Mushrooms

The Boletus are out in force, perfect growing conditions. I pick just a couple of Edulis, because they're large and heavy. After the rain yesterday, they are clean but probably water logged, so I slice them fairly thick and put them on over low heat with salt and pepper, after they've cooked for a while I add two tablespoons of butter, a minced onion, minced jalapeno and a can of chicken broth. Makes a great stew. I need to dry some of these, as they'd be great in my mid-winter Jerky Hot-Pot; and by themselves, made into a cream soup. I made a cream of squash soup, late last winter, using non-diary creamer, and it was quite good. Probably because it was zero degrees outside. I thought about getting a convection oven for hot-weather cooking. The one at the pub is not much larger than a microwave and I could clear a space on the counter for that. I'm interested in this water-bath cooking, but it's too technical for me, equipment that would fail. Most of the Boletus are best dried, the flavor is much deeper, I like to reconstitute them in sherry, and use that sherry in whatever I'm cooking. The first of August tomorrow, and I vow to spend an hour a day getting ready for next winter. I'm saving most of the Thoreau, as far as reading goes, and I have a goodly stack of Goodwill and library sale books. Seven large rounds of oak to split, though I'll probably foist that off on someone younger in exchange for cooking them dinner. A home cooked meal is a great barter item. Mac remembers when Marilyn and I lived on little more than oysters and strawberries. Also mussels and Brussels sprouts. Mid-day I'm interrupted by a beautiful Redbone Coon Dog, a gorgeous animal. He has a tag, and the owner is glad to hear from me, so I sit outside and feed the dog pemmican until the owner shows up. Someone not unlike my self. Unkempt. Splashed with mud and out of breathe, blame it on the driveway. He's obviously happy to see the dog, the dog wags it's tail, so I sense the feeling is shared. We sit on the back porch and shoot the breeze, the old guy is Frank and the dog is Bud. Frank spits tobacco juice every few minutes, and is a delight of local knowledge. Born, raised, and stills lives in Pink, which is the intersection where Upper Twin (Rocky Fork) runs into Route 125. Nothing there now, but there used to be a small store and a scattering of houses. It's interesting that the sub-areas locally, Stout, Upper Twin, Lower Twin, Rocky Fork, Pink, Squirrel Town, Lynx, distinct places when travel was extremely limited (except by travel on the river), all became Blue Creek (which is just another intersection) when unified by the postal service. When the boys finally leave I get back to my reading. An essay on the natural history of the avocado. The probable origin is in the Mexican Province of Michoacan, which, geologically and geographically is quite a distinct region. I had always scanned that word as Michigan, most of the pot we were smoking in the sixties came from there so I was familiar with the word. The area was settled by the Purepecha people. Tough guys, and they ran out whoever was there. Settled, managed the avocados which, because they were so high in butterfat content, meant you didn't have to mess around with diary animals. The Purepecha came from the west, via the coast, down from the Pacific Northwest. Michigan is an Ojibwe word, they mean the same thing, "land of much fish", the two languages are closely related. This whole migration by water down the coastline subject is quite interesting. The first growth forest provided very large logs for dug-out canoes. Had to stop and marvel for a while, about the work involved in hollowing out a log to carry forty people and the dogs. This is certainly the reason migration to the south happened so quickly. If you were the second son, you'd hollow out a log, gather a bunch of like-minded young folk, and head further south. It's fairly easy to earn a living on the coast, acorns just up the slope, and the occasional piece of meat. The relationship between seeds and plants had been drawn, three to six thousand years ago, probably the Chinese had been sitting on the concept for several centuries; look at how long it took the idea of paper to move from the east out to the west. Someone should have noticed that papyrus was simply a matter of fiber; there's a pottery shard older than that, which seems to indicate fermenting grapes. It's the oldest record, eight or nine thousand years, and he's walking on them, with his skirt held high. Expressing juice that becomes the best way to transport grain or fruit. If I reduce something forty-to-one I end up with far fewer barrels, apple brandy is a big hit though I suspect a red herring, the issue is really just moving stuff from one place to another. Moving seed.