Mussels

About twice a year, in the seafood section at Kroger, they have two pound net bags of mussels. I do cringe at paying eight bucks for a little bag of mussels, when I've collected hundreds of pounds for free, but I'm a long way from the sea. I got a bottle of dry white wine and a bunch of watercress, a small loaf of French bread, and one of those little jars of artichoke hearts in oil. Only one of the mussels fails to open, and I enjoy this meal as much as any in recent memory. Down Crow Pasture, where I had seeded mussel beds and oyster beds, where a tidal creek (Sesuit Creek) flowed into Cape Cod Bay, and where I often walked, I carried little beyond a flask and a lighter. I'd weave a crude grill from green willow twigs, build a small driftwood fire and roast shellfish until they opened. I always carry a small bottle of hot sauce. You roast them deep side down and use the flat shell to dig out the goodness. At home I make a dipping sauce of reduced butter and wine, but on the beach I just slurp the briny liquid. There's a dead fox in the woodshed, I saw it today when I walked in from the Jeep. No blood, no sign of damage, just a dead fox. Not my fox, this is a male and the ears are different. I'd like to skin it out, salt it, stretch it on a board, maybe use it for the ruff on my winter coat, but my tendency is to just bury and forget it. Mussels and a dead fox in the same day. Go figure. I assume a prime mover who has it in for me. I've certainly offended the gods. Why else would I have another flat tire? Morning walk, looking for morels, and I find a few small ones, enough for breakfast. I would have ordinarily left these for a day, but the turkeys would get them. After breakfast (mushrooms on toast, with a side order of soft scrambled eggs) the day is given over totally to the book B got for me, Harrison's The Raw And The Cooked, which I had somehow missed. It's a wonderful and quite comic food book. Articles from a food column, sundry other pieces about cooking game, overeating, hunting, fishing. Highly recommended. Outside one more time, in the afternoon, to take a bit of air. The leaves are matted and the fragrance is of fecund ground. The Red Maple buds have broken. The squirrels seem to have gone crazy. B noted the other day that they are a one-hit wonder, their trick is that they can do a 180 degree turn faster than any other creature. It's their main survival skill. I've fallen into a pattern, where when I get up to pee, at four or five in the morning, I just stay up and either read or write. At five this morning I could hardly wait to get out of bed, brew a double espresso, and start reading the Harrison, waiting for enough light to hunt mushrooms. Thank god I picked up a back-up pound of butter.