Fiddlehead Ferns, Ramps and Morels

Eric, Toby and I went foraging for fiddleheads, ramps (aka wild leeks) and morels on Sunday in Arlington and Manchester, Vermont.  Sadly, we didn’t find any morels; the earth was too dry at the time. Although most of the ferns had almost completely unfurled, we managed to collect several handfuls of bright green, tighly coiled fiddleheads.

We had the best luck with ramps. We probably picked close to two pounds.  I’ll never forget seeing ramps for sale for $14/lb. at a Whole Foods in Wayland, Massachusetts a few years ago. I remember thinking it was crazy to pay so much money for a food you could easily find in the woods.  I can only imagine what a pound of wild leeks fetches these days at a Whole Foods. Do I hear $20/lb.? (Going, going, sold to the sucker driving the Saab!)

I bought salmon steaks at the grocery store to prepare en papillote for dinner Sunday night.  I couldn’t wait to cook them with the wild leeks and fiddleheads.  Unfortunately, I could only find farm-raised salmon at Shaw’s, which I’m never going to buy again. It’s bad for the environment, according to Eric, and not nearly as healthful as wild salmon. It’s much more fatty and tastes more fishy.

I seasoned both sides of the salmon steaks with salt and pepper and placed them on slices of lemon on top of the parchment paper.  I topped the the steaks with fresh parsley and dill and lots of ramps, crimped the parchment, and baked the steaks at 350 for about 20 minutes.

This was a great way to prepare farm-raised salmon because the lemon, herbs and ramps offset the fishy flavor the salmon, which, I must say, came out delicious.  I served the fish with steamed fingerling potatoes and steamed fiddleheads.  The fiddleheads were so good!  They tasted so fresh and green.  The ramps tasted amazing, too.  I just love the taste of a roasted wild leek.

The weather this week has been conducive to mushroom growth.  Eric is going turkey hunting tomorrow, and I’m hoping he’ll be able to find some morels or maybe even some chanterelles while he’s in the woods.  I’m dying to make a quiche with ramps and morels.  Unless I go out tomorrow at lunch, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get back into the woods to forage until late next week, and by that time it may get dry again and the morels may be gone.

Of course, I hope Eric will come home with a turkey, too!

Migraines

After a hiatus that lasted way too long, Sugar on Snow is back!

I had to stop updating Sugar on Snow last Fall due to a siege of cluster migraines, which began in early October. I had a migraine headache almost every day that month, and I continued to suffer with frequent headaches through November. My noggin didn’t begin to feel normal until December.

It’s too bad I got sidetracked by migraines because I had much to write about during the Fall and Winter. Eric shot a deer in November, and we enjoyed the roughly 60 pounds of venison his three-pointer yielded into January. We feasted on venison about three times a week: venison Stroganoff and venison Marsala, venison chowder and venison Jumbalaya, venison sausage à la Fenway Park and venison Philly cheese steaks. We still have a few packs of venison sausage left in the freezer.  I’m going to make venison sausage, peppers and parmesan polenta for dinner later this week. Let me know if you want to come for supper!

At the same time that we had Eric’s venison, we were reaping the bounty of Clear Brook Farm’s winter CSA, which was AWESOME. We will definitely sign up for it again next year. It was an excellent value for our money, and having all of that organic Clear Brook Farm produce from mid-October until mid-December was a boon.  Between the venison and the produce from the CSA, Eric and I frequently ate meals that were entirely local, organic and wild. It was pretty cool.  We also saved a bundle (probably about $20 a week) on groceries because we didn’t have to buy meat and bought very little produce.

While I was suffering with all those headaches in October and November, I became more conscious of the food I consumed.  I had no idea what triggered all of my migraines, but I knew in general that certain foods trigger them. I learned that many of the foods that I ate on a daily basis–such as processed meats (bacon), peanut butter, almonds, aged cheeses and chocolate–were known migraine triggers. So I eliminated those foods from my diet. Some days, I was starving, but I was very glad to have the fresh organic produce (especially the sweet potatoes and spinach, and the carrots I puréed into carrot-ginger soup) from Clear Brook to nourish my body.

To this day I don’t know exactly what precipitated all those migraines back in October.  I didn’t feel particularly stressed out at the time. And I had been eating peanut butter, chocolate, almonds and cheese on a daily basis for such a long time that I couldn’t imagine that those foods were suddenly causing the blinding pain above my right eye.  I suppose it was probably a combination of things that triggered the migraines.

I’m just glad I have these headaches under control right now and that I can return to Sugar on Snow. I hope you’ll come back, too.

A Day of Hunting and Cooking

Patridge hunting season opened in Vermont last weekend, so Eric went hunting with a friend this morning. Eric took Toby with him since the friend he was meeting (Mike Q.) was bringing his Black Lab, Wally.  Toby was never trained for hunting because we got him from my parents when he was about 8 months old and because, as an alpha male Golden Retriever, it was hard enough to get him to heed our weak-willed human commands.  Needless to say, Eric and I were a little worried Toby would sabotage the hunt even though Eric’s taken him out hunting previously and he’s done fine.

Just to make sure Toby didn’t misbehave, I had a talk with him when I walked him before he left to meet Mike and Wally.  I told him to be a good boy when he went hunting with his Pa and to follow Wally’s lead (Wally has been trained to hunt.) I repeated this message to Toby several times, and I think it worked because when Eric and Toby came home around 1 PM, Eric said Toby did pretty well, all things considered.  He didn’t go crazy.  He didn’t run too far ahead of Eric and Mike.  He was a good boy.  He didn’t retrieve any birds because there weren’t too many birds for Mike and Eric to shoot at.  It turned out that Wally was the bad boy. Not so much in the field, but in the car.  He devoured three cider donuts Eric had bought–one he snatched right out of Eric’s hand.  That Wally.  He’s a rapscallion.

Game Dinner

Sunday night Eric and I went to a game dinner hosted by Jim and Deb Lepage. Scott McEnaney came up with the idea for the game supper. He thought it would be fun and helpful if everyone cleaned out their freezers of all the wild game they’d frozen over the past year so they could make room for the bounty of this year’s hunt. And indeed it was a brilliant idea. The potluck dinner everyone put together with their game was terrific.

Eric concocted a wild turkey soup with the breast of a turkey he had shot (and with some chicken carcasses, carrot, onion, celery and sweet potato), and I baked a lemon blueberry bundt cake.

Bruce Woodruff made venison bratwurst. Jim prepared an hors d’oeuvre with slices of bacon that were wrapped around a piece of duck breast, a morsel of cheddar cheese and a slice of jalapeno. Scott presided over the frying of a turkey, and he cooked Triple Baked Pheasant Num Num. Brett Ference marinaded and grilled a striped bass he caught off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Kevin Andrezejewski slaved over a fish fennel and lemon risotto with smoked trout. Robin Kadet tossed up a salad with baby greens, grapes, cheese, toasted almonds and edible flowers. There was also a mushroom risotto speckled with wild morels, a colorful vegetable casserole, strips of mule deer and elk, what looked like pulled wild boar and lots more. It was hog heaven, and I pigged out. Oink, oink.

The buffet table at the game dinner

My favorite dishes were Bruce’s venison bratwurst, Jim’s duck appetizer, the risottos and Scott’s Num Num. I had never previously tasted bratwurst and I wasn’t expecting to like it, but Bruce’s brats were phenomenal. I was also dubious of Jim’s duck appetizer. I’m not crazy about duck as it is, and the duck-cheese-jalapeno-and-bacon combo seemed random to me, but I could have easily inhaled a half dozen of those nibbles. I also really liked Brett’s striped bass (pictured above in my blog’s header.)

If you’re interested in any of these recipes, let me know and I’ll see if I can get them from the cooks.

A Forager’s Feast Starring Wild Turkey

Eric’s brother-in-law and nephew visited this past weekend. They’re both serious outdoorsmen so the three musketeers spent the entire weekend fishing and turkey hunting.

Gary, Eric’s brother-in-law, brought a turkey he shot opening day so we could all enjoy it for dinner Saturday night. He had plucked and boned it, and he asked me to prepare it. He suggested I season the turkey with salt and pepper and bake it in a covered casserole dish with lots of butter. Gary was worried the turkey would dry out if we cooked it uncovered. He also suggested I cook the turkey with the bunch of wild leeks he had picked Saturday morning while hunting with Eric and Jake (nephew). He figured the bird would take an hour to an hour-and-a-half to cook in a 350-degree oven.

I did as told and seasoned the bird with lots of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. I rubbed soft butter all over the meat. I scattered the wild leeks, whose heady aroma filled my kitchen, around, on top of and below the turkey. I poured some cheap white wine that had been aging in my fridge into the roasting pan, which I covered, and put it in the oven around 7 o’clock. I prepared garlic mashed potatoes to go with the turkey and a salad of dandelion greens that I had picked the night before.

The guys staggered into the house shortly after 8 PM after several hours of fishing. I didn’t think they’d be home until 8:30, but they were beat from having woken up at 4 in the morning to hunt turkeys. They were also famished. I checked the turkey as soon as their truck rolled into the driveway. It appeared to be done and it smelled wonderful.

Amazingly, the bird was perfectly cooked. When Gary sliced into it, the white meat was tender and juicy. When we tasted it, it was succulent and sweet, as if the turkey had been eating from sugar bushes while it was alive.

And the wild leeks: The hour in the oven rendered the ramps’ bite a rich tasting flavor.

How do you like to prepare wild turkey?

Putting the Birds to Bed

Sunday evening, Eric went scouting for turkeys, and Toby and I joined him. The process of locating turkeys in the evening when the birds head up into the trees to roost is known in turkey-hunter parlance as “putting the birds to bed.” It’s a bit of a misnomer, as the hunter isn’t so much lulling the birds to sleep as he is using his owl call to wake up the birds from their peaceful reveries. Since owls prey on turkeys, the sound of an owl’s hoot–whether natural or man-made using a call–startles the birds, causing them to gobble, much like a person starts with a grunt or a groan or a moan or a yelp upon being woken from a doze or deep sleep. The gobble alerts the hunter to the turkey’s resting place. The hunter now knows where to lie in wait when he goes to hunt the bird early the next morning.

I recorded the sounds of Eric’s scouting expedition, which you can hear by clicking the link below. You’ll first hear Eric’s box call, which is a small wooden, rectangular-shaped instrument designed to mimic the sound of a clucking hen and which hunters use to lure in horny Tom’s before they blow the bird’s brain out. (You’ve got to aim for the head, otherwise the shotgun pellets rip up all that tasty meat or you don’t kill the bird “humanely.”) You’ll also hear a gurgling spring creek and Toby’s heavy breathing and jangling dog tags. The owl call comes near the end of the minute-long recording.

Putting the Birds to Bed Audio Montage

My neighbor’s camo

I bumped into a neighbor the other evening while I was walking my dog. I noticed he was wearing camoflage. Why is Steve wearing camo, I wondered. What could he be hunting this time of year? Then it dawned on me: Turkey hunting season opens in two weeks. My neighbor was going scouting.

This is the turkey Eric shot last year:

I like to call this photo “Bye, Bye Birdie.”

(I know, the date on the photo reads 2004, but that’s because we hadn’t set the proper date on the camera.)