People are surprised when they discover I don’t care for mushrooms. I’ve had difficulty getting enthusiastic about the earthy-flavored fungus from the forest. I haven’t developed an appreciation for their texture that feels like rubber bands in my mouth.
My repugnance toward mushrooms took a surprising turn last Friday evening when I had my first taste of freshly foraged chanterelles.
I was in Duluth for a weekend of touring urban vegetable gardens and dining on remarkable food with friends, all of us members of the Minneapolis-St. Paul chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International (LDEI). Les Dames, as members affectionately refer to the organization, is a world wide philanthropic society of professional women leaders in the fields of food, fine beverage and hospitality.
I was staying at the home of Beatrice and Dick Ojakangas, tucked into a wooded acreage in the countryside several miles outside the city of Duluth.
The beginning of a new year continually fills me with a sense of renewal, a longing to de-clutter my life and an overwhelming desire to live more simply. My effort and elbow grease spent on creating and
implementing holiday meals are behind me now and it’s time to move
forward with new plans, goals and ideas for the future.
Every year about this time, Mimi and Granddaddy traipse up through
Georgia’s mountains to find some of the Peach State’s greatest
fruits–apples! Each autumn, the Peach State yields bushels and bushels
of apples and my grandparents seem to always
bring many of those bushels back to our now empty peach country.
“Whatever will we do with all these apples? “ Mimi always inquires; yet
her queries are always quelled once she gets to cooking and baking
with the bounty from their mountain travels.
As I have been known to confess on these very pages, when it comes to sweets, I am an unabashed purveyor of the pedestrian. Most people who have been to a Ralph’s Supermarket have probably noticed the bakery section with its apple turnovers, banana muffins, red-velvet cupcakes, entire cakes and even half cakes—presumably to add variety for the discriminating tastes waiting at home. Whatever glutenous confection you have a hankering for you can pretty much find in this section of the store, right in front of you, the minute you walk in. Since I am stuck with the kind of willpower that needs constant reviving and have been unable to resist many of these offerings in the past, I try to enter the store at the other end, where the fruit is colorfully, bountifully ensconced. But to no avail.
We had overnight guests last weekend. Two couples arrived on Saturday afternoon about an hour before it got dark. The guys immediately strapped on their snowshoes and hit the trail. The “girls” stayed back, with the intention of preparing toppings for the pizzas the group would be making together for our evening meal.