Oh, Nuts!

Earlier in the year I signed up to host my book club for June. But, man, was I not feeling well now. I went from thinking I could just make smoothies to thinking even that was too much work. How about a chocolate cake? That seemed like more that I wanted to take on as well. What's a person supposed to do in this situation? Call your momma of course. Mom suggested I just get in some cheese and crackers and call it good-no baking when you are sick and it's 100 outside. So, that's what I did. But, still, I wanted to make something for my friends. That's when I remembered the picante pecans out of the Cooking Wild in MO book. I've made them once and boy are they tasty. They mix up in a jiffy and you only have to run the oven for 5-8 minutes to bake them.

The pecans were the hit of the show. Several ladies asked for the recipe and the bowl of nuts was licked clean by the end of the evening.

I love these nuts. We used rosemary from our garden, and the fennel, lavendar, and red pepper we already had in. The little bit of maple syrup the recipe calls for we had in, too, from harvesting the sap this winter from our trees. And, the nuts were from the pecan orchard near Rockbridge Elementary school.

Yea. What a successful way to make something simple from wild ingredients to share with your friends. I didn't take a photo this time but you can see them on the 12/11/2012 blog post.

Goodbye Boat

We recently said good-bye to a long standing fishing partner: our Basstracker boat.

There are two reasons people give for selling boats:

1. I’m just not using it enough.
2. I want to upgrade to a bigger boat.

Paradoxically, we had both reasons. First some background. The boat was generously given to us by Ann’s parents about 14 years ago, due to reason number one. I thought they would continue to use it while we had it, but that never happened. At the time everything in and on the boat worked perfectly, and it was the perfect size for the two of us. It was about 13 years old, but looked like new.

When we lived in Hannibal we used the boat on Mark Twain Lake, and it worked fine there, so long as you steered clear of the main channel when there was a breeze. When we moved to Columbia, we weren’t sure where to go. At first we feared the mighty Missouri in our little boat, so we stuck to Perche Creek. That was pretty fun, and in the spring time you could run up it a good ways. Eventually we mustered up the courage to nose the end of our boat out into the Missouri. The current quickly grabbed us and let us know that we weren’t on a creek anymore. But the little 25 h.p. Mercury would motor the boat upstream just fine, albeit not too quickly.

The last launch.

We had some fun excursions on the Missouri, especially when we made it to the islands. I a few years ago Henry and I camped on a island down one night, where we watched the trains pass by the bluffs on the other side of the river. The next morning when I woke up the boat was much closer to the tent then where I had left it the night before. A quick glance revealed the island had gotten much smaller in the night. I quickly broke camp as the island continued to dwindle in size. As we motored away, it was obvious that the island would be no more before long. I hadn’t fully taken into account how local weather has nothing to do with the level of the Missouri River.

But lately we had made little use of the boat. I think this is primarily because we are a social lot. We enjoy spending time with friends, and the boys’ friends’ parents are our friends as well. But the four of us fill the boat up on our own, so we could never bring anyone along our outings. Hence, the need for a bigger boat. It’s hard to spend money to upgrade something you only use twice a year, but maybe with a bigger boat we would use it more.

An enormous stray cat made himself comfortable on the boat at Stockton Lake.

So we sold the boat, and are casually shopping for a replacement. I check Craigslist everyday, maybe more than once sometimes. It might take a while to find a boat that meets our criteria. First, it needs to fit in the garage, which is 23 ½ feet long, only 6 foot 3 inches high at the center support beam, and has 8 foot wide doors. And we would like the boat to be able to handle eight people when called upon to do so. I’m thinking an 18 – 20 ft. semi-v John boat with about 75 h.p. and a break-away trailer tongue might work. There’s also a bunch of open bow fish and ski’s that might fit the bill, although I like being able to beach a boat on the Missouri River islands, and that’s probably not a good idea with a fiberglass boat with an inboard motor.

We’re not in a hurry to buy. Our remaining water-borne prey that we need to pursue for Cooking Wild recipes are crawfish and catfish. I think we’ll pursue both locally, probably at the farm, no boat required. I really don’t want to buy another boat yet anyway, because in August we’re set for our annual family get-together on Mark Twain, and without a boat in the garage, nothing will be stopping me from renting a big ol’ pontoon.

Walleye encrusted with breadcrumbs and almonds, page 85

I was speaking with Kevin Lohraff, the gentleman who gave us the paddlefish and turkey, about the remaining wild ingredients we have left to find. You might recall that one of them is walleye. We went to Stockton Lake on my birthday in niave hopes of catching one and . . .well, didn't. But guess what Kevin said? He mentioned that at a certain time of year Hy-Vee carries wild, fresh walleye. So, down I went to fish department and sure enough there on the ice were large slabs of fish with a innocent little 'walleye' sign on them. Could it be this easy?

Then, I got sick. For several days I wanted to rally and go cook up that Hy-Vee walleye before it was too late, but I was feverish and couldn't stomach the thought of it. Slightly before I should have,  I went ahead and purchased the fish. I was still sick but got frustrated with the lack of progress on our project and afraid my chance to get walleye would allude me.

I say slightly before I should have, because my sense of taste was still affected by my cold, as was my energy level. Therefore I thought the recipe was . . . mild. But, Fred said the taste of mustard in the almond/breadcrumb topping was very strong. In fact, it was a bit too powerful for the boys and they had to take the crust off. I couldn't taste any mustard at all, which tells me I wasn't tasting up to snuff. So, I would take my review of this recipe with not just a grain of salt, but perhaps one of those funnily shaped salt barns. I really should have been making chicken noodle soup out of a can, not assembling an encrusted walleye dinner.

We did serve the walleye with boiled new potatoes and peas and a sauce of yogurt, dill and lemon. The dinner was pretty, I can say that for it. And, it was the first solid meal I'd made in several days so that was pleasant also.

Now the one walleye recipe is done and we are at least making forward progress again.

Time Out

I’ve been neglecting the blog lately. Fortunately Ann’s done more than her share at keeping things going, not just by writing but also by cooking some great meals so that she has something to write about.

We just take things as they come with the blog, not really planning any posts in advance, other than Ann needing to plan meals about a week out when she goes to the grocery store or farmers market. As for the writing, we just each write whenever we feel like it. At times it’s been pretty even, as I was writing about our outings to get the ingredients, and Ann was writing about the cooking end of things.

We don’t push or limit each other. Only once, in the beginning, I asked Ann to change a post about some nasty rice I made because I felt it gave our readers an inaccurate portrayal of my overall ability as a rice maker, and  a cook in general. And once Ann asked me to change a post, because as written it probably would have gotten our blog a Mature Content –Adults Only rating due to extreme graphic violence against squirrels. She had to remind me that women do read the blog.

But now I need to catch up. About three weeks ago we made a trip down to the farm, and although our time there was very short, we made time in the evening to go down to the pond and get out the little boat with both the boys. We weren’t out there long, but Ann brought in a really nice bass before it got dark.

 I cleaned it that night and put it in the fridge. The next day, Memorial Day, we headed down to Elephant Rocks. Henry had been there with a friend once, but it was Oliver’s first time. We then moved on to Johnson Shutins for some swimming. There was a big Memorial Day crowd there, but it was still fun, and we couldn’t drive past it without giving Oliver a chance to experience it. We finally ended up at Pulltite Campground, a National Park Service campground on the current river.

The next day we floated from Akers Ferry back to Pulltite. We had brought fishing gear with us, but with the four of us in one canoe we decided to keep it simple and not fish during the float trip. We did see several trout, hog mollies, and more small groups of gar than I had ever seen in my life. Not to mention a few families of baby ducks, muskrats, a mink, deer, turkey and just about anything else you can think of that you might see in the Ozarks.

Although the campout and float trip didn’t contribute anything to the Cooking Wild project, it was a great family outing, and something we look forward to doing more of.

Upon my return, I came down with a wicked summer cold that had me in shaking under multiple blankets on 85 degree days. It took a couple weeks to get over it, and during that time I was also in the middle of my busiest time of year at work.

But I’m all better now, and beginning to get caught up at work, so I’m looking forward to getting back at it. Our remaining to-do list for wild edibles is starting to get short.  

Wild turkey muffuletta sandwiches, pages 68-69

It's great how pretty the mundane can be sometimes. Just look at the ingredients in the olive relish salad before it is chopped in the food processor.

The relish makes this tasty New Orleans style sandwich special, what sets it apart from any other turkey and swiss sandwich. And, it does the trick very nicely with it's robust ingredients: basil, vinegar, onion, two kinds of olives, capers, pepper, parsley and on and on. What fun it was to make, serve and consume these tasty sandwiches.

To prepare for this recipe, there was Jarlesburg cheese to buy, turkey to cook (I ended up sauteeing the rest of the breast in butter and olive oil) , bread to buy at the bakery, ingredients to purchase for the relish. But, the actual making of the recipe was a pleasant breeze. Basically, it was just whipping up the relish and then assembling the sandwiches.

You can see that Fred and my sandwiches were the same (the works), Henry wanted to try the olive salad spread but not the cheese, and Oliver's sandwich was just plain turkey.

I'm struck yet again by the diversity of recipes in the book and how going through them all (keep our fingers crossed) will expand my cooking. I remember years ago talking to a conservation agent friend of mine. He cooked for his family and  had a weekly dinner routine. I don't remember the specifics, but it went something like this: Monday is taco night, Tuesday is spaghetti night, etc. and then starts all over again on Monday with taco night. I remember thinking that A. the routine of it was kind of  a crack up B. I'm impressed he cooks for his family and is figuring out a system to make that possible and C. the predictability of it could be sweet and comforting, too. Goodness, if you used a book like Cooking Wild in Missouri, it would be sushi Monday, muffelatta Tuesday, crab cake Wednesday, cassoulet Thursday and then you could really let your hair down on the weekends. Gadzooks.

Well, there we have it, folks. We just made the three wild turkey recipes in the book in three days (in other words fried rice Monday, soup Tuesday and sandwich Wednesday!). We finished the last of the turkey breast at the end of the meal. Yum. Yum. Yum. And, right now I'm thinking tomorrow might be fast food Thursday! It's break time!

 

Get the picture? Photos of wild turkey and summer sweet corn soup, pages 66-67

OK. That was yummy. Maybe this post should be a photographic journey of making corn and turkey soup, including the licked bowl at the end.

Wild turkey fried rice, page 64-65 with spicy cucumber salad, page 65

This is the first of the three recipes in the book calling for wild turkey. Fred and Henry gave hunting a good try but had no luck, so a coworker of mine gave us a turkey breast from the turkey he killed this spring. Thanks again, Kevin. I can not believe how generous people have been about sharing their bounty with us. OK, there was the  stealing of our mushroom logs by the numskulls that justified their thievery by leaving half the logs. One cannot pretend that didn't happen. However, that was a ridiculous anomaly. The generosity of people has been much more constant and abundant. Thanks.

I'm counting on being able to use this one turkey breast for all three recipes. Within the next two days I plan on making the next two recipes.

Ironically all three turkey recipes call for already cooked wild turkey. But, how does one get there? I would think just baking a skinned wild turkey would result in a seriously dry bird. And, I'd rather be tarred and feathered than to mess up some one's hard earned, then gifted to us wild turkey. I mean, a person waits all year for spring turkey season, buys their hunting tags, scouts out a good place to hunt, pries their eyes open before the crack of dawn, has practiced the skill of calling and shooting enough to actually be successful and safe in the hunt, cleans and dresses the bird, labels it properly for transport, and ships it to me on ice.

So, what I end up doing is slicing off some small pieces of the meat and sauteed them in the bacon the recipe calls for anyway for the fried rice. I'll deal with how to cook the rest later I guess.

Other than that, the recipe went off without a hitch. I cooked the rice a day in advance and cooled it as Bernadette suggest so that the rice didn't go mushy when fried. We used eggs from our own chickens, which is always pleasant. Both kids loved the dish. Henry had fourths in fact. I particularly liked the spicy cucumber salad that is suggested to serve with the fried rice. I made the salad once before, in fact, but thought the paring sounded so good that I went ahead and made it again.

One turkey recipe down. Two to go. Next up: wild turkey and corn soup.

Bass and crappie spring rolls, page 86 with spring roll dipping sauce, page 87

Ingredients inside the spring rolls

I do believe this is the last of the bass/crappie/bluegill recipes in the book. I've been looking forward to making these spring rolls for some time. In the spring I planted a Thai basil plant and have been watching it grow knowing that I needed 12 leaves for this recipe. Finally this week I felt like the plant was big enough that it could afford to loose 12 leaves without totally doing it in. It's spring roll time!

We also have mint growing in garden, so that just left cilantro as far as herbs go. We bought that at the farmer's market this weekend. The fish is lightly fried, then there's also noodles, avacado, and peanuts in the spring rolls as well (by the way, if you're not familiar with spring rolls I think of them as a cold/fresh ingredient/not fried version of an egg roll). I've never made spring rolls before but have had them at a few Vietnames restuarants and quite like them. Adventures in cooking, here I come!

The action shot

The funniest thing about the spring rolls I made is that they were literally the size of small burritos rather than egg rolls. I started mounding up the pile of ingredients in the rice paper wraps and supper sized them I guess. And, you know what? They were perfectly good that way. We had them for dinner tonight, rather than as an appetizer, so what does it hurt to have burrito sized spring rolls? It's America after all. Hey, would these be good with nacho cheese squirted on top? Hmmm. That's a pretty disgusting thought, actually.

The other thing I learned that I've never done is that I guess I've never in my life filleted a fish. Surely that's not the proper way to spell the past tense of fillet. Not sure. Anyway, I had to fillet the fish for the recipe and couldn't think of a way around it this time. I'm not so keen on cutting the largest hunks of meat off an animal and disposing of the rest. That, and I've never learned how to do it.  I whittled away at three small bass to get enough meat for this recipe, all the while thinking, "There's got to be a better way at doing this". Later in the day, I was glancing at the boys' magazine on conservation and in it is filleting directions (The magazine is free to Missouri citizens, by the way. It's called Xplor and is produced by the Missouri Department of Conservation). So, you start at the head end apparently. Who knew?! How odd that I'd be making something as exotic as bass spring rolls while also learning something as rudimentary as how to fillet a fish.

Fishished product. Like the sumo wrestler platter? My cousin made it.

Anyway, I'm glad I've gotten making spring rolls and attempting filleting under by my belt. It seems like both skills could come in handy in the future.

As to ye recipe evaluation part of the blog, two thumbs up.  The spring rolls were really great as was the dipping sauce. Setting aside the fact that this book helps you cook with many kinds of native Missouri meats and plants, it's also a fantastic reference for how to make all sorts of exotic recipes.  I love Cooking Wild in Missouri!

Grilled trout stuffed with tomato and basil, pages 106-107

 It's summer time! I can feel it.

Today we went to an art festival here in town called Art in the Park. We ate kettle corn, got too much sun, and (Fred's snickering at this one) I bought three photos of man hole covers. Ah, a typical weekend day in the summer!!

After the program we went for a swim, played a bit of tennis, and then came home for a Woods to Food dinner.

Tonight's dinner was trout stuffed with tomato, basil, and firm goat cheese (it called for parmesan, but we have a lot of cheese from our friend's goat farm in right now), rubbed down with olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped in bacon and grilled. I'm rushing the summer veggies a bit, but the corn on the cob at the store is good already, so we accompanied the trout with most everything Bernadette suggested in the book: corn on the cob, boiled potatoes, cucumbers with peppers and onions in a vinegatte, good bread and we added more goat cheese to the menu!

Boy, did it taste like summer. I think it was mostly the cucumbers in vinegar and ice with mint and dill that smacked me in the face that it was a summertime meal, actually.

The fish was great. After muffins for breakfast and kettle corn for lunch, I was quite ready for a solid, healthy meal and this one surely did not disappoint. Honestly, I wasn't sure why trout had to be wrapped in bacon since it is so good on its own. However, when is it ever a true mistake to add bacon to anything, eh? I like the taste of grilled bacon, and it gave the trout a smokey, complex taste that was certainly nothing to complain about.

The world is always turning

When we were floating on the Current River this weekend, I asked Fred and the boys if they knew what the tall plant with white flowers was. Can you guess? It was elderberry. Elderberry is blooming right now. And you know the first thing we picked to start our year long Woods to Food project? Elderberries. Those white flowers are reminding us that the seasons are cycling back around to when we started, though we still have time left. Those flowers will continue to bloom for a while, then fade, then fruits will form and later ripen. And, that's when we will have been at this project for a year.

What have we left to do? There are summer and fall mushrooms to find and we're shaky on our ability to get those. Plus we'll need some rain, I'd think. There are blackberries and crawfish to harvest. Fred was asking me how we were going to get crawfish and I was hoping he was the one with the answer. There's walleye to catch. And, there are a few more squirrels to get. Wild blackerries and squirrel I'm confident about getting, the rest I'm tempted to buy and lie about. Or, maybe I could buy them and we could all write in made up stories about finding them in the wild.

One idea I did have, though, is that there's a beast feast gumbo recipe in the book we have not made yet and it makes a big batch of the stuff. Perhaps that could be our final recipe and we could celebrate with a Woods to Food finale party. Sounds like a plan to me. But, then again, I have lots of plans and only a dribble come to fruition.

Freshwater seviche, pages 82-83

From Ann: The first time, maybe the only time, I've been around someone who ate seviche was in Costa Rica.  I was taking a college course on biodiversity. One of our instructors was studying bats in Central America. At the end of the course the class went out and she ordered seviche at a restuarant. Two main things I remember about the lady (obviously one of which is not her name). 1. She ate a cup full of raw fish in a foreign county. 2. She told me that in Peru, where she did most of her bat studies,  it was common for families to raise guinea pigs for meat while also sleeping with them in their beds for warmth.

Why is it I have always felt like I know what the world outside of Missouri is like when I'm so blown away by the actuality of it? Raw fish in cup. Snuggling with animals you will later eat. I'm sure I looked like Kramer from Seignfeld as he stumbles backwards in shock. What a sheltered, naive person I have been, am and likely will continue to be.

When my instructor ordered the seviche, IS THAT THE SAFEST CHOICE? was what was screaming in my head, like she'd ordered a cup of cocaine. And that was followed up with another obvious question in my mind. How could a cup of raw fish possibly be worth any sort of risk?

We took the boys camping and floating on the Current River this weekend and I was hoping to make the Cooking Wild's freshwater seviche recipe during our campout. We started by catching a nice sized large mouth bass in Fred's parents pond before we left to go camping. That pond is my new go-to place for getting fish. I woke up the morning we were leaving for our trip not feeling the greatest, however, and just could not bring myself make the seviche. So, we iced down the fish for when we got back.

The boys are now visiting grandparents for a few days so Fred and I have Columbia to ourselves. Perfect time to make seviche, because I was pretty sure it wasn't going to get thumbs up from the boys. Usually when the boys are away, Fred and I barely see the house. We're fully taking advantage of our time together at the movies, on the trail, and at restuarants. But, this week Fred has a miserable cold, so we're trying to make the best of it at home. So, renting a movie and seviche at home it is.

Which finally brings me to the recipe. If you want to know it was GREAT. This seviche recipe actually calls for a quick cooking method for the fish, which I'd never heard of. I thought if I was going to eat seviche it would have to be raw. I guess it's kind of like sushi in that way in that the fish is usually, but now always, raw. I have to say, for my first try at seviche, this did make me feel a lot more comfortable. What a fabulous, fresh, zesty way to serve up a bass,  bluegill or crappie from Missouri.