up the coast to another KOA campground in the Seaside/Astoria area. It’s actually located near the small town of Hammond.

I don’t want to disparage RV parks too much because I know a lot of people really enjoy them, but they are not our ideal situation. KOA offers a lot of activities, but the mere fact that they spell camping with a “k” starts us off on the wrong foot. This campground was across the street from the state park where would we have liked to have stayed, and the view from the front of our cabin looked out on our KOA trailer park. In the evening when everyone gathers around their individual fires and cooks dinner the sounds and smell of the smoke remind me of being in a African village. Ann’s been to some of those same African villages, but her connotations with RV parks are considerably less romantic. We decided our campground would just be used for sleeping.  

Oliver's eyes at Ft. Stevens beach.

After arriving we headed out to the nearest beach, Ft. Stevens. It was on a point, and very windy. They boys embraced it, but we found the sand and wind harsh, or Ann’s word for it was “inhospitable.”



3 C coffee shop with a hammock chair and monopoly!

So the next day we sought refuge in the village of Astoria. It’s a famously beautiful town, and lives up to its reputation. The day started off right with pastries in a coffee shop where they really knew how to make a Latte like Ann likes it. Then we went to the top of the Astoria Column on top of the hill and sailed balsa-wood gliders off it into the woods below. We took a trolley ride and enjoyed the town.

Launching a plane off  Astoria column.

While there we visited a place recommended for its smoked fish. There we found the smoked salmon needed for our next mushroom recipe. The $40 per pound price tag was a little shocking, but we only needed about a ¼ of a pound, so we bit the bullet and got some. One more stop at a liquor store to buy a tiny bottle of brandy to use to sauté the chanterelles and we were good to go.

The recipe we were planning on was a salmon and mushroom spread on bruschetta. Ann had thought this might make a better lunch than dinner, and didn’t really want to cook back in our campground, so we planned on making it in a city park in Astoria. Instead lunchtime came and went, and we ended up having a very late lunch of wings and shrimp at a Rogue-brewery that looked out on ships coming up the Columbia River, having just arrived from China and Japan.

So the recipe was bumped back to dinner. We decided to give the beach another try, but this time we picked one a little farther down the coast, on the other side of Seaside. When we arrived we took a hike among the giant rocks on the coast, and then another hike in the woods on top of the bluff overlooking the ocean.

The boys in a typical scene of them helping Ann cook dinner.

Near the parking lot overlooking the beach was a picnic table with a fire ring beside it. This was an ideal setting for dinner. The sun had set early behind a bank of clouds over the sea, so the light was already getting dim when we started.

I built a fire, and Ann expertly sautéed the mushrooms, and added the sour cream and salmon, and then toasted the bread over the fire. The result was an unbelievably delicious meal at what must be one of the most picturesque settings in the country. And this recipe was no appetizer, it was made more than we could eat. We ended up giving the last piece to the last surfer who was coming in from the beach in the dark.

Overall, at the time Ann was saying that this was one of the neatest cooking experiences she has ever had, and I couldn’t argue. The ingredient list was pricey, but still much less than we would have spent at an average restaurant, and the result was better than you would get at any restaurant, and we had the best table in the house. This would have been a grand meal to end the Woods to Food project on, but we still have a few recipes to go. And I’m happy about that.

We're back from the coast! Chaneterelle and polenta foil packs, 186

Hello again. This is Ann. We've had the very good fortune of traveling in Oregon so sorry for the lack of posts for the last little bit. But, not to worry. We took the "good book" with us and I'm able to report on a few of the expotitions (as Poo would say) we had.

I was hoping chanterelles would be in season in Oregon while we were out and that I could find someone selling them at a farmer's market. Well, luck was with me. We were in the right town (Waldport, OR) at the right time for their farmer's market. One sweet lady was selling mushrooms, and she did have chanterelles for $12 per pound, which to me seems like a deal. After all, morels were $50 per pound this spring in Missouri.

Anyway, later that day we went to a beach and luck was still by our side, apparently. It was low tide and the coastal area we stopped at had fantastic tide pools with starfish, sea weed and mussels clinging to the rocks waiting for the water to rise again. The boys learned how to pull mussels off the rocks by a fellow who was doing the same, and they ended up with a nice clump of mussels to cook up with the mushrooms. Later in the day we tried to catch crabs in the bay where we were staying but we didn't get the timing right on that, so we bought a nice sized crab from a boy by the docks and took it back to our cabin.

Fred did a great job getting the fire right. We boiled crab, baked the polenta and chanterelles in foil (which was the Cooking Wild In Missouri recipe) and steamed the mussels in wine, garlic and lemon. Now, that's my kind of camp cooking!!! Oregon rocks!