Quieting Life

When Life Gives You Oyster Mushrooms

Our friend Rob is, if not an expert, at least a very accomplished mushroom forager. He's also a dry stone waller like my husband, and brought TJ on to help with a big project this summer. So he's been arriving for worker pick-up early every morning for the last few weeks – and delivering some of his precious haul. Two weeks ago it was a clutch of perfect chanterelles, which I turned into a fine risotto with some local sweet corn. Friday, he handed over a brown paper bag containing close to a pound of the most extraordinary (and gigantic) oyster mushrooms I've ever seen. He'd spotted a tree along the roadside that was covered with them; he harvested about 10 pounds, and claims there's easily that much remaining.

Now, there are all kinds of wonderful things you can do with oyster mushrooms, but given the unprecedented quantity and quality, I opted to go 'showcase' and make them the star of a crusty pizza.

Buying Corn: A Public Service Announcement

I'm always dumbfounded at the way people defile corn in the process of buying it, stripping bare one ear after another and tossing them heartlessly back on the pile. To tell you the truth, I'm not entirely sure what it is they're looking for...and I've become convinced that – in most cases – they don't either. Just that, like everything else in their lives, there must be a better one somewhere.

Back when I was still doing the farmer's market, I was chatting with a fellow vendor one morning, a woman and a farmer I respect and admire (once I got over being terrified of her fierce demeanor) and like a lot. She'd wandered over to my booth during the slow early hour of the market. She kept a keen eye on her stall as we talked, and suddenly she took off at a sprint mid-sentence, hollering across the green 'Hey! hey! What are you doing? Stop it, stop that!!!'. There in her stall, some jackass was rifling through her bushels of corn, stripping the husks, tossing them back...I was almost as pissed as she was, and when I got home, I sat and wrote up a post for my previous blog – A Cooking Life – to try and rehabilitate the Corn Molesters. Chances are, the people that really needed to read it never did, but those sympathetic to the cause have suggested it should be printed out and posted everywhere corn is sold. And during this high corn season (here in Vermont, the sweet corn has been spectacular, even while it withers and dies elsewhere around the country), I think it bears repeating.

Garden Report: July 30

Every gardener I talk to says the same thing, even the professional growers. Sure, endless watering because it refused to rain (the drought finally broke last week)...but holy crap the bugs. I've been gardening for 25 years, and I've never felt so under assault. That fella there in the picture is a red-legged grasshopper, measuring over 2 inches long. There are dozens like him out in the yard, each capable of devouring many times his body weight in tasty plant material every day. Add to that his lesser cousins, numbering in the thousands. Factor in the flea, tortoise, and cucumber beetles, the cabbage loopers and moth worms, centi- and millipedes, slugs and snails, all in quantities enough to make me queasy; it's a wonder there's a single leaf left. But.

I am vigilant. I prevail. And my garden thrives, flourishes – and feeds us.

Little Darlings

There's nothing from the garden I look forward to more than the first sweet tender English peas. Perfect ripe cherry tomato after a year-long wait? Sure, but cracking open a fat green pod and swiping a handful of sweet little pearls right into my mouth is, for me, the garden's greatest reward. Until I figured out how to grow enough of them to satisfy my greed, I'd often eat most of them right from the vine. Now I gang-plant a full bed and have enough for several fresh-from-the-garden dinners plus a couple of pounds to freeze for safekeeping. It's become tradition to serve our own peas with Christmas dinner every year, whatever else may be on the menu.

For the last 3 years, we've gone off to Maine for the week of July 4th, and I'm always sure the peas will peak while we're away and be dried and shriveled by the time we get home. But each year, they've held back through the blasting heat only to welcome us home with handfuls of perfect pods.

A Better Burger Bun

A few weeks ago, I had thawed some nice grass-fed ground beef for hamburgers and needed to pick up some buns. I'm in the habit of buying the ones from the grocery-store bakery (lacking any good local bakeries that would bake them from scratch), but as I reached for the package that afternoon, the thought crossed my mind that I should be making my own. I have a perfectly good recipe, proven and simple. So here you are, just in time for 4th of July cookouts.