LONE APPLE

Sharing Apples with Mule Deer
Just got back from a conference in Missoula, Montana.

While reading on the back porch of the country home where I stayed (the place adjoins an elk refuge of sorts) I heard a plunk and looked up to see an apple drop from a tree in the neighbor's yard. I inspected and snapped a green-red apple from one of the branches for myself to eat.

I returned to my book and munched on the tasty apple but was interrupted again by a different sound: a mule deer snatching apples off the ground (she didn't ask the neighbor for permission either.) This deer picked up the apple and looked like she'd gulped it whole but it was at the back of her throat (as if she might choke on the thing,) then she started to chew on it like chaw. It appears her teeth are in the back of her jaw.



I was struck with the fact that the deer and I had shared this moment and this sun-warmed apple tree.

It's what I love about knowing where my food comes from. You create a memory of place (the sound of wind rustling aspens and dry golden grass and the slant of light) that's attached to the feel of the food, the cool, smooth-skinned apple in the hands, the crispness of a bite and the perfect taste- watery, untart but not too sweet.

The deer was looking for survival, I for an appetizer. . . that's perhaps the largest difference. The deer didn't feel guilty in the least for "stealing" this apple.

It's interesting how what is grown seasonally in a place and what the locals eat seems to shape the way they are. At a party in Missoula, someone asked me what my favorite animal was and I said a Big Horn Sheep, to which another guy sitting in the room said, "Oh, I just ate Big Horn sheep yesterday." I guess one of his roomates who they call "wolf-man" just returned with his kill and shared it with his roomates.



(From a bumper sticker in Missoula, it appears that they don't eat maggots here, the festival has something to do with Rugby and free-flowing beer)

Every year the area puts on the Testical Festival a Mardi-Gras type party where people come in their boots, hats (and some wearing nothing but chapps) and eat deep-fried cow testicals cooked in various ways and in various sauces. Yeah.

ZUCCHINI LOVE

Eating from the garden:

(Disclaimer: I hestitated posting a photo of me embracing zucchini, but after looking at it I realized I do have a sort of affection for this particular zucchini because it's assumed the role of helping to feed a hungry writer (me) this week. How could I feel anything besides love :)

The fact that one member of my family (7 siblings) has a green thriving parcel packed with potatoe, tomatoes, raspberries, corn, lettuce and zucchini (I think zucchini is plural) in her backyard, tells me there's still hope for my family.

Here's my sister's daugher, my niece Kjiersten beside the corn


Picking the season's last raspberries


Making salsa fresh from the garden

NUDE CANTALOUPE

Forget all you know about the cantaloupe, I didn't like them much until I met this one from Green River, Utah. Love at First Bite!!

"Nothing is as good as a good cantaloupe, nothing is as bad as a bad cantaloupe." -Chris Spencer, resident Green River melon supplier





More Love Affairs with Food- however brief


Cantaloupe flesh- simple, succulent, requires hollowing out, something an animal might do with his paws, but seldom humans resort to this (we'd rather buy it already hollowed by some wage-earner at Albertsons.) Sara M is here using an obliging cantelope scooper.

Cantaloupe compliments of Chris.

Besides the act of scooping out this pretty melon-- which I got the chance to help with. I got to eat the juice straight from the shell, lift it up and pour in into my mouth, as though it were something tropical instead of a thick-skinned desert species.

I'm not even going to describe how GOOD this melon was except let's just say I never buy cantaloupe because I normally don't like the taste.

Tortilla dough

A few friends came over for dinner last night and we made Mexican food. Before they came I threw butter into flour, then added salt and warm water to make tortillas.

Funny thing... dough... the feel of dough in my hands, it's comforting. Reminds me of helping my mother make homemade bread when we were children. It's the comfort food that starts comforting before it goes into your mouth.

Watch sheep herders make cheese, cool clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjChYD-qX5A&mode=related&search=

Carlos Petrini talks at a Slow Food picnic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4OdaExHSEk

(get past the first part and watch this, it's inspiring!)

Quotes by Carlos Petrini, founder of slow food movement:

"Gastrinomes who are not agronomists are idiots; agronomists who are not gastronomes are stupid"

"It's not enough for food to be good, it has to be good, clean and just."

"Many intellectuals think that ideas are only of the mind, but they come of coure also from the senses, and senses make the mind function. And somebody who is not paying attention to their senses is impoverished... We are people who live by our senses."

"Cursed is he who doesn't realize that the act of eating is an act of love."

Mad for Abalone!





















Okay, it's been a little crazy around here for 3 days. It started the day I arrived here in Northern Cal just in time to accompany my brother, his wife and his brother-in-law and all their families to the Pacific coast- to Ft Bragg on their quest for the rock sucking, crusty, barnacle-backed abalone.

To bag this rare beast, one must wear a protective suit to keep your blood from gelling in the frigid Pacific. (Here is a photo of the fearless abalone hunters Dan my bro's brother-in-law and Jim- my bro.)



One must wear a weight belt (to help you descend low enough) and carry a flat utinsel that helps you knock the little guys off of the rocks. So there is some trickiness, a little danger and some grit involved in the whole sport.
This might satiate my brother's yearly lust for that dangerous-excursion-culminating-in-killing activity. And it would also give my sister-in-law that taste of the fear-of-husband-killing-himself-while-on-dangerous-excursion-culminating-in-killing. Our father was a hunter that would bring home a mega-pound elk every fall (one year it was 800 pounds.) So what was some measly abalone flesh in comparison?

Tales of the dangers of abalone hunting abounded before we left. Men diving 30 feet into the kidney-numbing pacific ocean battling gigantic bulbous kelp that have ensnared less-prepared abalone hunters. And the story about the guy who got his head eaten off by a great white shark last year while hunting for abalone in this same locale. How fun!!

Jim and Dan both got 3 abalones each. Jim likes to say that his were 8 and 3/4th while Dan's were 7 inches. Like it matters how big they were.. then again, a few inches is a big deal to men isn't it.

I wanted to find an abalone myself, but was less than enthusiastic about wearing the weights while wielding that blunt object under the ocean. And was deterred by the $100 out-of-state fishing license too. So I opted to hunt for abalone shells (they are so pretty.) Besides, look at this critter!!



I saw sea anenomes as big as a wagon wheel- really- giant star-fish and was caught like a pickle in a washing machine-like swishing of briney water, enormous slimy sea onions (kelp) and dancing sea grass, which altogether made the whole experience a little disorienting. Jim (my brother) had to point out a few shells and encourage me to relax while bobbing next to a kelp covered outcropping. I was freezing and was afraid I'd run out of breath before I reached the abalone shell. After I got my shell, we flippered back to shore. I was feeling quiet frozen and said to Jim numbly, "I'm feeling a little hypodermic," scaring myself a bit because "hypodermic" came out rather than "hypothermic," a clear sign that I was already under the spell of the cold.

Needless to say, we made it back to shore victorious. I with my pretty shell and a borrowed unmarred (thankfully) $500 wet suit. My only calamity was a razor-like gash from sharp barnacles on the fleshy part of my palm. It's healing nicely though.

Onto dinner.

Here's Jim scooping out the thing:






YUM!!



Here's what they look like when scooped out. They clean up nice!



That night as I tried to sleep, I heard Jim pounding away (like a character out of an Egdar Allen Poe story) at the thin strips of abalone meat he had cut off the monster mollusk. It was a little maddening trying to sleep to that pounding. . . bang, bang bang with the meat tenderizer. Best case scenario when eating an abalone is to cook it when it's still alive. After it's been soaking in a Costco cooler in the back of a van for a day, the abalone gets a little solidified.

During Jim's evening tenderizing ritual, the doorbell rang and in came Dan, Jim's brother-in-law who had come with us abalone diving. He had a bowl of pasta noodles and aldredo sauce and guess what? Strips of abalone. I tried a few, which tasted faintly like chicken, but really and less flavorful than even a boca burger. But it wasn't bad. The night after, Jim fried up fat sections fish-n-chips style and they were great!

Forgot to mention, sometimes you can find a pearl in the abalone if you palipatate their gonads after capture. No pearl in these abalones, but Jim did find a batman toy, (look to left of abalone.) How cool is that!






Jim cranked up the deep fryer and used the recipee below for all of you who want to try this at home.



Cut into strips

Dredge in cornmeal, flour, salt and pepper and garlic powder

Dip in a beer batter (beer, cornstarch, pepper, flour and egg.)

Dip in panko (Japanese) bread crumbs

Deep fly until crispy brown :)

Dip final crispy mollusk strips into chipotle sauce:

Chipotle sauce for dipping:

Recipee for 2 fat cloves of garlic, 1 cup mayo, 1/4 cup dijon, 2 T of diced chipotle chili, 1/2 teas. adobo seasoning (Mexican seasoning) 1 tablespoon of white wine

Here's the "Abalone Disco," compliments of my nephew Andrew Skoy.

SLOW FOOD, MAINE-STYLE

Getting a little sentimental with a clam in this photo! This beach was loaded with giant clams, an unlikely event since we arrived after the record storm that closed ports. Thus, lots of molusks escaped the fishing vessels and landed joyfully on the beach. Seeing their advent, I sought to know the secrets of the ocean from the clam itself.

John and I just returned from Maine, seemingly, one of the capitals of Slow Food. The idea of slow food feels new to Utah, but in the East, they seem to speak this language more natively. They've been speaking it longer, that's for sure. The economy in Maine is made up almost entirely of cottage industries which are more sustainable than our industrial way of life out West. It's such a "literal" breath of fresh air. What is it about the West that seems to encourage new, unchecked and out-of-control growth? (St. George in southern Utah is the fastest growing city in the United States.) Though it's harder to get a great paying job in Maine than in Utah, look at the quality of life there. No grotesquely-large homes build with gaudy Greecian pillars on the hill of a small agricultural community. And the big box stores were mostly contained in "mall" neighborhoods. Or in Freeport, which I loved, all the big box stores are housed within old historic structures, or build to resemble them. Even the McDonald's was not allowed to hoist their fiberglass golden arch into the sky.
Looks like it's housed in some old home. In Freeport, everything seems to fit, to belong there.



More about Freeport from Boston Globe travel guide: (Incidentally, John and I were snapped by the photographer and it looks like made the travel guide!)http://www.explorenewengland.com/travel?photo_gallery=maine/galleries/freeport/&pg=9


Obviously fresh lobster, crab, mussels, clams and and other yummy molusks served at local restaurants are all taken from the sea within a short distance from neighboring harbors. From the fisherman right to your plate! Maine lobster is the best. Somehow, eating right from the harbor gives you a sense of place hard to experience when eating in the west. Restaurants here serve food from all over, it seems, so eaters perhaps get a little jet lagged after partaking. Just a thought. Really though, it does elevate the experience when you know you are eating locally-- besides the food tastes better. This lobster roll from Gilbert's in Portland was to die for.



Another great place, in Freeport, is the rustic tavern at Haraseeket Inn. I ate from their buffet: local fish and chips, mussels, hand-cranked pasta dishes, roasted farm veges and fresh berries or rhubard baked up in pies. On the back of their menu was a list of all the farmers and markets where they get their food. Another feel-good dinner.
Look at this Website and note:
Chilled Maine Lobsters from Potts Harbor with dandelion aioli;Organic Greens from New Leaf Farm

http://www.harraseeketinn.com/site/MothersDay07.shtml

And another place I loved, was a market in Belfast. A huge bulk-food section; buckets of cashew and peanut butter. The guy at the cheese counter pointed out all the local cheeses; spigots flowing with Maine maple syrup and lots of fresh produce and cottage-made treats wrapped in plastic and bearing a crafty label telling you where in Maine the treat came from. Loved it!


Belfast Coop's mission: "Fresh Produce from potatoes to artichokes free of agricultural chemicals. . . Competitively priced organic produce awaits your selection from local vegetables and fruits to exotic fruits from around the globe. . . A priority to support local organic and natural farmers. We have in season a large selection of fruits and vegtables. We have free-range and organic poultry products, organically raised beef products and our own hand crafted sausages from naturally raised animals. Seafood products either come from local distributors or from the fisherman directly."