Butter

If it seems like my life is becoming a "Fun With Dairy" series, that's because it is. I love finding out how these wonderful foods are made, and they seem to be much better when made at home (despite all my failures). Butter really is easy to make, and all you need is cream. Of course, salt is a great thing to throw in there too, and we tried adding honey, cocoa powder, pimenton, and herbs as well. My favorite was the butter that we added black, smokey salt to. This made it sort of grey in color and a little bit creepy looking, but absolutely delicious. You can see it there spread on toast.

Topher made Ghee, a sacred food to feed his spirit through the winter. He gave some to me perhaps to enhance my spiritual life, but I'm probably just going to spread it on waffles and call it a day.

The Hunt

The chanterelle hunt was one of my favorite activities so far.We drove out towards the coast and pulled off onto a secret road that I will never divulge. As we stood on the side of the road, looking down into a creek basin, I saw some orange spots dotting the forest floor. At first my friends and I were overwhelmed by the abundance of mushrooms. We hiked down the slope and then turned around so that we could look up into all the tiny caves and dales of the hillside where mushrooms tend to hide. They were everywhere- filling hollow logs, pushing up through leaves, nestled under rotting stumps. We picked and trimmed a pillowcase full in perhaps an hours time. Then the larger group came back together and we split into new groups. None of us had such luck again, but we tried another spot and found some perfectly formed beauties and also some weird creepy mushrooms that my mushroom dweeb friends were very excited about.

Then we went to dairy queen and I had a cherry dip, and then we went home to cook up a feast.

The Feast: Wild mushroom bread pudding (my favorite dish ever, in fact we almost ate the whole damn thing), pressure cooked lamb leg with chanterelles and celeriac, and braised greens from my garden. We surprised Nic with a pumpkin and gingersnap cheese cake for his birthday (made possible by me, not made by me- I'm still sick and nearly useless!) and we drank fantastic wine and talked trash the whole meal.

I really loved the experience of hunting and gathering. It was a sunny but cold day and the woods were wet and musty. We got worn out climbing around over fallen trees and up slippery rocks. And then we got to go home and cook one of the best meals I have had in a long time.

Homemade Pasta

As I am now the proud owner of a food processor, I wanted to start trying recipes immediately. The very first thing I did was push a lemon through the slicer, just for fun. Then I moved on to something a little more complicated- pasta. I got my recipe from James Beard's book Beard On Pasta as it is specifically for a food processor. It is so easy. Flour, eggs, oil and salt. I don't have a pasta roller and that was the only thing that slowed us down, but even rolling it by hand wasn't very difficult. I also was lucky enough to have an assistant, Lauren, to do most of the sweaty labor. The results were predictably fantastic- fresh pasta really is the best. We also made pesto with purple basil from the back yard.

Food Processor Pasta
Adapted from James Beard "Beard on Pasta"

1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon olive oil

For this recipe, use the metal blade attachment. Put flour and salt in the food processor work bowl. In a small bowl to the side, whisk olive oil and water. Feed this mixture into the food processor while it is turned on. If it is dry and not forming into a ball, add water just one drop at a time. You should not need very much at all. Once it forms into a ball, remove it from the f.p. and knead it for 5 minutes. I used my standing mixer for this, just to really geek out on my kitchen appliances. After kneading, wrap in plastic and chill for 1/2 hour or more. Then, roll it with your hand crank pasta roller, your kitchenaid attachment (lucky) or by hand, like me! We wanted wide ribbon noodles, but you can cut your pasta in whatever shape you'd like. Next I will make Jacky shaped pasta.

Brain Burn

We Oregonians spent this week frying our asses off. It has been in the 100's, including a special afternoon yesterday where it got up to 107 degrees. It's weird that this was the week that my friend from NYC was here for a visit. We spent the whole week underwater... in matching straw hats from the drug store...

What do you eat when it's stupid hot? We decided that wine was good. Also hot peppers, watermelon and pickles. One of the best moments of this week was when we were floating down the river on our backs with a bottle of wine, not a reasonable thought in our heads. We ate a whole box of popsicles in one sitting that afternoon... I miss that day-even if it was too hot for chips.

I am sure by now you are realizing that I am brain dead. Heat damaged. Forgot english and how the computer works. Please forgive me. Also forgive me for the fact that zucchini is visible in this photo of the purple bush beans that I finally got around to picking.