Our fearless tent guard.
Reading with some wine before bedtime.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
In quest of the perfect burger
I spent weeks scouring Mexico for the perfect taco, the ideal carnitas, and the inimitable mole. In Spain, it was a quest for a jamón de pata negra so delicate that it would send me to heaven. In Ireland, it was a search for legendary fish n’ chips (Leo Burdock's in Dublin was the winner there!). I’ve now turned my sights to burgers. Not as exquisite or refined as the jamón but possibly as satisfying, just in a different way, the burger is what has defined “American cuisine,” which might be considered an oxymoron by food snobs. Sometimes maligned as fast food, it must be remembered that other special foods, like tacos and fish n’ chips and even jamón, served in taverns as a tapa accompanying a drink, are also “fast,” and the burger represents the Americans well. I've heard stories of French tourists coming to this country just in search of that perfect burger, so I will make sure to make this review quest-like in style.
I’m not going to rush this, but will slowly review all of the burger joints that cross my path.
First one:
Rusty’s Drive-In: Cashmere, Washington
Burger=3.5/5. Rusty Burger with soft bun, special sauce, fried on a frier. Great burger. Nothing particularly special, but very worthy as the American standard fried burger.
Onion Rings=4/5 lightly fried, easy to enjoy
Blackberry Malt= 5/5. No other words to describe this other than ridiculously thick/real fruit. Which is to say: Excellent!
Cashmere is the home of Aplets and Cotlets and we have also enjoyed a wonderful barbecue in town at Country Boys BBQ. I'd probably hit the BBQ over Rusty's, but if you need a burger, Rusty's is great!
Seeking out food that tastes like where it came from: Morel hunting in the forests of Central Washington
Eating a good oyster is like taking a bite out of the ocean. A Taiwanese High Mountain Oolong tea tastes like a walk through a high mountain tea forest; you can almost picture the tall spiky mountains when you drink it. Eating morel mushrooms is like the experience of being in the woods.
.....
On our drive down from Bellingham to Portland, taking the long route through the Cascades to avoid the Interstate, we went through Blewett Pass, an area that was burned in a forest fire last fall. Knowing that morels sprout up the spring after a burn, we wanted to stop and let the dogs run and have a look for mushrooms. Having camped in the area many times before, we knew that there were many logging roads that scour the area. We turned on a random one off the 97, not knowing what it would lead to. We found many cars on the road in a place where we rarely run into other people and instantly knew what others were doing at the spot: Searching for morels.
We picked a pound of yellow and black morels, lingering in the duff surrounding nondescript pine trees. Under logs, not far from charred stumps, and deep in holes that were frightening to dig through with our hands, with centipedes crawling through pine needles, we got lucky.
It takes a while for the eyes to get adjusted to what a morel looks like camouflaged in the forest detritus, but once we locked in on the honeycomb treats, we became like primitive hunters. Our senses were heightened; perceptions were highly intensified by the hunt for mushrooms.
We dropped the morels off with my friend Brad. An accomplished chef, we knew he'd know what to do with them. On our return trip back from Oregon, we scored some mushrooms for ourselves.
.....
Morels are a significant species in helping fire-damaged ecosystems recover. In spring, they are some of the first organisms to pop up from the barren ashy landscape left behind after a late summer forest fire. Their aroma attracts insects and mammals who bring seeds and life-breeding microbes from adjacent lands. Therefore, morels work as natural restorers of habitat.
Morels help their hosts--larch, pine and Douglas fir seedlings--by penetrating into their feeder roots. It's possible morel mycelium infiltrates the root zones of most conifer forests in western North America and then appears in the ashy remains to help restore life to the forest.
These microrrhizal treats are living networks that connect life forms and forests, essentially regenerating life on this planet. Like a matrix, a biomolecular superhighway, mycelium is in constant dialogue with its environment, governing the flow of essential nutrients through the food chain.
A forest ecosystem cannot be defined without its fungi because they govern the transition between life and death and the building of soils, all the while fueling numerous life cycles.
For more info on how mushrooms can save us, see Paul Stamets's Mycelium Running.
Sunday, April 07, 2013
Captain Cook, Kealuakekua Bay
Where Captain Cook first landed on the Big Island of Hawaii on Kealuakekua Bay. And also where he died. We hiked to this spot twice, which involved a steep descent to a jetty and a thick coral bed and a very sweaty climb out. Note the fish just in the 6 inches of water. The snorkeling here was unbelievable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)