The Rowdy Pea

wild foods weekend update

Well our wild foods weekend was awesome, as always, even if I barely made it out of the kitchen the entire time.  The food turned out great though, and I got to sample (more like chow down on) some of the most exquisite dishes imaginable, all created from wild foods hand-harvested in the midwest.  It is so inspiring to know that no matter how much we seperate ourselves from "nature" in our daily lives, we really are designed to thrive within the natural world.  The real world.

Here is a sample menu of some of what we ate. These are dishes made from foods readily available to anyone in the midwest who knows how to find them--simple information available in books like this one.

breakfast: wild rice with maple syrup and walnuts, dried berries and tea. (a 100% wild meal!!)

lunch: acorn chili with a salad of wild greens and mushrooms, cookies made from wild fruit, grains and nuts (okay, 80% wild, at least!)

supper: wild grape leaves stuffed with venison, wild rice, greens, onions, and hickory nuts--all wild, acorn bread and for dessert--ice cream sherbet made with wild berries. (again, almost completely wild foods. And so delicious!)

There were also many items that were mainly storebought ingredients with one or a few wild componants: Cream of morel mushroom soup, hickory nut mini-tarts, and an elderberry cheesecake among many others.  All in all we must have had around 60 or 70 different dishes, containing untold variety of nature's brilliant bounty. It was incredibly encouraging to see so many different ways to nurture my family's connection to the earth through food, and to spend time with others who are interested in the same.  It was a great weekend!  And can you believe I didn't take the camera?  Forgotten at home, poor thing. Oh well, next year there will be photos.

acorns for fun and food

Yesterday may have been our last beach day of the year.  Well, the last real beach day anyway, with swimming and and warm sand to play in.  There were also falling leaves, acorns dropping by the dozen, and a flock of nighthawks flying south.  Signs of things to come.  It's supposed to cool off a lot and start feeling like fall by next week so I hear.  And I say . . . bring it on!  I'm starting to think about apple orchards, autumn leaves, pumpkins, acorns, sweaters, and the yards of corduroy on my sewing table waiting to become pants for Ivo.  And speaking of fall, tomorrow we leave for the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival, where I will be in charge of food this year, cooking four meals for sixty people over the course of two days.  With helpers of course.  We are doing a lot of baking this year, from scratch and using as many wild ingredients as we can, however we do have quite a shopping list to accomplish tomorrow before we get started, a list that includes 16 pounds of butter and several hundred eggs. oh my! We will be busy.  But truthfully I cannot wait to get started.  I do love bustin' around a busy kitchen, and the kitchen in question here is ten--no, twenty times the size of ours at home.  Last night I made a brand new playlist on my ipod just for the occasion, with my speakers all packed so all the helpers can share in the fun.  We'll be swingin' our spatulas to the likes of Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Natalie Merchant, Talking Heads, Dolly Parton, The Big Wu, Allison Krauss, Ben Harper, Jimmy Cliff, and so many more. wooo!  I am actually kind of nervous so please send some Betty Crocker vibes my way if you're reading this (which you are!)

A wonderful weekend to all!  And Happy Birthday Aya! Remember this post from one year ago today?  It's still true today :)

making the best of things

Our plans to spend the weekend playing by the lake in a friend's borrowed cabin fell through at the last minute on Friday, leaving us with the challenge to make lemonade as the saying goes.  As any good Papa would, Josh got out his atlas and after a few quick internet searches came up with a weekend adventure that made us forget all about our disappointment.  We made two seperate day trips to sort-of nearby state parks that we had never been to before.  We swam, hiked, fished, and played the days away, stopping for picnics (with lemonade of course) and and naps on our great big blanket. The weather gods smiled down at us with 89 degree sunshine and not a cloud in the sky.  Being new to Minnesota (and leaving again in a few months) made the exploring all the better. We even found a park that we hope to return to next summer for a real camping trip.   

These pictures are from Kathio State Park, where we spent the whole day on Sunday, and we will again another day. 

This half-mile trail took us an hour and a half going at the pace of a curious two-year-old . . .

stopping for a trailside nibble of wild raspberries and choke cherries . . .

clomping--I mean "marching"-- down the board walk . . .

Ivo scared up two deer and several small animals this way, which may be his new preferred method of hiking.

And we watched this marsh hawk hunting for a long time. And wow do those hawks have to work for a living!

It was a weekend we will remember for a long time to come,  full of all the good stuff summers are made for.  And I hope your weekend was the same :)

hiking at quarry park

Animals we saw . . .                                        

                  

Flowers in bloom . . .

And signs of good things to come . . .

It looks like we'll have service berries and ground beans a-plenty this year. yum!  (at least for the berries anyway.) 

Other neat findings today were tadpoles, four different kinds of butterflies, and a toad that looked like it had barely missed getting eaten by a predator.  It was hopping around with a big bite mark on it's back, kind of oozing a bit but not slowing the little guy down.  Josh said toads have an amazing ability to heal quickly from wounds.  Although it's possible he was just saying that to assuage my worries about the wee thing.  It didn't appear to be suffering anyway, and I do have a great photo of the toad, but I thought I would spare posting it since people don't typically come here for photos of oozing wounds. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! 

                                                                         

a few of our favorite things

With Thanksgiving day just around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the bounty of simple pleasures we are enjoying these days. 

Ivo: moving piles of dirt. for hours.

Josh: beech nuts! We're headed back to Door County this weekend to stock up for the winter. We'll do other stuff too of course, but beech nuts are definitely on the agenda

Me: vintage Fisher-Price Little People. I scored these pieces last week at the thrift store. I spotted them from across the room and I felt like I was moving underwater on my way over to grab them. Lightheaded, heart racing, all the way up to the register like a thrifting fool. Then I realized I had left my wallet in the car because we had just stopped to make a donation, not to shop. (um, does that ever happen? not with me!) The lady at the register told me to just put my cart over to the side but I begged her to keep it behind the counter with her until I got back with my money. I'm sure she thought I was nuts. I don't think I exhaled at all until the booty was safely locked in the trunk of the car. Ok, I am nuts.

Leo: this basket of oddball ribbons spells P-A-R-T-Y for our curious kitty!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

I hope tomorrow is filled with some of your favorite things!

hi again, i'm back

In case anyone has noticed, I've taken a few days of bloggy-break over here.  The reason is twofold: one-fold is that Ivo has been ill and therefore we all have been paring down as much as possible in order to relax together and focus on getting well.  And two-fold is that I am down in the dumps about my broken camera and blogging just isn't as much fun without it.  Ok, the pity party is over, thanks for coming . . .

Meanwhile, here are two pictures of Ivo and Josh grinding acorn flour in the gristmill. One of Josh's professors asked him to bring in some wild foods to share with the class for a particular day when it related to the lecture topic. So we made some blueberry-acorn bread and some wild rice with beech nuts and maple syrup.  He said it was a hit. yay, Josh.

 

As for Slow-Cookin' Sunday, since I never did reveal what that was all about, I am going to feature a new slow-cooker/crock-pot recipe every Sunday on my blog. Whoop-dee-doo! I have been wanting to get more use out of my crock-pot and this is just the project to encourage me.  I am also welcoming any and all crockpot recipes in the comments section.  I need to get my recipes from somewhere, so if you have a favorite, send it on over! And you will get a big thank you from my whole hungry family. 

hackberry, snackberry

One nice thing about being married to a forager is not having to bring snacks along for a day of outings.  Stopping for a surprise trailside nibble is fun, like eating straight from the great big hackberry trees that live in our favorite park. yum!

sun, finally

After two rainy gray days in a row, we were so happy to open our sleepy eyes this morning and see bright sunlight streaming in through the windows. After breakfast we put on our warm clothes and headed over to the old quarry for a nice long walk. Ivo ran straight for the wild plum tree and was disappointed to discover that there was no more fruit to be eaten. But he had a splendid time chucking pebbles into the pond with Josh, and later he found an earthworm and decided to give it a ride in his toy Jeep. Afterwards he carefully returned the worm to the spot where he found it, gently covered it with a leaf and said, "nigh-night!" Adorable. And Josh checked on the ground bean plants that cover so much of the forest floor.  They were getting really big and were almost ready to collect. Some of them were nearly the size of a peanut. OK, I know peanuts are small, but we are talking about beans here after all.