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.

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!