Lazy Days in Kirkland, WA: October 14

Sunday was a lazy day, mostly spent catching up on work and chores.  Back in LA, I take the internet and phone reception for granted.  I don’t always have the best signal, but at least I know which corner of my living room will get me through the calls I need to make.  So, when we have a home base, like these past couple of days, Andre and I take full advantage of both services by making calls to family and friends, responding to emails, reading the news—all parts of life that don’t involve foraging and processing food.  Here on the road, I take nothing for granted. It’s a luxury to have lazy days.

We have fruit on the verge of rotting in our bus.  Plums, elderberries, apples, and even a few pears that we picked back in Wisconsin.  Even on lazy days, I can’t escape processing.  Ordinarily, I enjoy finding food much more than dealing with it, but not today.  We spent part of the day learning how to turn our overabundance of elderberries into booze, port to be exact.  It’s pretty simple, quite a bit like making the herbal beers I’ve been bottling for the past year or so.  Most recipes I found called for much more sugar than I would prefer to use, which is usually the case when I preserve foods like jams and fruit spreads.  With alcohol, though, the right balance is important because yeast feeds off the sugar.  If you give your brew too little, it’ll stop fermenting before the alcohol content gets too high and you could end up with kombucha instead of beer.  I haven’t tasted my port yet, since it’s still bubbling like mad—those little yeasties are having a feast—but I’ll let you know how it turns out.  If you live in LA, you might even get to sample it.

We’ve been eating mushrooms every day since we arrived, a joy given that the lobster mushrooms cooked up back in Wisconsin were our last find until we arrived here!  Steamed matsutake, chanterelle pasta, hericium frittata, chanterelle and kale sauté, hericium chili.  I’m definitely getting my fill while they’re fresh and abundant.  Dinners at Daniel’s house have been a real treat.  He is quite the character, generous with his time and space, and incredibly interesting to talk with, regardless of the topic.  He’s also hilariously funny, worthy of using two verbs that convey the same meaning twice in a row – hilariously funny.  This guy is sitcom material, seriously, and his daughter does a pretty job keeping up with her papa.  A German Buddhist who takes people on mushroom hunting (“Mushroaming”) tours to Tibet, Daniel has a passion for experiencing the world and mushroom hunting.  He was brave enough to try and make those two passions fit into a career.  Between giving lectures around the world, offering classes in his community, and taking people on mushroom adventures, I’d say he seems pretty happy… then again, maybe it’s the meditation.