West African

Slack guitar, not unlike Delta Blues, a treat at 3 in the morning. A nice excuse for a wee dram and a smoke. I'd been listening to Skip James earlier, so I was primed for this African music. The lyrics sound about the same. Went back to bed, having planned several hours in the woods for later, and a book on mushroom cookery to peruse. Coffee and a couple of slices of polenta (just butter, salt and pepper, these Logan Turnpike grits don't need much, although I do usually add a few drops of pepper sauce) and I'm outside. Hunting morels is a fairly slow-motion event. I harvest maybe a pound, and when I get back to the house I make an excellent clam/mushroom chowder. I make a simple clam chowder, using canned minced clams, quite often, but the addition of sauteed morels, the butter they're cooked in, and a little cream, put this over the top. I agree with the Barnharts, that morels are maybe even better dried. The flavors are condensed, there's a smokey touch, and the mouth-feel is luscious. My specimen hickory tree, only my specimen tree because it's right outside one of my windows, is budded, and the sumac are unfurling their fronds. The last three days the oaks have started leafing and this changes the landscape. The hills and hollows are furred with green. Feeling enormously self-satisfied, I can't help myself. Eating so well, Joel joked about that, morels on toast. Reading about foraging mushrooms in the Pacific NW and some interesting recipes. One of them, for which I have all the ingredients on hand, that I intend to make tomorrow, is a gorgonzola ragout with mushrooms served on polenta. I immediately come out against cutting polenta into shapes, I just cut it into wedges, quarters usually, I don't hate having those irregular left-over bits of fried grits: with maple syrup, they are very good, but it seems so needless, to cut things into shapes. Saw TR and the Thoreau will be in on Monday, but the museum is closed, so Tuesday. The Buckeye Diary Bar and its miniature golf course were hopping, so I got a milkshake and watched for a few minutes. Avocados were two for a dollar at Kroger and I don't ever remember them being that cheap, so I bought several of the hardest and a couple of cans of crabmeat. I love avocados, stuffed with crabmeat sauteed in butter, topped with a spoonful of pesto. But, on track, I collect a few more morels, to make a pound of fresh (and I have a batch in the dehydrator), make a nice pot of pecan rice, mince a medium onion, brown it in butter, chop the morels, cook them until they release their juice, add a half cup of chicken stock, then crumble in the cheese and take it off the heat. Everything about this works, the nutty, woodsy thing, the texture, the slightly fecund cheese. I'd give this a ten. I'm a good cook and like everything else I'm good at, it took time and hard work to get there; good, only, not better than that. I cook a great many meals that might be rated highly, most of them over-rated, but that's because I'm perfectly willing to read a book and stir a pot of risotto, or take forty minutes to fry an onion. I substituted pecan rice for the polenta because I must have eaten polenta at six meals in the last three days (if you include the cheese grits) and I wanted to try this new rice. The underground rice network had highly recommended it, and a friend sent me some. Smell and taste is an interesting subject, and the aroma of this rice actually makes you remember shelling pecans so that Aunt Sadie could make those cookies, Sandies, which are, actually, gritty. As we grind down to a Trump/Clinton election, I have to say, it's interesting. The Republican VP is important, because Trump would be impeached almost immediately, and what about the Supreme Court? And money, I don't know anything about that, if you have a few hundred million, what do you do with it? First, of course, is that everyone gets a cut, that ancient sacrifice where you divide the carcass, then, I guess, you move to Switzerland, or buy an island off the coast of Scotland.