1-Up Hunting

I went mushrooming for the first time: chanterelles in the bay area on Saturday with Duncan. Tilden is over-hunted because of all the Berkeley foodies, so we went out to Sibley and filled a backpack, then out to Redwoods and filled it again. How far off the path had we gone? We found a pristine pull-tab era Budweiser can.

That night we cooked up a slamming pasta fungi (with chard from the garden) for 9 and Duncan still had 15 pounds (clean) left to sell to a restaurant (whose name I won't drop here). He got $11/lb on Sunday morning. Whole Foods was selling them for $22, but I doubt they got them from a couple of random dudes who cleaned them with their mini Swiss Army knife keychain and had them in a backpack they may or may not have fell on once while sliding down a slippery hill.

Slicing the mushrooms made the kitchen smell like peppery apricots, and browning them alone smelled so complex you'd think we were cooking with dozens of ingredients. Now I need to learn about Chicagoland mushrooming.

Butter, Beef, Bunnies

Cheesehead burgers, with about a half cup of fresh local butter at Solly's Grille, outside of Milwaukee.


















After which we enjoyed the tour of the Sprecher brewery down the street. With a half dozen varieties of sodas (including their famous root beer) in addition to their half dozen beers on tap, there were plenty of families in attendance.
There was even an Easter bunny taking pictures with the kids. Eleanor thought Drew and I should take a pic to send out as a "Save the Date" for Thanksgiving 2009. As we posed with the bunny, brews in hand, the little kid you see in the foreground ran up and posed with us. After the picture was taken his dad asked him what he was doing and the kid burst into tears. Despite our efforts to reassure him, the kid was inconsolable.


We ended up sampling beers all afternoon and I missed my fantasy baseball draft. Worth it.