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Month: May 2009

Monster Morel

Monster Morel

p1300032 Yes folks, that’s an 8.4 ounce morel! Chuck found it up behind his cabin yesterday morning, growing just at the waterline of the irrigation ditch. It was a monster, but we managed to slay it, cook it in butter and vermouth, and enjoy it on rice (along with some pork chops) last night.

It’s the only place we’ve had any luck this year at all, up behind his cabin. He found a couple of really little yellow morels, and one other black one, not nearly so big as this. It did rain a little this week, so here’s hoping the weekend brings us some luck with the wily morel.

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear

On Sunday, Chuck and I went off on an adventure — we headed over to the backside of Livingston Peak to look for mushrooms and elk horns. We’d just crossed a ridge that bordered private land, and were talking about how goofy the Icelandic horses in the field looked with their long long manes when Chuck stopped suddenly.

About 100 feet below us, under a big fir tree, was a bear. A pretty big bear. Not a stupendously big bear, but big enough. He didn’t seem to see us, and the Icelandic horses didn’t seem too upset, so we figured he was a regular in the neighborhood. Chuck pulled out his binoculars, and because I’m a scaredy-cat, I watched the bear through the little space over his shoulder and under the binocs.

The bear was digging for something under the tree. We quietly got down closer to the ground, as slowly and silently as possible I unclipped my pack and unzipped the outer compartment where the bear spray was (astonishing how loud things can sound when you’re trying to be silent). The bear was still down there, digging around under the tree, eating small plants. Chuck kept passing me the binoculars, but I was too scared that I’d see them fill up with charging bear, so I kept handing them back.

But the bear didn’t charge. We watched him for five or ten minutes before he ambled down the drainage. From what we could tell, he was maybe three to five years old, with a beautiful grizzled coat. He didn’t have a big hump (which is why we think he was young) but he did have big claws, and Chuck said he saw through the binoculars that he had “big shiny white incisors”. He was a gorgeous, healthy bear, doing bear things, and we felt so grateful (even if I was really scared) to have had the chance to watch him for a little bit.

After the bear left, we continued hiking. We bushwhacked up through a lovely fir forest. It was much more open inside than it looked like from the outside — glade after glade, many of which were speckled with yellow Glacier Lillies. We found a very cool exposed ridge at the top, which, when we came around on the downhill side turned out to be a really spectacular cliff. On the way down we followed a creek, which met another creek, and then another one. It thunderstormed in the afternoon, and the creeks came up visibly. We saw a lot of elk and moose sign, as well as some large bear scats, but we didn’t see any other animals.

It was such a fun adventure. Bushwhacking around, looking at things, the bear, and then the kind of soaking rain we so rarely get around here. We made it back to the car, drenched, and about five minutes from being really cold, then drove home through nearly-flooded roads with the heat on high, and the car steaming up, drinking a beer and talking about what a fun day we’d had, and how lucky we are to live here.

Tomato Seedlings for Sale

Tomato Seedlings for Sale

For all of you in the Livingston area — I have tomato starts for sale. They were started from seed on March 15, and although you could put them in this weekend (the traditional start time) I’d suggest using Wall o’Water’s if you do. We’re more than likely to get another snowstorm before it’s over, and I’ve had great luck with the Wall o’Waters in the past.

Seedlings are $5 per plant, and all of them are cold-hardy varieties. They’ve been in the cold frame for about 3 weeks, so they’re hardened off and although they’re small right now,  a week or so in a nice warm weather in a wall o’water and they should sprout right up. (Plus I transplanted them deep for better root growth.) Also, since I started them myself in sterile soil mix, you shouldn’t have to worry about picking up verticulum wilt.

I have the following varieties available:

Milano Plum: this is a determinate plant (bushy, not viny) and last year it gave me a bumper crop of heavy plum style tomatoes (about 4-6 inches long). These tomatoes were fabulous for salsa.

Mountain Princess: Another determinate plant that sets nice round mid-sized tomatoes (about 3 inches in diameter).

Marmande: From Seeds of Italy. This is an old French tomato that I’ve had great success with the past few years. It ripens fairly late in the season but sets bunches of slightly flat, ridged tomatoes. Great flavor. Semi-determinate plant (responds well to heavy pruning).

Grushovka: A Siberian variety from High Altitude Gardens. Determinate plant that sets clusters of rose-colored, oblong fruits. Very productive.

Olga’s Round Yellow Chicken: A Siberian variety from High Altitude Gardens. I admit it, I plant this one for the name. Indeterminate plant that sets bright orange, very round tomatoes.

Galina: A Siberian variety from High Altitude Gardens. This is one of my favorite tomatoes. It’s very indeterminate, and will sprawl up and across any trellis you set it on, and it’s also highly productive. This plant sets large yellow cherry tomatoes that have a wonderful balance of sweetness and acid. I’m not a fan of very sweet tomatoes, so I love this one. Kids love it too …

Black Cherry: another sprawling indeterminate plant that bears dark purple cherry tomatoes. Again nice acid-sweet balance. Not quite as early as Galina.

Marglobe: From Seeds of Italy. Old heirloom variety, indeterminate, clusters of medium-sized deep red fruits. Great taste, mid-season.

Principe Borghese: From Seeds of Italy. A classic. Semi-determinate plant, not too sprawly, that throws clusters of small, thick-walled, delicious plum tomatoes. These are the tomatoes that they make sun-dried tomatoes from. I like them for sauce.

Jaunne Flammee: This is one of my favorite tomatoes. Indeterminate and sprawling plant that throws clusters of bright-orange, egg-sized fruits. These are delicious tomatoes that come in about mid-season and continue to ripen all the way through.These seedlings are from seed I saved myself, so they’re acclimated to Montana.

Perestroika: A Siberian variety from High Altitude Gardens. Indeterminate plant that throws nice round medium sized tomatoes. Red-orange fruits with nice flavor.

Prairie Fire: Bushy determinate plants. This is historically the first tomato of the season. Nice round orange-red fruits, on the smaller side but taste really delicious. Plant is prone to flea beetle damage, but that never seems to affect the tomatoes much.

Chickens on the Ramp

Chickens on the Ramp

p1210029 The chickens spent the first night in their coop last night — we still need to build the fence, but the Carpenter came by and put the door on, and built a ramp for them — I think we’re putting the fence in tonight — they are very funny — they like exploring around, but they’re chickens, they’re not very brave.

So this morning they poked their heads out of the coop, and negotiating the step to the ramp seemed very daring for most of them — the rooster of course was the first one out, checking out the scene for his girls.

p1210030 Eventually though they all made it down the ramp, and back into their dog crate (which is there to protect them from the dogs). I’ll have to reposition the plastic things (formerly the bottom of a composter) so they’ll have a little shade — it’s supposed to be 80 degrees today and I’d hate to roast the little guys.

The chicken coop is made from a packing crate — my friend Sabrina had some family things shipped over from England, and the crate was so beautiful that we decided to recycle it. The Carpenter had some old doors he’d used for closets, so there’s a door, and of course, he has a plethora of lumber. He also found an old temperature-sensitive foundation vent, which you can’t see in these photos but which he put on the side of the coop for ventilation. It closes when it’s cold, opens when it’s hot. The whole thing is up on cinder blocks so they’ll have  a shady place to hide on a hot day. I recycled an old wooden wine box I found at the dump as a laying box, and the Carpenter is bringing over some old broom handles to put in as roosts.

Then as soon as we get the fence in, they’ll be a little more free range than they have been. The dogs are off to the groomers this morning for their spring shave, so I think the chickens might get some free time in the yard while they’re gone.

So far so good on the chicken project. With many thanks to the guy who built me a beautiful coop — it would all have been considerably more slapdash if I’d done it myself …

Morels!

Morels!

morels 2009 Here they are — the first morels! (I always want to sing that to the tune of The First Noel.) The Carpenter and I had a great time this weekend finding morels up behind his cabin — mushroom hunting is SO MUCH FUN! I get SO excited when I see one sticking up out of the duff (he laughed at me as I splashed through the irrigation ditch in my haste to get to a patch of three on the far side).

Saturday night we had morels sauteed in butter with onions and garlic over steak, and last night I made a baked macaroni and cheese with morels. And there are more out there — it’s been intermittently rainy and sunny for a week or so, and we haven’t had any snow in almost a week.

Spring! Morels! Delicious delicious mushrooms out there waiting to be found — like presents from the universe.

Craig Arnold, 1967-2009

Craig Arnold, 1967-2009

Craig and I survived the PhD program at the University of Utah together — it was a terrible time for me, a program that wasn’t a good fit, and in general, an experience that taught me that academia wasn’t a good habitat for me. But Craig, Craig was maddening, a provacateur by nature, but he was also one of the truly kind people I met at Utah. His loss, which is chronicled here at the Salt Lake Tribune, is immense. He was an enormous talent, a poet just hitting his stride. There’s a lovely rememberence here by his friend Michael Hanson.

The best tribute you can give though, is, as our mutual friend Joel Long suggested, to go outside and “read a poem by Craig Arnold out loud with bravado, like a rock star.”

So today Craig, in my backyard, I’m sending up my words to you — although no one will ever read “Hot” with the same insinuating tone that you always did. It’s the best we can do, to keep the poems alive — for those of you who don’t know Craig’s work, we have two books —Shells (Yale Series of Younger Poets) and Made Flesh. There’s also the blog he was keeping of his volcano adventures: Volcano Pilgrim.

It’s a huge loss, for his family, his son Robin, his partner Rebecca, and for all of us who knew and worked with him. It’s also a huge loss for American poetry. Our only small small consolation is that they think he went quickly, and that he hadn’t been out there suffering, as many of us had feared.

“Woke Up This Morning ….”

“Woke Up This Morning ….”

So, my new sweetheart (who needs a blog name, the Carpenter?) hasn’t had cable these past few years, and isn’t really a tv person. But because he tends to work late, and we eat dinner late, neither of us has the energy for a whole movie. But it’s too early to go to bed, and so I’ve discovered the wonderful world of TV series on DVD. The Carpenter has never seen the Sopranos, or Deadwood, or Rome, or even Planet Earth — all of which are now rotating through my Netflix queue.

Can I tell you how much fun it is to start all over again and with someone who has no idea what’s coming? While it’s very hard for me not to keep jumping in with things like “oh, that’s Livia — the meanest mother ever,” or “that’s Calamity Jane, she gets much more interesting,” it’s still really cool to start over from the beginning.

We watched the first episode of The Sopranos last night — and wow. The ducks! Tony is so thin! Dr. Melfi’s office is all different! The priest — I’d forgotten about the annoying priest! Meadow was so young, and not having eating disorder issues yet!

My theory is that these long-arc narrative series are the Dickensian novels of our time — big sprawling episodic dramas in which there’s plenty of room for characters to unspool and develop (especially for the Sopranos which went for so many seasons). And watching these first few episodes have been really fun because it’s clear that characters I thought were minor the first time through, were already designated for development in ways I didn’t anticipate. Like re-reading a favorite novel, the pleasure this time around comes not so much from finding out what happens, but from watching how it happens (and of course, from getting to share it with someone new).

Linky Round-up

Linky Round-up

Things have been a little crazy — work is work, life is good and I’m sort of just enjoying living it without the self-consciousness of blogging. But there are a few things I’ve been meaning to link to —

First off — my friend Craig Arnold, who I went to grad school with at Utah, is missing in Japan. He was researching volcanoes and went missing last week. He’s an award-winning poet (author of Shells and Made Flesh, teaches at the University of Wyoming, and has a teenaged son. It’s all very upsetting — if any of you would like to help out, there’s a Facebook group called Find Craig Arnold with info about how to help.

Sad news yesterday about Dom Deluise, author of one of my all-time favorite cookbooks: Eat This! You’ll Feel Better! I’ve blogged about my love for this book before, and in his honor, I think I’m going to have to go make his grandmother’s cake, the one I make for every occasion. It’s the perfect cake — spongy yellow genoise, split in half and filled with fruit and custard, then “frosted” with sweetened whipped cream and topped with more fruit. I’ve had men propose marriage over this cake at potlucks. It’s fabulous. So thanks Dom for making us all giggle a lot, and for giving me my favorite cake recipe.

The NY Times has a long article on how the American company Smithfield is inflitrating eastern Europe and building industrial hog farms in areas with lax legislation …

I picked up a copy of a cool new magazine about cheese called culture. I really liked it, especially as there were a couple of articles about cheesemaking, and it wasn’t entirely focussed on buying and eating cheese. It’s a terrible time to start a new magazine, so if you’re at all interested, go pick up a copy so it’ll stay in circulation.

Again at the NY Times, Mark Bittman writes about how the freezer is your friend. I am a huge proponent of home-frozen food, and was just noting the other day about how one of the first things you learn when you move to Montana is that you need to buy a separate freezer. My own take on Montana freezer culture is here, at Ethicurean.

I’ll be back later this week with cheese news, photos of the baby rooster (yes! there is a rooster) and garden news. It’s still cold and while it hasn’t snowed in three or four days, it’s still barely spring here. So not much happening outdoors yet.