Thursday, August 30, 2012

Taos Ski Valley


This morning we woke up next to flowing water, parked alongside a road in the national forest between Taos and the Ski Valley.  Excited to start hunting, and unable to sleep due to the constant roar of trucks passing by (there’s construction up at the ski area), we had a quick breakfast of granola with gooseberries and tea, then headed to the hills.  It’s been years since I skied Taos Ski Valley, but remember it quite vividly.  When we first started dating, Rich took me on a romantic ski vacation to Taos.  Having hit a tree the year before, concussion and 16 stitches, I was by no means an expert.  Of course, he wanted to hike, which entails going beyond where the lifts take you and into the backcountry.  From the peak, I watched him fly down the steep slope with ease.  I was in awe at his grace and form.  I whimpered, wondering how I would ever make it down.  I sat down, and reminded myself that I wouldn’t die.  Needless to say, it wasn’t a graceful decent, but I’m still here.  Oh, the first of a wonderful life with Rich, filled with extreme adventures… 

On the slopes, we ran into a gaggle of women who were out hiking, poking around for mushrooms.  They carried plastic bags (a no no for mushrooms) filled with inedibles.  We helped them ID their harvest, and told them about our forage voyage.  One of the women, Sally, reminded me of my friend Mary who lives in Boulder.  Her hair is silver and white, her eyes bright, and her smile would light up even the darkest of spaces.  My heart immediately opened up to hers, and I know this sounds a little woo-woo, but I’m a little woo-woo… I could feel energy flowing between us, something ancient bonded me to her.  Sharing stories, laughter, and ideas with these woman was such a joy.  And to top it off, Sally told us that her son is a hunter and her freezer is full of elk meat, which she generously offered to share with us.  Andre’s been lusting for some meat, especially after seeing elk steak on a menu at one of the restaurants that wanted our mushrooms (a wonderful place called Love Apple that serves locally grown and foraged foods, but too low of a price).  We’ll hop on our bikes in a few minutes to go pick up our steaks.  Yay!  Phyllis generously offered to let us forage in her garden, too!  To top it off, after a 10-mile hike, we filled our bags with mushrooms to trade, porcini, hawks wings, coral, and others. What lovely women, what amazing fortune.

canning chanterelles


Morning chores.  Canning in the forest isn’t trivial.  It’s already a bit difficult in the comforts of a fully stocked kitchen.  In the forest, though, it involves sterilizing jars in boiling creek water over a hot fire, and dealing with the elements... like ash flying into the mixture.  But, today, it is necessary.  We have too much food, too many chanterelles to be precise.  What a wonderful predicament.  Andre has experience canning these little orange beauties, and I love his vinegar-based recipe.  That’s how we started our morning.  No, actually, we started by making acorn flour pancakes topped with gooseberries and strawberries warmed over the fire along with a pot of earl grey tea that we rescued from the lobby at Pagosa Springs. 

If you want to try canning mushrooms yourself, here’s what we do.  Place clean mushrooms (any mushroom will work, but they either need to be small ones or you’ll need to cut your mushrooms into bite-sized pieces) in lightly boiling salt water (salty like water used for cooking pasta) for about 3 minutes.  Scoop them up quickly and place them on a towel or rack to dry for about 12 hours.  Then, mix together vinegar with a bit of water (we did about 2/3 vinegar to 1/3 water) and some spices… peppercorns, garlic, bay leave, juniper berries (go foraging), and parsley in a pot and bring to a boil.  Place the mushrooms in sterilized (boil them) glass jars, and pour over the vinegar and spice mixture.  Do this fast, to keep all the critters out.  Place the lid, also sterilized, on top of the jar, being careful not to touch the seal (use tongs) and screw on the ring.  Turn the sealed jars upside-down until they’re cool.  Once you turn them over, they should be sealed (check the seal by pushing lightly on it).  If it’s not sealed, eat it.  Yum.  If it is, you should store these for a month or so before eating… they’ll taste even better.

You can jar mushrooms in oil, too, but it's a bit of a different process.  The mushroom oil left behind in the jar once they're all eaten, though, is absolutely wonderful for topping on pasta and makes a delicious dipping sauce for bread!  Let me know if you try this at home... 

Taos: Earth Ships and Dumpsters


Driving through New Mexico we passed a grocery store after a long stay at the Welcome Center where we stopped for internet and water.  Of course, Andre wanted to stop to scope out the dumpsters, which were parked alongside the building in an easy to access area.  Most of them were filled with flies devouring the remains of what had been tossed out the night before.  We grabbed 2 bags of Doritos, spicy “dinamite" tube-shaped chips, and almost immediately devoured one bag, despite the long list of ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, food colorings, and MSG.  I can see why people love those things.  Yum and yuck at the same time. 

Just outside of Taos, I spotted the Earth Ship community designed by Michael Reynolds, Garbage Warrior (if you haven’t seen that documentary, you should.  I show it to my Best Practices in Sustainability class each semester… great stuff!), and we quickly pulled over to check them out.  I’ve been wanting to visit his place for years, and was so excited about our accidental passing.  Each house, made from ram earthed tires, glass bottles, cans, and other reclaimed materials, has a water capturing system, uses passive cooling and heating and uses no electricity, and importantly, has an indoor garden.  At the visitor center, we met Jess, a nice young lady interested in foraging and mushrooms but had little to no knowledge.  We talked about herbs around the center, our forays, and our harvest.  I spotted some kale and chard plants growing in their indoor garden, and while I’ve been enjoying the nettle, oyster greens, dock, amaranth, and other greens we’ve found in the forests, there’s just no wild replacement for a delicious and hearty kale green. Andre asked if we could trade some for wild chanterelles and without hesitation she answered yes.  What a score, for all of us!

A few miles down the road we decided to look for restaurants that might want to trade mushrooms for a meal.  Andre’s been longing for some meat, an elk steak maybe.  We had no luck (except for the harvest of shaggy manes from the lawn at the resort that turned us down). Somewhat tired of mushrooms, greens, and garlic, we headed to Cid’s Market to see what the dumpsters had to offer.  There we met Ryan and Karin, fellow divers, travelers, wanders. They dive regularly and donate much of the food they rescue to various organizations and people in need, traveling from city to city, scavenging food for themselves and others.  Ryan had already done all the hard work for us, and generously offered to let us take what we wanted from a lovely wooden box he rescued from Whole Paycheck.  He had plenty, so I pulled out a few tomatoes, onions, a cauliflower, red pepper, daikon, turnip, and a lemon (we haven’t had lemon since LA).  He spoke of their dreams to build a donation-based restaurant out of a trailer that they’d haul behind their truck, and they invited us to camp on their land.  We hugged goodbye (“my hands are covered in garbage,” he said.  I replied “I love garbage). I hope to see them again before we leave Taos, but was excited to wake up in the mountains rather than in town so we moved on.

Scavengers and pickers are the saviors of our water and our land—taking what might be tossed into a landfill that is destined to leak (all landfills eventually fail) into our aquifers and using it or distributing it to others—not to mention helping to ensure that the energy, time, and resources that it took to extract, grow, produce, and transport all of the stuff we consume and discard gets used to its fullest.  Thank you Ryan and Karin for the work that you do.  Thank you to all of the scavengers out there.  May you remain free from judgment by those who do not recognize your value.

Heaven on Earth - August 27


We landed in Pagosa Springs last night just in time to soak our tired legs at the hot springs.  We’d been hiking all day.  I love this place—they graciously allow us park Butter behind the resort for free, and we get to enjoy wireless internet from the comforts of our sofa or their cozy living room, whichever suits our fancy, while sipping free tea and coffee from the lobby inside.  I was searching online for a farmers market in town when I stumbled upon a link to a lovely little farm called Heaven on Earth that looked like an interesting place to visit, so I phoned Jonni, the owner, and left a message.  Shortly after, she returned my call and invited us to the farm for a little tour. 

In her mid-sixties, Jonni is a fireball who built the place from the ground up mostly by herself.  She slept on a tarp under a tree for nearly two months while a road was being built for trucks to haul in construction materials and supplies.  When we arrived, the goats welcomed us in.  I was taken back to Boone’s Farm for just a moment, Michael’s cheese, my time with Roger.  I don't think I’ll ever eat goat cheese again without comparing it to Mook’s.  A past life, for now.  A few of the bunnies on Jonni’s farm had turned renegade and were running freely from one building to the next.  I wondered if she raised them for meat.  She had quite the zoo, actually—on top of the goats and rabbits, her farm houses turkeys, chickens, her dog Osha, bears who, “out of boredom like to reek havoc on the other farm animals,” and hundreds of chipmunks who devour the seeds in her garden with lightning speed.  We sat for a long while, waiting for the summer storm to pass, discussing how she moved to and acquired the farm, her lifestyle, political views, and the sort.  I felt like we’d been friends for years. 

She spent most of her life in California as a dog groomer, and raised goats while she was there, which explains why she’s so knowledgeable after having only been on this land for 13 years.  A former hunter, she once shot an elk from her front porch, but now she doesn’t see the need to kill for meat because of the abundance of roadkill.  In fact, she has a “contact” who calls each morning on his way to work to report death sightings, then quickly hops in the car with Osha and her toolkit to go get what she can.  She’s amazingly spry, and I was thoroughly impressed by her ability to deal with a 700-pound carcass (“blood all over the car”), and her openness to share the stories that would gross out most people.

The rain passed and Jonni took us on a tour of her property.  She fed me oregano, lemon verbena, and snap peas from the upper garden, and then we all piled into her electric golf cart and headed towards the big dome that housed the plants during the cold winters.  There, she fed us tomatoes and taught us about ring of fire tincture. Andre needed to grab a sweater, so I used the time alone with her to have a little girl talk—asking deep questions about killing animals, like how did she learn to hunt, how did it feel to take a life for food.  She said her angels told her that they couldn’t do the dirty work for her, so she figured out a way to make it as easy on the animal as she could, but it was still hard on her.  I’ve been longing to become more attached to my meat.  I already fish, but struggle with the killing part.  I’ll do it, but not without a little suffering.  The thing is, I like meat.  I don’t eat it very often, maybe a couple of times a month, if that.  But when I look into the eyes of another being and think about taking its life… animals have families just like we do.  The struggle of a forager.

Andre returned and we headed towards the murals that were recently painted, and we met the goats, by name.  Somewhere between Moonshadow and Moonie, Jonni grabbed her 22-caliber gun and quietly walked to the door.  A bear?  No. Chipmunks.  One bullet and it was dead, making a total of 287 this summer.  Yes, she shoots chipmunks.  It’s her method of seed saving.  Andre and I looked at each other and just smiled.  It’s certainly better than poison.

On our way out, she gifted us with chard, purple lambsquarter seeds, and welcomed us back anytime.  We let her choose from our collection of polished stones. What a farm, what a woman, what an inspiration.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The big day - August 17


The big day.  The Annual Mushroom Festival Chef Cook-Off.  Us against the chefs.  We had 60 minutes to prepare 100 samples, with eager consumers wandering around asking questions.  It felt like Iron Chef.  While being introduced, I watched a couple of the chefs in action, feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the delicious ingredients… bacon, gnocchi, cheese, cream, butter—all things that make food yummy.  We didn’t have any of that goodness.  We just had crackers, which were pretty amazing, but still I felt like I’d spent too much time thinking about the “plate” and not enough on the topping.  This wasn’t a cracker cookoff, after all, it was a mushroom cook-off.  Whatever.  I wasn’t in this to win.  I was in this to teach people that they could prepare a delicious and nutritious all, or nearly all, foraged meal.  Our secret ingredients, besides the acorn crackers, were bluebell greens, wild onions and herbs (wild oregano gifted to us by the infamous Katrina Blair), and beautifully fresh chanterelles and hawks wing mushrooms.  Simple pate, topped the simple crackers.  People were impressed and had lots of questions, and many were inspired to try acorns at home.  This in and of itself was a win.

During the announcement of the winner, we learned that we were in the top 3—voted best by the people.  Then the judges spoke—the winners dish “embodied the spirit of the festival.  You could taste the Earth when you took a bite.”  We won.  I couldn’t believe it!

So many people asked for the recipe for our dish.  I’ll try to recreate it here.  Keep your eyes peeled…

Acorn Crackers - August 16


Today we spent nearly the entire day preparing for the Annual Chef Cook-Off.  Yes, two hippie foragers pretending to be chefs.  A week or so ago, Andre sent a message to the festival organizers offering our volunteer services.  We were willing to participate in any way, hoping not just to “forage” a free ticket, but also to serve an active role in the festival we both really support.  They asked if we wanted to be in the cook-off, which sounded like fun to me.  Andre wasn’t too interested, so I asked Nico, a dear friend, an amazing cook, and I knew that combining our skills in the kitchen and love for cooking would make for a fabulous, possibly award-winning meal.  As time passed, Andre became more excited about participating, so we started trying to come up with ideas for what we’d make.

We’ve been wanting try using acorns, and I’ve been wanting to get them out of Butter… she’s been hauling them around all over the country since we left LA, but processing them has been a bit of a psychological barrier.  It seemed like so much work, but this competition served as the perfect opportunity.  On first though, I considered acorn polenta, something creamy and warm to top with sautéed mushrooms, a hearty fall dish.  On second thought, plates and plastic silverware would be required, something we both opposed.  No waste.  Finger food.  Crackers. I’ve made them plenty of times before, so I knew generally how to do it even with the acorns.  We’d top them with pate, my mushroom specialty.  Everyone loves it, not just Andre, but he loves it, too. 

We started by cracking open the acorns and removing them from their shells.  Leaving them whole, we filled mesh bags with the nuts and soaked the in the campground creek overnight.  In the morning, though, they were still a little bitter. So we put them into the pots we’d brought, filled them with water, and boiled them gently—being sure to leave the acorns whole so as not to remove all of the starches.  As the water became a tea-like color, we changed it and boiled again.  I think we repeated this process about 3-4 times.  Because we’ve read that the skins are a bit of an issue on this variety, I decided to spend a little time skinning them.  It was a meditative process, touching each nut individually, gently rubbing off the red skin, while at the same time oiling my fingers in the cool water.  Andre had a faster method, of course, Swiss efficiency, which involved simply grabbing a handful and rubbing the nuts together in his hands.  His weren’t quite as clean as mine, but there really is no need to remove the entire skin unless you’re a little on the obsessive side… it becomes addictive handling all those beautiful blond acorns. The last step involved grinding.  We took the leached and skinned nuts into the bathroom (it was the only place with an electrical outlet), and ground them in the food processor. The result was a delicious course meal, not quite flour consistency, perhaps even a bit more coarse than polenta, but perfect for crunchy crackers!

The evening was spent baking, and making videos of the process.  We mixed about 3 cups of acorn meal to 1 cup of flour (rescued, of course), with about ½ cup of flaxseed oil (also rescued) and a pinch of salt.  Stirred, shaped, rolled, cut, baked.  Yum.  Special thanks to our generous friends, Hayden and Mandee, at the Viking Lodge for letting us use your kitchenette!  We still had time to attend the opening ceremony!

Telluride Love - August 15


It’s been a while since I’ve written.  Gosh, how time flies when you don’t have to keep track of it, no schedules—rising with the sun.  That said, when I think about all the adventures I’ve had in the past few weeks, it feels like a lifetime of joy.  Really, though, it's just so much harder than I imagined it would be to write out here in the forest.  I'm doing plenty of work... personal growth, learning plants, reading, thinking, but writing is something I’m having a bit of trouble with.  I keep meaning to try the digital voice recorder that I bought for my research, which will allow me to simply talk out loud and upload the file with software I’ve installed on my computer.  

In any event, I’m writing now.  Lately I have been resonating with the idea that the separation between nature and us, that false dichotomy we speak of, maybe some of us actually experience, has contributed to a lot of the disconnection we see, the disconnection that contributes to many of the social problems we face. Much of my time out here has been about recognizing that living consciously means that nature is becoming aware of itself - I am just as the trees are.

We arrived in Telluride today after a lovely visit with the other Erika Lynn – Roger’s daughter.  We came for the annual Mushroom Festival—the Mushroom Festival, according to some of the attendees I’ve already met.  In the campground here in town I see mushrooms turned on their heads, cut stems, people milling around excited about the upcoming forays.  Mushroom nerds, just like us.  After a leisurely breakfast and a quick check in at the volunteer station, Mark drove us up to Andre’s secret chanterelle spot.  Sadly, we found nothing.  Well, not nothing… I found 1 old porcini, a few hedgehogs and deliciosas, and 1 aspen bolete.  Turns out, my bag had the most variety of edibles after a long day on the mountain.  Part of me hopes we’ll have better luck at the next spot, and another part of me dreads processing mushrooms… we have plenty to eat for the rest of the year, after all. 

In the evening, we went to John’s house for dinner.  All the older mushroom experts, major mushroom nerds, were there.  The famous authors of the mushroom bibles.  Mushrooms were laid out all over the counters, finds from various forays, quite an impressive variety of edibles.  There were probably 30 or more guests, and everyone helped out in the kitchen… cleaning, chopping, telling stories.  I found myself hovering over the range, cooking for the crowd, just where I prefer to be… right in the middle of all the old guys, doing what I love—feeding people.  Everyone loved the morel and cream pasta I whipped up.  I’m such a sucker for positive reinforcement!

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

bartering at the Boulder famers market

I love porcini.  They're quite yummy.  The worms agree.  The deer agree.  And the farmers agree.  We've made them into meals for friends, gifts to neighbors, dried them for future use, traded them for fancy restaurant dinners, and most recently, bartered for food that we can't easily find in the wild.  Some of our favorites include: farm fresh eggs, several different kinds of goat cheeses (including one that was literally bathed in local Boulder IPA), curly kale, black kale, tomatoes, red cabbage, onions, parsley, and peaches.  We've used porcini 2 weeks in a row to get what we want from the Boulder farmers market.  It seems to me that mushrooms are the new cash.  This definitely leaves a good taste in my mouth!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

secret spots, and camping with Josh


I think I’m the only person who ever makes Josh go camping, but this time it took no coaxing whatsoever.  He and his friend, Cindy, were happy, eager even, to come along with Andre and I to hunt porcini and other wild foods.  After waiting patiently while we finished up a long morning of processing mushrooms, more than half lost to worms (lesson learned the hard way), we drove up the canyon road to our favorite and most productive site. 

Minutes after arriving we had already gathered more than enough for dinner, but the setting sun forced us back to Butter to find a place to sleep. The following morning, I woke up before everyone else and decided to do a little sunrise yoga, but I grabbed my knife just in case... smart move.  Andre joined me shortly thereafter, and by the time Josh and Cindy got up, we'd already filled more than a bag.  

After enjoying the delicious hawks wing frittata they whipped up, we gave the newbies a quick lesson on edibles, what to look for and what to avoid.  Armed with knives and paper bags, it became quite obvious that they had caught the fever.  Porcini after porcini.  Like the time we took Ram up to Topanga to look for chanterelles, we just couldn’t stop.  Despite the fact that there were several other hunters, we quickly filled our bags, all the while munching berries and thin slices of raw mushroom.  Everyone was happy, even Josh, who didn’t fare so well at 10,000 ft.

After arriving back to town, Andre and I had a pretty intense conversation.  I now feel a bit torn.  Keeping our spots a secret seems contradictory to the purpose of this trip.  After all, I want people to realize the bounty that exists around them, to free themselves from industrialized food, and to connect with the land on which that food grows.  At the same time, I return to my spots in Colorado every fall and want to know that those adorable little porcini will always be there, waiting patiently for me to lovingly pluck them from the forest floor.  My conversation with Andre reminded me of those competing goals, and it felt threatening.  Eventually, I suggested that he was right, that we should share our spots with others, and the conversation space began to feel calm again… that is, until I told him I wanted to share his morel spots back home in LA.  Now, he’s the one who seems torn, especially because we both enjoy selling and trading our finds. Something like the Tragedy of the Commons?  Conflict sparks thought, and this is one I'll be thinking about for a while.  In the meantime, mum's the word.

Hunting in Colorado, Russian style.


Today we took my friend’s dad, Alex, mushroom hunting with us.  He’s Russian (Ukrainian, actually), and has been foraging all his life.  I asked him to come along because I wanted to learn about food preservation, old ways from his country, although of course I thought it would also be nice to see him.  When I called to request a visit and potential interview, he warned me that he doesn’t know anything about food preservation.  He only knows what he does, which he learned from his mother, grandmother, and various family friends back home.  Precisely what I was hoping for.  Alex is indirectly my teacher when it comes to mushrooms.  He taught a friend who later taught me, and I was so inspired and excited to learn more that I continued to pursue knowledge about other mushrooms.  That was nearly 10 years ago.

Back home, I’m typically an early riser.  Here in the woods, I’ve grown accustomed to sleeping in a bit.  So when he said he’d pick me up at 6:30AM, I asked if he could make it 7:00.  With the storms (monsoons, as they are referred to here in Colorado) usually threatening us by mid-afternoon, this seemed a wise choice.  We arrived at one of my favorite spots around 9:00 after a car ride filled with stories.  Growing up in a communist country, Alex and his family relied on foraged foods to round out their meals.  As his knowledge grew, he also used his foraging skills to make money.  He could sell a handful of crawfish for what would buy him 10 pieces of candy.

He started out not knowing much at all about mushroom hunting but learned very quickly, mostly, as he said, by making mistakes.  For example, one day he was poking around the forest for mushrooms, not finding anything he recognized.  He and a friend picked loads of milk mushrooms (lactarious deliciousus) not knowing what they were or whether or not they were even edible.  They later stumbled upon a patch of shrooms they recognized from the market, and one by one started tossing out those orange and green milks.  They noticed that an older woman began following them, picking up those mushrooms they were tossing out and stashing them in her apron (he animated this process while driving, making for an adventurous drive up the windy canyon).  That’s how he learned that the milk mushroom was “first class.”  He also learned about the white porcini by making a huge mistake—after harvesting an entire car trunk full, he tossed them out in exchange for the regular porcini upon later discovering a patch.  Learning the hard way is never easy, but it works.

Chanterelles, on the other hand, he told me are “third class.”  In order to make them edible, they must be boiled three times, changing the water between boils, then they can only be used for soup or stew.  I wouldn’t completely agree, but I prefer hawks wings, a mushroom that no restaurant in town will serve but that all the chefs request from us for their own meals.  Chanterelles are so much more beautiful and fragrant than delicious.  On top of it all, in California, they grow with my friend, poison oak.  When hunting for chanterelles, I like to disguise myself as mugwort by tucking the leaves of the plant in my hair, pockets, and shoes because poison oak and mugwort seem to like each other—at least they also typically grow next to each other—in hopes that the poison oak will leave me alone.  Between that and eating it, I haven’t had a bad outbreak in a couple of years.  Chanterelles, in my opinion, really aren’t worth the trouble, and my Ukrainian friend full heartedly agrees… although when the season comes around, I always seem to forget this.  I guess I love the hunt.

Throughout the day, I learned all sorts of things like how to salt and smoke fish, how to preserve raw strawberries with sugar, make sauerkraut, pickled apples and watermelons (yes, pickled watermelons, whole!), and so much more.  I also learned that if you have an accent, you don’t speak around other pickers in the forest—especially other Russians.  Secret spots are guarded carefully.  I had the pleasure of taking him to my best spot, the best he’s ever picked so he told me—“one word, Erica, crazy.”  He said this over and over all day.

We quickly filled our baskets, hiked them to the car, then spent several more hours hiking, barely stopping for lunch. By the end of the day, my mouth hurt from smiling so much, my legs hurt from hiking so much, and my arms hurt from carrying so many mushrooms… and I thought he’d be slow in his older age.  Between Andre and I, we gathered nearly 70 pounds; Alex took home at least another 20.  Stopping several more times on the drive home, “let us look, Erica, what do we have to lose,” I was exhausted by the time we arrived back to Boulder.  He still had at least an hour to drive, plus a full night of processing ahead of him, so I offered him a tea or coffee, but he politely declined.  Andre then offered him some the huckleberry vodka we picked up in Idaho, handmade in small batches.  Of course.  Vodka.

That kept him going for at least another hour, ensuring us a constant stream of stories and tips for drying and preserving our harvest.  In the end, we were sad to see him drive off, but so happy to have spent a lovely day in the forest with my teacher.  Thanks Alex!