Going to San Francisco

I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco. One of our good friends from the time we lived in Poland is from California and goes to grad school there. We got to see her after five years, and it was a wonderful reunion, like no time had passed. Cap and I sorely needed this vacation after a few crazy weeks at home. We were itching to get away and relax, and neither of us had ever been to northern California. The above photo is of the famous painted ladies of Postcard Row. I’ve always loved the idea of them.

We did lots of shopping in Hayes Valley, Haight, the Mission, and Fillmore Street. I got some artisanal chocolates from Cocoluxe, three types of dark-chocolate-covered goodies all locally sourced: spiced figs, pine-nut and sage toffee, and honeycomb. Cap, of course, spent several hours flipping through record bins at Amoeba and Aquarius. I enjoyed wandering around all the cute boutiques like BellJar, Needles & Pens, and Sunhee Moon (where I fell in love with this Dia de Los Muertos dress but didn’t buy it), and we inspected the peg legs and beard extenders at 826 Valencia, Dave Eggers’s writing center/pirate supply store. I tried French macarons for the first time, entranced by their bright hues and intriguing flavors like earl gray tea and violet cassis, but they looked better than they tasted. I guess I’m not really a macaron gal.

Our friends took us to one of their favorite restaurants, Suppenkuche, a Bavarian wirtshaus. White-washed walls, rustic pine tables, and a ceiling dangling with dozens of “radvogel,” or “bicycle birds,” sleek, metal birds in flight, seem spare at first but the addition of candlelight and jolly, red-faced patrons makes for a cozy and unique atmosphere. Most guests squeeze in next to strangers on the long benches, joining in the communal feeling, but we sat in a snug room on the back side of the bar, which was dark and mellow. They serve beer in half-liters but also in glass boots the size of The Captain’s calf, so of course he had to get one. I think it held two liters. I enjoyed an average-sized Schneider Weisse Hefeweizen. I am a wheat-beer kind of girl.

But it’s the food I must rave about. You wouldn’t think vegetarians would find much to satisfy them at a German restaurant, but Suppenkuche came through for us. Gemischter Salat (Mixed German Salad) came with four kinds of cold salads: shredded carrot, pickled beet, potato, and sauerkraut. If I lived in San Francisco, I’d pop into Suppenkuche all the time for salad and a beer. Very satisfying. All four of us shared the salads before digging into Cheese Spatzle with Onion Butter Sauce, which I am still craving a month later. Okay, if I lived in San Francisco, I’d be full of spatzle and beer. I have to figure out how to recreate that dish.

I had the best stout of my life at Magnolia Pub, a former apothecary on Haight Street. Stout of Circumstance was smoky, and The Captain’s seasonal ale smelled of apricots. A plate of local pickled vegetables made a good afternoon snack. Another favorite food/drink experience was the rosewater-cardamom ice cream at Bombay Ice Cream on Valencia. They had other exotic flavors (saffron, pistachio, basil seed), but Cap got rocky road for some reason. He could have at least ordered the banana rocky road, but he opted for the regular chocolate. We also had delicious burritos, noodles, and Ethiopian food, a cuisine we can’t get back here in Tennessee. And I can’t forget Samovar, a cool tea lounge, where we had Cherry Oat Scones with Devonshire Cream and Strawberry Jam alongside a steaming pot of Ocean Wisdom Herbal Blend created for His Holiness The Dalai Lama. The scones were flaky and hit the spot before a long day of shopping and sightseeing.

And there is so much green in San Francisco. It’s like a big city with a neighborhood feel. We wound our way through Buena Vista Park, cut through the trails of the Panhandle, and climbed up to Alamo Square to get a glimpse of the classic San Francisco view (in the photo at the top of this post). I hope all the walking balanced out all the eating.

On our last day, I picked up some breakfast from a farmer’s market and snagged some adorable Betsey Johnson dresses before the four of us picked up sandwiches and piled into the car for a hike up to Point Bonita Lighthouse and a picnic on Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands. Point Bonita offered a fantastic view of the bay and Golden Gate Bridge as well as friendly seals playing in the water. Rodeo Beach was pebbly and dotted with surfers and dogs. We relaxed on a blanket and watched the Blue Angels loop and roll across the sunny sky.

Unsurprisingly, The Captain now wants to move to San Francisco. Maybe someday. In the meantime, how can we turn our house into a painted lady?

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Coastal South Carolina: gator snouts, jellyfish tentacles, and dolphin fins

I’ve long suspected that I need to move farther south, and a recent trip to South Carolina was all the confirmation I needed. Our friend Claire grew up on Kiawah Island (must have been nice), but her parents now live in Georgetown, which is a little historic spot on the coast between Myrtle Beach and Charleston. And they win the award for sweetest hosts on the planet. Claire’s mama even had cookies waiting for us.

The old rice fields

Live oaks lead the way to the house

We arrived in the evening, and after a satisfying meal at a local seafood/barbecue/southern buffet joint, we grabbed flashlights and ambled through the neighborhood, a former rice plantation, to the sandy path that leads to the marina at the Sampit River. We were in search of alligators. I must admit that I was a touch frightened, but it was one of those instances where the fear gives you a thrill. I had never seen an alligator in real life and was reminded of all the people who spot a bear in Cades Cove, get out of their cars, and creep up to take a picture. Everyone knows this is stupid, right?

We walked out onto the marina, feeling a bit glum at the sight of still water, but when our flashlights hit the surface, something incredible happened. A phalanx of gators were slowly moving toward the marina. The light made their eyes shine red like beady devil eyes. That was all we could see at first. It was like being surrounded by monsters! Once our eyes adjusted a little more, we could sometimes make out their snouts.

On the marina, we were only about three feet from the water no matter where we stood, and I felt like gators were going to attack us from behind. I kept turning in circles. One gator was making his way toward the shore, so we decided to get there before he did and head back to the house. The Captain and a few others lingered longer than I could take. I saw that gator’s tail flip up from the water, and he was not small. I knew what to do when approached by a bear, but what about a gator? Claire told me to run in a zig-zag. Apparently, they can’t turn fast enough.

On our first full day, Claire’s papa took us out on his speed boat to a private island, where we could sit in the calm, warm salt water on one side and watch the mighty waves from the Atlantic crash to shore on the other. Everything about it was beautiful and relaxing, except when I thought some kind of little worm was stinging my thigh. It turned out to be a stray jellyfish tentacle, but it wasn’t too bad. After a few hours, storm clouds began to gather, so we went home and made a Lowcountry shrimp boil called Frogmore stew, Cajun tofu salad, and cherry pie.

The next day we visited McClellanville, a small shrimping village where Claire’s grandparents live. It was like going back in time and also a little like Bon Temps if Sookie Stackhouse lived near the coast: fewer than 500 people, nineteenth-century houses, live oaks, Spanish moss, palmettos, rundown shacks, a mayor named Rutledge B. Leland III. And it’s surrounded by Frances Marion National Forest. I wanted to live there and run the little bookshop.

We had lunch at an idyllic seafood restaurant, which fried up some of the best hushpuppies I’ve ever had. We went to pick figs at the grandparents’ house but didn’t find many ripe ones. We did, however, find random crabs crawling through yards, dolphins playing in the salt marsh, and a tiny frog living in the cabbage patch.

Unripe figs

A surprise!

Salt marsh

A dinner bell to call people home from fishing

A sunny afternoon meant another trip to the beach, but this time we went to Huntington Beach, where we could play in the waves. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Oh, but when we were leaving, we saw an alligator resting on the shore of the lagoon. We pulled up right alongside it in our car. (I have to apologize because I did not get any gator pictures.) Back at the house, we still had enough energy to make crab cakes, grilled vegetables, and margaritas.

Before leaving the following morning, we wandered around downtown Georgetown, staring longingly at the historic homes, eating chocolate-covered macaroons, and picking up locally grown rice and tea to take back home. It was even hotter than Knoxville, but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted Spanish moss in my trees! I took one last walk to the marina but heard something crash through the trees next to the shore. I turned around and retraced my steps, afraid I’d have to run in a zig-zag all the way back to the house.

Historic Georgetown home built in 1734

500-year-old live oak

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Great fiction and better food: Oxford, Mississippi

From Clarksdale, we drove east to Oxford, home of Ole Miss, countless historic houses, and some of the South’s finest writers. We immediately adored the sunny square, relaxed attitude, and comfortable neighborhoods. After sitting happily in the sun for a bit, we checked into the Five Twelve, formerly the Oliver Britten House, and ambled down the street to find Ajax, my preferred lunch spot in the square.

Five Twelve

Usually, the best southern food is found at a meat-and-three (sides) diner, but the sides at most places are cooked with pork or meat broth. Ajax is much more than just a simple meat-and-three, and their list of side dishes is lengthy and mostly vegetarian. I practically inhaled my squash casserole, fried eggplant, potato salad with homemade mayonnaise and green olives, and jalapeno cornbread, which was spicy, sweet, and moist. The casserole was cooked until the squash and onions fell apart, and I happily let each bite melt in my mouth. Easily the best I’ve ever had. The Captain enjoyed his very (real not processed) cheesy mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole with the perfect balance of butter and cinnamon, and fried okra, whose bright shade of green told us they did not come out of a freezer.

Our first stop after lunch was Rowan Oak, the idyllic refuge of William Faulkner. During our drive through the farmland between Clarksdale and Oxford, Cap and I had been talking about our desire to live on a semi-farm with loads of gardens, a few animals, and plenty of privacy but still be able to easily ride our bikes into town for entertainment. This, in a nutshell, is Rowan Oak. There’s even a wooded trail from the back yard to Ole Miss campus, a horse pasture, and an old outdoor kitchen. I think we would be content just to live in the two-room servant house.

Built in the 1840s, Rowan Oak looks as it would have at the time of Faulkner’s death in 1962. Nothing from his study has been moved. His riding boots are still sitting next to a chair in the bedroom. All of the furnishings are original, and the paintings in every room were made by his mother, Maud. When Maud received a wedding invitation in the mail, she would paint watercolor flowers on it and return it to the bride and groom as their wedding gift.

But back to Faulkner’s study, which, obviously, is the most important location. His typewriter sat in front of the window, where sun streamed through and made me think he was just down the hall getting another cup of coffee before settling back down to finish a letter. Faulkner wrote the outline for A Fable on the wall of the study, and it was preserved for the fascination of his readers.

The next logical stop on our visit was Square Books, a tidy, brightly painted bookstore in the, you guessed it, square. We gathered our purchases and made our way down to writer Larry Brown’s favorite bar, City Grocery, for a late-afternoon cocktail. Little plates bearing the names and favorite drinks of regulars are nailed into the brass bar. I traced the names, imagining what a boys’ club the place had been over the years. (My personal run-ins with what I like to call the Good Ol’ Boys Literary Guild have not been very uplifting for this young woman writer. Hence my name for their club. I will spare you the stories, however, since they all include Barry Hannah, one of Oxford’s stars, who died just a couple of weeks before our trip.)

When we headed back to our room to drop off our books, the owner and her daughter-in-law invited us to join them for a glass of wine in the drawing room, where we met her granddaughter, Stella Augusta, a cute baby with ham-hock thighs and an inevitable future of debutante balls and thank-you-card writing. Okay, not really. That’s just my way of telling you that Stella Augusta came from a long line of upper-crust Southern women.

They recommended an Italian restaurant, Lenora’s, for dinner, but the menu wasn’t particularly inviting for two vegetarians, and we were so taken with Ajax that we went back for seconds. This time, however, I skipped the sides and ordered a salad that I think was divinely inspired. I occasionally eat fish and had managed to get this far into the trip without being stuck with fried filet after fried filet, so I was kind of in the mood for a little catfish. Picture this: romaine topped with smoked catfish, toasted pecans, sweet corn, black beans, and a Creole mustard vinaigrette. Yes, one of the best salads I’ve ever eaten was created in Mississippi. Who would’ve thought?

But that’s not all. Our appetizer was just as good. It may not sound as good to you if you think of pimento cheese as something that comes in a plastic tub from the megasuperstore. But if you’ve had real, homemade pimento cheese, you’ll know what I’m talking about. A pimento cheese quesadilla with black pepper-infused sour cream and crunchy jalapenos. This dish is like the ultimate comfort food, especially when served with a bloody mary stirred with pickled okra. Seriously, if you ever find yourself in Oxford, Mississippi, you must go to Ajax. And they have lamps made from gourds!

Courthouse Square

A few of Oxford’s gorgeous homes

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Fried pickles and mojo rats: the Mississippi Delta

To celebrate our first wedding anniversary, The Captain and I took a road trip through parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. This post will only cover the Mississippi Delta, with other posts to follow. I apologize for the quality of a few of these pictures, which were taken on my phone.

Neither of us had ever been to Mississippi, and we were both inclined to explore more of the South for a change. We drove to Memphis and then followed Highway 61, a.k.a. the Blues Highway, down to Clarksdale. I was surprised by how quickly the landscape changed. The trees were different. The grass was bright green even though it wasn’t quite spring. Since we live in the foothills of mountains, the flat, sweeping plains were a new experience for us. Between Tunica and Clarksdale lies the longest stretch of highway in the world without a single curve, either horizontal or vertical. We even saw a mirage at one point. I swear it looked like the middle of the road was blazing with fire a couple hundred yards away, but it was simply the combination of headlights, bright sun, roads slick with oil, and that wide open space. It was the strangest thing.

We stopped at the infamous Blue and White, a diner in Tunica, for a lunchtime snack of fried pickles. You may be thinking what I thought when I first heard of them in college: You can’t fry a pickle! Honey, in the South, you can fry anything. And I mean anything: tomatoes, pie, Snickers, Coke. I don’t typically go in for most of it, but there wasn’t much for us to choose from at the Blue and White and fried pickles are a Mississippi delicacy. The server, who honestly reminded me of Sookie Stackhouse, gave us each our own personal dish of ranch dressing, which was a little much, and plopped down a large platter of sliced, battered, and deep-fried dill pickles. We commented on the size of the heap, and she said, “Oh, you’ll finish ‘em.” And she was right.

We pulled into Clarksdale in the early afternoon and immediately hunted down the site where Muddy Waters’s house once stood when he was a sharecropper on Stovall Plantation. It was here that Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy. The house itself is on display at the Delta Blues Museum, which is definitely worth a trip, although the gigantic head of a life-sized Muddy Waters dummy smiles at you inside the shack, and I swear he was ogling my chest so joyfully I was convinced he might wink at me. It really creeped me out.

A whole host of blues musicians came from this town in addition to Muddy Waters: Howlin’ Wolf, Roebuck Staples, Charley Patton, Elmore James, Pinetop Perkins, Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Sam Cooke, to name a few. Ike Turner was born there. Bessie Smith died there. John Clark, founder of Clarksdale, built the house below, Belle-Clark. His daughter, Blanche Cutrer, was was the inspiration for the iconic Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire.

We stayed just down from the crossroads where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil to get those mad guitar skills. (A sign at the Delta Blues Museum kindly informs you that this story is fiction just in case you thought otherwise.) The Shack Up Inn is located on the 4000-acre Hopson Plantation, where the mechanized cotton picker debuted in 1944. Pinetop Perkins was raised there. The plantation is dotted with shotgun sharecropper shacks, which are all corrugated tin and cypress walls, but we stayed in the Sky Shack, a suite on the top floor of the cotton gin, also full of tin and cypress and crazy antiques. A door in the living room led to a porch overlooking a stage inside the cotton gin. The headboard was an old door, and the low lighting felt authentic, but there’s a leather couch and flat screen. It’s shanty and swank all in one.

Packed full of antiques, the Commissary has been turned into a bar and venue, but it’s entertaining enough to just walk around and inspect the old-style barbershop set up across from the bar, crates spilling with cotton, rusting signs, and general bric-a-brac. We sipped beers from Mississippi’s own Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company and climbed the stairs to the lookout tower, where we thought about the land and the people as the sun sunk along an impossibly far horizon.

Cotton and barber chairs in the Commissary

As vegetarians, we didn’t have many options for dinner, but we found some garlicky pizza at the Stone Pony, where everyone and their mother was inhaling that evening’s crawfish boil. After dinner, there’s one obvious place to be: Morgan Freeman’s juke joint, Ground Zero. As we strolled up the sidewalk, an old-school, baby-blue limo whose license plate read Mojo Rat screeched into the parking lot. I figure it either belonged to Frank “Rat” Ratcliff, owner of Riverside Hotel, the hospital where Bessie Smith died after a car accident, or this awesome figure who came struttin’ in a moment after us: Razor Blade.

Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero

In a sleek suit and hat, Razor Blade shook hands, talked up tourists, and joked with regulars before taking the stage. It was jam night, and a sixteen-year-old boy visiting from Shreveport sat in on drums, while his family, from his ten-year-old brother to his 96-year-old grandmother, grinned and nodded their heads. Razor Blade sang about women, occasionally recognizing that he was sharing some parent-unapproved life lessons with the lad behind him. We drank PBRs and whiskey and enjoyed the heck out of ourselves before coming back to crash in the cotton gin, fully appreciating the cotton in our pajamas, sheets, blankets, and everything else for perhaps the first time.

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Memphis blues

A few weeks ago I visited Memphis for the first time, which is a little ridiculous given that I’ve lived in Tennessee most of my adult life. But it’s all the way over on the other side of the state, and there isn’t much else out that way.

I went to a conference that was not planned well at all. The hotel wasn’t near anything but fast food and empty storefronts, and their restaurant didn’t have a single vegetarian item on the menu. Nothing. I was forced to walk to Taco Bell, which is never near the top of my list. I walked outside to discover that the entire hotel and parking lot was girded by a tall iron gate. In fact, every hotel (I think these were the airport hotels, all in one clump) was surrounded by one of these fences, which meant I couldn’t cut through any parking lots and was left walking in the street since there were no sidewalks.

Later that evening I called a taxi to take me to Beale Street for dinner. Some of my friends had suggested places that sounded great, but they weren’t near anything else, which made them a little impractical for someone without a vehicle. I figured if I took a taxi to Beale Street, I could wander around, find dinner, have a drink, and relax. Interestingly, the cabbie mentioned that I should ignore any urge to walk around outside of my hotel because it was in a very depressed neighborhood with a high crime rate. Now, this conference was planned by the Department of Justice. So the DOJ forced me to walk the streets in a dangerous area looking for food? Thanks, guys. I always knew you were brilliant.

Anyway, during my one evening out, I did manage to see a tiny slice of Memphis that was not highways, fences, and fast food. I was disappointed not to have any time free during the day since Memphis is full of museums (Rock N Soul, Pink Palace, Graceland, Civil Rights, Cotton, Stax, Metal–yes, metal, as in ornamental), but Beale Street was interesting for a couple of hours. It’s kind of like a teeny-tiny Bourbon Street with all the lights, music, and history, but it’s only a couple blocks.

BB King’s had melt-in-your-mouth sweet-onion hushpuppies and creamy, crunchy coleslaw. I’m not usually one for mayonnaise-based coleslaw, but I scraped my plate trying to get every bite. The band was harmless, playing old Motown hits, and a few couples danced in front of the stage. Afterwards, I made my way to this little diner that plopped your slice pecan pie into a buttered skillet before plating it. When we went to New Orleans last year, that was on my list of things to eat, but I never managed it. I felt like this was my last chance, but the diner was out of pecan pie and every other pie. I was flabbergasted. Maybe they didn’t bother with pie in February? So I went to King’s Palace Cafe, a gorgeous, dimly lit restaurant with scarlet walls and an ornate bar. I sat in the jazz room while some old dude played hearty blues and ordered Orleans Parrish Bread Pudding with chocolate chips and a Jim Beam butter sauce. Needless to say, I forgot all about the pecan pie.

King’s Palace Cafe Jazz Room

I’d already eaten half of it.

I’ll spare you the gory details of the end of my trip, wherein I actually, as a grown woman, puked on an airport shuttle due to a nasty stomach virus, although I will tell you how I very nearly let myself puke on an airport screener who made me remove even my tiny sweater, as if I could have hidden anything underneath it. I was afraid they might not let me on the plane (considering the entire airport was plastered with warning signs about the swine flu), so I breathed deeply and got through it. As you can imagine, I’m really trying not to associate Memphis with nausea.

Yes, that’s a toilet seat.

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My tea ritual: Boleslawiec pottery

I love tea, but only herbal. (I can’t do caffeine.) When you have a chill you just can’t shake, you’re feeling a little gloomy, or you just need some energy, tea is your best friend. I have a smallish collection of tea accoutrements, and while I adore all of my dainty teacups, I usually stick with one mug. I think everyone should have a special mug, preferably larger than your standard teacup, because it makes the individual tea-drinking experience more comforting.

I used to sip my steeped herbs from the mug you see above, which The Captain gave me a few years ago. Isn’t it divine? I feel like the moment he spotted it he saw me in it and had to bring it home. Sadly, while it sat on the counter one day, patiently waiting to be washed, a (jealous?) coffee mug from the shelf above tumbled down and took a chunk out of it. That chunk immediately shattered, leaving it irreparable, at least as far as I can figure. I was heartbroken.

But never fear! I found a beautiful Polish mug to take its place. Boleslawiec pottery, from Silesia, Poland — the region where The Captain and I once  lived off of beer, vodka, potatoes, cheese, and pierogi (potato and cheese) in a cramped flat with an Ikea-like bed that was similar to sleeping on a puzzle whose pieces slid away from each other in the night, letting your rear end sink down in between them until you woke up and shoved them back together — holds a special place in my heart, and every time I see a piece in someone’s home, I immediately like that someone a little more.

These unique ceramics have been produced in southwestern Poland for more than a thousand years (although Silesia has passed in and out of Poland’s hands several times — see Norman Davies’s Microcosm for a detailed account of Wroclaw’s fascinating history). In fact, Boleslawiec, where the pottery originated, is also called Miasto Ceramiki, or Town of Ceramics. Don’t you love that?

It’s easy to identify Boleslawiec (bowl-uh-swah-vee-utz) pottery because the potters use recurring motifs: most commonly blue circles, flowers, and dots on a white or cream background. I have several pieces with cream dots on a bright blue background. These designs date from the 19th century. Prior to that period, brown and white or ivory were the norm, and some artisans still follow that tradition. Each piece of genuine Boleslawiec pottery is bears a stamp on the bottom: “HAND  MADE IN POLAND.”

During World War II, most of the country’s ceramic workshops were destroyed, but Poles are a resilient bunch and they wouldn’t let the tradition die. They formed a cooperative that was supported by the University of Fine Arts in Wroclaw. Today they are thriving, and their sales extend beyond Central and Eastern Europe into the US. Whenever I find some that’s affordable, I snatch it up.

Do you have a mug to which you feel particularly attached? Do you give people the side eye if they use it? If you do, then you know just how comforting it is to hold that mug in your hands and lean into the steam.

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“This precious stone set in the silver sea”

Fall reminds me of Europe because I’ve spent so many falls there. And because the places I’ve lived in Europe don’t have the hot, sticky summers we do in Tennessee, so when it turns cold, I’m transported back to my previous lives. I have loads of beautiful photos (no thanks to my photography skills, really; it’s the landscape!) from a trip to England one October that you must see so you can understand one of the reasons I adore the UK so much.

I’ve always been a bit of an Anglophile. Ever since I was aware that there was such a thing as studying abroad, I knew I had to spend a semester in Wales when I went off to college. And I did. Swansea, to be precise. There were castle ruins a hundred yards down the road from my host family’s house and a long strip of beach across the street from the university. I visited Dylan Thomas’s homes and haunts but managed to avoid drinking as much as he did, though I think there were nights I would have made him proud.

I long to live in the UK again. In Scotland, Wales, or southwest England. Devon and Cornwall are particularly breathtaking. I can imagine myself pulling a pan of Cornish pasties out of the Aga while The Captain goes out in his Wellies and cable-knit sweater to get some more logs for the fire. From the kitchen window, I can see sheep grazing and wild ponies tossing their manes against the dusky horizon. See? Isn’t it dreamy?

Have a look at this landscape. I dare you not to fall in love with it. Even the cows have.

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Wild mushrooms

With all this rain flooding the Southeast, wild mushrooms have popped up here and there. I’ve seen several fairy rings, including the one below, which I snapped in my neighbor’s back yard before they mowed them down. Fortunately, none have appeared in our basement. (For those who don’t know, we are in the process of stripping everything out of the basement to have it waterproofed, and mushrooms did in fact once grow through the nasty old carpeting that we ripped out a few months ago.) But we did get the cuties above that I noticed today while pruning some bushes under the magnolia.

When we lived in Poland I wanted to go mushroom hunting but never had the opportunity. We’d see entire families coming off the train, baskets covered with tea towels dangling from their arms, and know they had gotten up before dawn to sniff out wild mushrooms in the forest. One day we bought chanterelles at the enormous flea market from an old lady wrapped in a mangy coat and two threadbare scarves. She told us to cook them with eggs, and we happily followed her directions.

I just read that certain wild mushrooms in Russia are to be avoided due to Chernobyl. Until recently, governments as far west as Germany tried to keep people from hunting and eating some mushrooms because of the nuclear fallout. I guess it’s not surprising. When I was teaching at UT, I had two students in the same class who suffered from thyroid cancer because their families were visiting Europe during the Chernobyl disaster. How crazy is that? But let’s not linger on that sadness right now. We’re talking about fungi.

I’m not familiar enough with mushrooms to do much identifying. I read about them from time to time, but some things really just require a teacher, someone to point out in person the difference between the poisonous species and the safe ones because they can look very similar. For instance, chanterelles, with their orange caps, resemble Jack o’Lanterns, which cause bad stomach problems. The ones below might be parasol mushrooms. That’s my best guess right now.

I feel sorry for people who don’t like mushrooms. A few weeks ago, I purchased a slender bottle of truffle oil, and I have to resist the urge to drizzle it over everything and OD on something that is supposed to be used sparingly. It is expensive after all, and we are in a recession. But it’s just so delectable.

Wild-mushroom ravioli

• Wonton wrappers (found at any old grocery store) or homemade pasta
• Homemade farmer’s cheese or ricotta
• Assortment of mushrooms (porcini, chanterelles, etc.), diced
• Onions, diced
• Garlic, minced
• Fresh herbs (basil, oregano, dill, etc.), chopped
• Truffle oil
• light grey Celtic sea salt

Saute the onions until translucent. Add mushrooms and garlic until softened. In a bowl, mix the cheese and herbs. Stir in the vegetables. Place a teaspoon of the mixture onto a wrapper, brush the edges with water, place another wrapper over the top, and press to seal. You can press with a fork to make sure the edges are sealed and to give the ravioli some semi-fancy crimping. Drop them in boiling water and fish them out when they rise to the top. Drizzle with truffle oil and sprinkle with sea salt. You can use any sea salt, of course, but I highly recommend experimenting with different salts. You’d be surprised at how much the flavor varies. Light grey Celtic sea salt is divine. Sometimes I spoon a little basil pesto over the top before adding the truffle oil and salt. If you end up with leftover filling since I didn’t specify amounts, sit back and eat it out of the bowl.

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Hiwassee River

Last weekend I went camping near the Hiwassee River with some friends and was pleasantly surprised by wildflowers blooming everywhere. We set up camp at Lost Creek, where Claire thought there was a jellyfish sitting in a burnt cup that floated along the creek. Hey, there is such a thing as a freshwater jellyfish. But it was just some plastic that looked gelatinous under the water. Wonder what it’s like to be a gelatinous creature.

Anyway, we went rafting on the river, which was hilarious and occasionally frightening. We paddled in circles a bit and got stuck on rocks more than a few times, bouncing to try to push off. I whacked my front teeth with the end of my paddle and couldn’t believe they didn’t crack. They were sore for a week. At one point, rain poured down so hard it hurt my face, and Julie fell out, but we snatched her up. We spent a few minutes on a tiny island after hearing thunder, and Lisa shared some Japanese snacks from her USA fanny pack, which then got soaked when she went swimming. Toward the end we got out and floated in our life vests, which felt sublime. Forget tubes and noodles. All you need is a life vest.

Cardinal flower

Coneflower

Black-eyed Susan

Another wild mushroom. This one’s even better.

Jewelweed: a good poison ivy remedy

United States Post Office, Reliance, Tennessee. Also, this place sells homemade lotion in tiny Tupperware containers with mailing labels on top.

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Lately

Just a few things going on around here lately.

Shelling purple-hull peas on the porch.

Washing raspberries plucked from the bushes next to the St. John’s Wort.

Spider friend hanging out on the porch. She’s got the most glorious web. Garden spiders build stabilimentum–the thick zigzag in the middle of the web–which either attract prey, camouflage the spider, or ensure that birds notice the web and don’t destroy it by accidentally flying into it. The females are much larger than the males, and they eat them after mating. Human guys don’t know how lucky they have it. So often in nature males exist simply to assist in procreation and then they die soon afterward.

Wild mushroom in the neighbor’s yard. Love when these pop up. Some folks down the street had a giant fairy ring last fall, but they mowed it down before I had a chance to get a picture. I couldn’t fathom why they would just run their lawn mower over something so special.

Sweet li’l bird that sleeps in the eaves of our porch every fall. I love how it snuggles up. Hm. It’s pretty dirty and spider webby up there.

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