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.




Launching Woods To Food

Have you seen the Missouri Department of Conservation’s new cookbook called Cooking Wild in Missouri by Bernadette Dryden? I am inspired by it. I work for MDC as an urban forester and saw the new book one day while visiting the clerical staff at the front office.  I was so impressed and inspired by the book. This is no mix a can of this and a box of that recipe book. This was no drown out the taste of wild meat by soaking it to death in salad dressing, bottles of bbq sauce or cream of mushroom soup. This was a fresh, proud, personal recipe book. I was thrilled we had published such a book and thrilled that Bernadette wrote it. It seems to me it is a very personal book, by which I mean this was not just an assignment but HER recipe book on the subject of hunting and gathering in Missouri. Great for you, Bernadette!! I love to see someone find a way to use their proudly developed personal skills to better their work, which I believe Bernadette did by using her vast experience with cooking, and cooking using local foods, to produce this book for MDC. And, I’m likewise thrilled that MDC went out on a limb to create such a beautiful, unique recipe book. Ceviche and cordials? Does this sound like drone government work to you? It sounds fantastic and inspiring to me!

So, I had the idea that my husband Fred and I could partner together to really get in to Bernadette’s book. How about we (mostly he) hunts and gather (likely both of us) the needed ingredients for the recipe book and then cook (likely mostly me) the recipes, say in a year in a similar fashion to the Julie and Julia book? Have you read that one? It’s about a lady in NY city trying all of Julia Child’s recipies in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then blogging about it. Anyway, I thought our project sounded like a good one in many ways which leads me to this blog.