WEST BRATTLEBORO — Spring is interesting. Most people think about it as the beginning of life and renewal, but it comes with a shadow side.
Spring is also the death of dying.
Transitioning from death to life is quite the endeavor. Winter-to-spring takes more energy than any other seasonal conversion. It is a tumultuous, transformative time, akin to the phoenix rising. Mountains of snow melt, the ground heaves and buckles, animals reanimate, and flora awakens. Then, it rains. The rain I don't mind. Every drop could potentially allow a seed or spore to ignite.
Since this is a cool, slow spring, May is the grand opening of forage season.
Foraging is one of my favorite ways to “fare well” - eat fresh, ripe, whole, and local. It's wild gardening. Even the verbs associated with it - “gathering,” “searching,” “seeking,” and “discovering” - are scintillating and mysterious.
Foraging is like real-life Easter egg hunting. Vermont forests and fields offer treasures around every nook and cranny.
Weeds provide nutrient density packed with vitamins, minerals, proteins, and enzymes. Coltsfoot and yellow dock lead the way, followed quickly by dandelion and nettles. These herbs offer cleansing and blood-purifying properties and detoxify lymph glands, liver, and kidneys.
Blood vessels are nutritional highways, while the lymph, liver, and kidneys are waste-management centers. Following our town's example, spring is the time to repair roads, sweep the street debris, and clear wintered-over scrub and limbs. Just as we scrub tubs and toilets, we need to clean the very body parts that clean our bodies.
After a sluggish winter, spring provides the flora to do just that.
Arnica - an herb used for sprains, burns, and bruises - grows at the bases of European cliffs, right where animals would land, if they fell. Australian melaleuca (tea tree) trees grow in the bush, where predators roam. In the event of a mauling, tea trees provide medicinal leaves to treat the wounds.
Right here in Windham County, nature provides us with perfect remedies for spring cleaning and allergies.
For you foodies and trendsetters, foraging is hot, but this artisan cultivation is not new and is not limited to halfway across the world. You may enjoy foraged delicacies at local establishments such as TJ Buckley's in Brattleboro and The Farm Table in Bernardston, Mass.
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This year, my enthusiasm is directed toward mushrooms. Although we don't have the fungal opulence of the Northwest, we do have our share of mycophagia.
That means mushroom eating, and that's a new word for me. I discovered it in local author and forager Trudy Crites' new book, From Mycophobia to Mycophagia: Overcoming Your Fear of Mushrooms. It's a delightful guide to local mushrooming. Specimens are delicately illustrated and listed in the order in which they appear throughout the season.
Mushrooms are natural composters of the vegetable kingdom. They convert death into life. A host of dying materials - rotting trees, dead leaves, and animal carcasses - are consumed by fungal spores.
Crites shares an interesting symbiotic relationship: “Another group of mushrooms has a magic arrangement with a specific host tree: receiving essential nutrients from the smallest rootlets and benefiting the tree by breaking down nutrients that the tree can then utilize.”
Mushrooms are 90 percent water, rich in protein, and packed with water-soluble vitamins B and C. They supply a rare source of Vitamin D.
Fungi grow differently from plants, and so they offer different micronutrients - nutrients unavailable in typical mono-cropped diets, but necessary to our survival.
Some of these nutrients contain anti-cancer properties. Shiitake mushrooms are bursting with the antioxidant selenium and other immune stimulants. Mushrooms are, indeed, natural wonders of the underworld.
Ready to embrace mushrooms? Good. Now hold on. Don't run to the supermarket and buy factory-made white buttons shipped from California. Our forests and lawns are ripe with many varieties, from early spring to late fall. Health is right outside your front door.
But don't run to the forest without consulting someone knowledgeable in mycophagia. Consuming foraged mushrooms without knowing what you're doing can make you sick. That's not health outside your front door.
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Morels are one of the first mushrooms to emerge. When you see lilacs, morels are beginning to tickle apple groves and elm stumps.
These mushrooms are funky-looking. Their top resembles a pine cone, or a brain perched upon a thick tan stem. They are something straight out of The Lord of the Rings.
Morels possess an exquisite, iconic umami flavor. Like an undiscovered planet, umami is reaching peaks of popularity as the fifth taste, along with sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Umami is that earthy, musky flavor that permeates tomatoes, cheeses, wines, and mushrooms. And it's delicious; we seem to crave umami with primal intensity.
Our neighbor Nicholas Liechte - my inspiration - heads out every spring for his morel hunt. He retrieves a bounty so beauteous that he is able to dry enough morels to last the year.
The best and simplest way to prepare mushrooms is to sauté them gently in butter or olive oil. Add freshly ground sea salt and whole pepper.
Garlic is good, too, but I think it overwhelms. You are honoring the mushroom and want to savor its flavor. It ain't sick, so don't doctor it up.
I came across a unique way to eat morels: pancakes. Morels are nutty flavored, so they complement the sweetness of maple syrup. Chris Matherly, author of The Mushroom Hunter, experimented with morel-oatmeal cookies and was surprised by their tastiness.
As you eagerly till the soil and prepare your gardens, remember the garden already planted: the weeds dotting every inch of yard and pasture that are hastily tossed into the compost.
As you walk in the woods, enjoying the sweet trilliums and jack-in-the-pulpits, see if you can discover the oddly delightful morels.
Honor nature and her exalted gifts, and she will thank you.
Fare well.