Findin' Any?

Morel-hunting season has begun in Missouri. It’s hard to believe that I grew up in central Missouri and had almost no idea about this whole scene. My family’s food came from the grocery store and it came from people’s gardens. We were not big mushroom eaters, probably because my mom isn’t a big fan of mushrooms.

Once or twice, perhaps, we had mushrooms at the commons of Grandma Schroeder’s house (yeah, where I live now), if, say, Uncle Richard and Aunt Carole had had a bumper harvest in Moniteau County—enough for them to not eat up immediately; enough for them to bring to Jeff City and share as part of a planned rendezvous for the whole family, perhaps on a work day at Grandma’s yard—I can imagine that could have happened. I can imagine Grandma frying up some chicken and having some potato salad; I can see Aunt Carole frying up the morels just before serving.

I can imagine me looking at the gorgeous, hot, perfectly fried morels with skepticism, taking a bite, and finding them good.

But I don’t clearly recall it.

And even though I spent tons of time hiking and exploring the woods, I also don’t recall ever seeing a morel until I was more than full-grown and had moved back to Missouri in the late 1990s. That’s when Sue and I had started our “Year of the’s” and had two back-to-back “Year of the Mushrooms” (two, on account of the first year being abnormally dry and droughty, so there were few mushrooms to find). (By the way, our “Year of the” projects included all species in the group, not just edibles, so having two years dedicated to learning about mushrooms still only scratched the surface. It’s such a large, diverse group, it was like having “year of the animal” or “year of the plant.”)

I highly recommend having yourself a “Year of the.” Decide on something you’d really like to learn about, and just saturate yourself with it. Turn it into a year-long master’s program on that subject. Devour books about it. Talk about it with others. Look for lectures (and now, YouTubes) about it. Join a club that does it. Every time you go outdoors, look for it. If it’s an activity, like painting or playing an instrument, then try doing it every which way; go to concerts or museums; learn its history; take lessons; attempt related artforms. Spend a year seeing the world through the lens of that thing.

And it will stay with you forever. Like any part of your education, no one can take it away from you.

So as we enter morel season once again, I’d like to share with you one of my favorite morel-hunting stories. (Everyone has a ton of morel-hunting stories, right?) This was during our first Year of the Mushroom. Sue and I were still living in Columbia then, in a duplex in the Country Hill subdivision in southwest Columbia, near the Columbia MKT trail. We spent a lot of time on that section of trail between Columbia and McBaine.

Well, since we were saturating ourselves with mushroom consciousness, we were always on the lookout for morels. We couldn’t go outside without scanning the ground . . . looking.

If you haven’t hunted for morels, you don’t know what a dickens it is to try to see them. This time of year, the ground is covered with dead leaves that are the same colors as morels, plus pinecones . . . and little dead flower stalks from last year, and newly sprouted brittle ferns, and all kind of other odd things that cast reticulated shadows that look like the pockmarked pattern of morels, and catch your eye.

Anyway, we had taken to always carrying a wadded up plastic grocery bag in our back pockets “just in case” we found any mushrooms. (Yes, plastic is not optimal, but we’re talking “just in case.”)

So we got a little sidetracked. We stepped off the trail and down the shallow slope toward a nearby dryish creekbed. Again, . . . just in case. We didn’t have any luck, but as always, we enjoyed poking around. We didn’t have any reason to even pull our plastic bags out of our pockets; it was a bust.

But as we were doing this hunting, several well-coifed ladies had hustled by in their colorful new track outfits; I sensed them looking down at us, casting disapproving looks in our direction. Yes, we had roamed off the trail onto private land (I suppose). We might have even looked sketchy. I don’t think they had a clue what we were up to. Whatever; I don’t care what they might think.

Anyway, we finally gave up and were trudging back up the slope to the MKT trail, and at that point we met a fellow on the trail. He was loping along, but I don’t think he was there to get exercise. He looked like he was out for a nice walk, just kind of sauntering. He was fairly young, in his mid-twenties, I’d say, and he had on a pair of jeans, some worn work boots, and no shirt. He had kind of longish, dirty-blond hair. He looked to me like a native Boone Countian.

And he just half-smiled at us and said, knowingly: “Findin’ any?”

This, my friends, is one of the best things about morel hunting. It’s a club, and an offbeat one. It has nothing to do with race, class, ethnicity, religion, politics . . . anything, other than a taste for morels, a willingness to go into nature, and the thrill of the hunt. And a kind of time-honored competition, with a strong impulse not to divulge the precious locations of perennial troves.

. . . So, how did we respond to this fellow’s inquiry? We said, after a healthy, slightly less-than-innocent pause, “. . . no.” And we all kind of smirked and nodded, and we left him to wonder.

Happy morel-hunting, y’all. And if you’re “findin’ any,” I hope you leave a few for someone else!

Wild Cooking!

There’s a new blog for all my chow-lovin’ friends to look at! “Woods to Food” follows on the trail blazed by blogger Julie Powell in her famous “Julie/Julia Project,” and other cookbook-guided blogs like “Nose to Tail at Home,” “French Laundry at Home,” and the sadly disappeared “Georgia on My Thighs.” (That last one was going to be based on a Paula Deen cookbook; wonder what happened to it?)

But in “Woods to Food,” bloggers Fred and Ann Koenig aren’t grabbing headlines by challenging themselves to cook their way through some big TV-celebrity chef’s national best-selling cookbook—instead, they’re going native, going local, and that’s why their project is so very, very cool!

They’re not just going to talk about making the recipes; they will also tell the stories of hunting, fishing, and foraging the comestibles their dinner comprises!

The cookbook upon which this blog is based is a new (2011) publication by the Missouri Department of Conservation, Cooking Wild in Missouri: Savoring the Show-Me State’s Game, Fish, Nuts, Fruits, and Mushrooms, by Bernadette Dryden. Dryden recently retired from the publications branch of the MDC, and for years she’s been a leader of the local “Katy Trail” chapter of Slow Foods, not to mention a true Queen of the Kitchen.

(Look, I’m not putting in all these hyperlinks for my health: Check them out!)




Have you been holed up in a little cabin for several months, and the letter carrier’s not delivering your free copies of the Missouri Conservationist? Well, let me fill you in. Cooking Wild is a wild foods cookbook for twenty-first-century America. Yep, it uses foods that were hunted, hooked, or plucked from our own Missouri landscapes, but it approaches them with a global palate and an eclectic pantry. You might need to head to St. Louis for some of the ingredients, even if you only need to go as far as the back forty for the entrées themselves.

Here are some of the recipes, to give you an idea of the level of “foodiness” we’re talking about:

• Moroccan spice-braised venison
• Pawpaw frozen yogurt gelato
• Cioppino, made with bluegill and largemouth bass, shrimp and mussels, and, optional, crayfish (some of this seafood isn’t quite local!)
• Bass-and-crappie spring rolls
• Papassinos, made using pecans or hickory nuts (What are papassinos? Well, get the book and find out!)

There are plenty of less “exotic” dishes, such as “wild turkey dropped-biscuit pie,” but throughout, the emphasis is on an elevated, sophisticated cuisine—which of course is incredibly popular right now.

Now, when you go to buy yourself a copy of Cooking Wild in Missouri, you might find yourself confronted with a choice, because there’s an excellent chance that right there next to Dryden’s two-hundred-page, full-color volume will be a humble copy of Cy Littlebee’s Guide to Cooking Fish and Game. Written by Werner O. Nagel, who was also a longtime MDC employee, this cookbook, like Dryden’s, is published by the Missouri Department of Conservation. (Actually, it was the “Missouri Conservation Commission” back in 1960 when it first came out—it’s now in its seventeenth printing!)




Nagel’s book has certainly stood the test of time. “Cy Littlebee” isn’t exactly an “author”; he was a character Nagel invented to represent an ordinary, down-home, rural Missourian, and the Conservationist used to carry his entertaining columns as a regular feature. You don’t see much written these days in Ozark vernacular (as opposed to garden-variety “Suth’un”), so it’s a treat to bathe in the grammar and cadences of old-time Missouri dialect.

“Cy” apparently was well-known in his day, but I suppose Missourians have mostly forgotten him now. (Pity.)

Here is a sample of the writing style, from the section on cooking rabbit: “You take a state where from four to six million rabbits is eat in a year, not counting tame rabbits nor any shipped in, and all you can figger is that either a lot of folks likes some rabbit, or some folks like lots of rabbit” (p. 30). (I’ll bet Nagel and Vance Randolph knew a lot of the same people!)

The Littlebee cookbook represents a base camp for cooking wild foods; its recipes, hardly changed since settler days, were certainly passed down from farmwife to daughter to granddaughter, from hunter to son to grandson. This small volume presents many recipes by women (yeah, mostly women) who sent in their best wild-game dishes. These are “good- ol’” recipes, like “baked rabbit,” “fried groundhog,” and that venerable southern favorite, “opossum and sweet potatoes.” Naturally there are a lot of venison recipes, but there’s even a recipe for skunk!

So which book do you get? Do you get the one that represents a rich tradition, our true, elemental, cultural roots, the simple cuisine endemic to our nation and our region? Or do you get the exciting, fresh, globally inspired cookbook that “figgers” the sky’s the limit? Decisions, decisions!

Well, fortunately, the answer is simple: You buy both! Dryden’s volume sells for $15, and Nagel’s little chestnut is just $3.50 a copy. So you can get both for under twenty bucks.

And then, when you have the other kind of “bucks,” then you’ll know how to fix them!

Meanwhile, let’s stay tuned to the Koenigs’ cooking adventure!

Jane’s Varmint Vittles

Last night was a first for us! I love trying new foods, and this was a doozy.

Our friend Jane P. lives in a nice, wooded neighborhood in sophisticated, college-town Columbia (so don’t be going on about hillbillies here); she’s a foodie, I suppose—though she goes far beyond simple classifications like that.

Anyway, Jane has a couple of dogs, Wagner and Porter, and they . . . well, hunt things. They’re dogs! And this week a woodchuck had the misfortune, or the poor judgment, to get caught inside their dog-fence with them.

When Jane came upon the situation, the dogs were playing tug-o-war with the deceased woodchuck.

Most people would have chucked the woodie into the woods, or thrown it in the trash, or buried it, but not Jane, oh-no-no-no. Jane drained and skinned and gutted it, and made it into a stew!

And not just any stew, mind you—this was fantastic stuff, with big chunks of carrots and onion, as well as fresh local chanterelle mushrooms (yeah, in nice big pieces).

So she had us and her friend Rod over for dinner last night, to sample the culinary wonder that is woodchuck. Groundhog. Whistle pig. Land beaver.

“What did it taste like?” you ask.

It tasted great! Better than beef, in my opinion. Tender and rich, kind of sweet in a way. Yes, slightly “gamey,” but not overly so; in fact it was quite mild. And not stringy or tough at all.

As we ate, Jane explained that part of its tastiness might be from it being a fairly young animal—probably in its first year of life—and a female (thus less musky). Also, Jane had done her homework on cooking woodchuck and had removed the creature’s scent glands prior to any cooking, which probably helped the flavor immensely.




To round out the meal, Jane also served us fresh cooked greens, a medley of diced squash and red bell peppers, roasted potatoes and onions, and a bowl of fresh wild persimmons. It was a truly special, delicious meal, and we felt like royalty.

I had asked what we could bring, and Jane—based on a sample she’d tasted—suggested an “old-vine Zinfandel.” Which I promptly went out and bought. Although I did ask the lady at the wine department, anyway: “What can you suggest: I’m looking for a wine that would pair well with woodchuck . . .” Yeah, I asked just to see the look on her face.

I also brought a blackberry pie that I picked up from a Mennonite lady at the Cole County Farmer’s Market.

It was all incredibly delicious . . . and the dogs got to lick the plates.





Epilogue. Four minutes after we said goodnight and left, Jane tells us, the dogs had murdered an opossum in their enclosed area. Jane was tired; it was a work night. . . . She flung it over the fence!

Pickled Walnuts

I’ve been working up to this post in some of my previous posts (“Walnut Catsup,” “Ketchup and Vinegar,” and some notes about the progress of our own walnuts). I hope you’ll bear with this fairly long entry, given that blog entries are “supposed” to be quick little “thots” only 800 words long. Don’t worry, I’m breaking it up with pictures.

So: remember that 1880s recipe I gave you in the post for Walnut Catsup—apparently pickled walnuts, which could be ground up into a paste? Well, it turns out that one small, family-run company here in Missouri makes the pickled walnuts for you. So you can try it first without going to all the hassle of picking, pickling, and processing the nuts yourself.

The company is called Barnicle Farms—it’s Tony and Lorraine Barnicle, down in Mary’s Home, Missouri. They have a Web site, so you can learn more and order your own pickled walnuts. Easy to remember: http://www.barniclefarms.com/.

Their story is pretty simple—they were visiting friends in London in 1981 and had some pickled walnuts there. Pickled walnuts are an English tradition; Evelyn Waugh and Charles Dickens, for instance, mentioned the food in their writings (the Barnicles quote the passages in their promotional literature).

Of course, the walnuts that the Barnicles ate in England were English walnuts, a.k.a. Persian walnuts, the kind labeled here in America as just “walnuts.” But the type that Missouri is so famous for is the black walnut, whose nutmeats have a much richer, stronger, darker flavor. So the Barnicles did their homework, experimented with traditional recipes, and pioneered the process of pickling Missouri’s black walnuts.

As of 2003, they were approved by the USDA and received certification with the Agri-Missouri program of the Missouri Department of Agriculture. They’ve appeared at the annual Walnut Festival held down at Stockton. You can find their product increasingly throughout the state.

Of course . . . the moment of truth is when you taste the pickled walnuts! Realize: if you’ve grown up around black walnut trees, you’re going to have a deeply ingrained idea that all parts of the walnut tree, except the true nutmeats, are decidedly inedible. Or at least kinda gross.

Remember, black walnuts give off juglone, a respiratory inhibitor (to plants) that keeps other plants (such as tomatoes) from thriving near a walnut tree. As a kid, I simply came to the conclusion that walnut trees must be kinda toxic.

All the green parts of the tree smell funky, and the new growth of shoots and leaves can be sticky and resinous. If you have a walnut sprouting up in your flower bed (thanks to the squirrels) and pull it out with your hands, you’ll smell the walnut juice immediately.

The green husks that surround the shell give off a sap that stains everything it touches dark brown. As a kid I usually had brown hands and knees in the autumn from playing in the backyard under the walnut tree.

So the idea of eating one of these little suckers whole is bizarre, to say the least. But here is my verdict, in a nutshell (pardon the pun): Very good, when combined with other foods, but probably not something you’d want to eat by itself.

They are very pickled-tasting, sour and sweet and funky. For some reason I cannot name the flavor that predominates, though it tastes familiar to me. Is it alum? Is it mace, or cloves? Sue says she thinks it is the flavor of the actual walnut juice. Hmmm.

So they are pretty strong, and they have a grainy texture, which I think comes from the green hull (it all turns black once pickled). I personally wouldn’t want to eat a whole one. Slice it first.

In England, pickled walnuts are often eaten as part of a cheese and cold-cut/sausage tray. I think the nuts are generally sliced when served this way. I would imagine that the cheese tray could naturally contain some traditional British cheeses—cheddar, stilton, and so on. I’ve tried the walnuts with sharp cheddar, and the combination is terrific.

The pickled walnuts are also supposed to be good with roasted or grilled meats (Dickens’s character asks for “a mutton chop and a pickled walnut”). I can see where you could grind up the pickled walnuts, mix it with some of the juice, and make a kind of relish out of it. A “catsup,” if you will. I’ll bet that the dark sharp bite of the walnuts gives some excellent zip to steaming meat. You can also marinate a roast in the pickled walnuts. Look for this as the “next thing” at highfalutin big-city restaurants.

The Barnicles suggest grinding the pickled walnuts and using them “in a dip, in a salad dressing or sprinkled on a salad,” adding that they are also “great with eggs and egg dishes. Sprinkle ground nut in deviled egg mixture and add some on top before serving.”

I would suggest that they are an excellent gift and something to start a conversation over. Of course, I am supporting our local made-in-Missouri products, but you can also tell that I’m sort of a “foodie,” and I find this a wonderful new flavor to play around with.

By the way, they’re not exactly cheap: Down at Columbia’s Root Cellar, they sell for six seventy-five for an eight-ounce jar. But if you stop and review the complicated process for preparing these little suckers, you’ll understand why the Barnicles sell them for so much.

And once you’ve tasted them, you might find yourself with a brand new little addiction. In fact, you might even start doing things that really piss off the local squirrels.

Photo comments. Throughout this post, the photos show the pickled walnuts, whole, cross-sectioned, and sliced and served on crackers. The pickled walnuts are the black ones.

I’ve also included pictures of some fresh walnuts from our tree, taken last night, with the good ol’ Missouri quarter to show how they’ve grown since last time. The fresh walnuts are green. Some pictures show fresh and pickled walnuts together, with cross-sectioning. They are about the same size; I’ll bet the Barnicles are down there in Mary’s Home right now harvesting the same-size immature walnuts for their pickles. I’ll bet their squirrels hate them.

The picture of the “hatpin-through-the-walnut trick” is to show you that our walnuts are indeed still at pickling stage: The shell inside isn’t yet hard enough to prevent the pin from penetrating.

The photo of the jars on the shelf was taken at Columbia’s own Root Cellar, purveyor of Missouri-grown, farm-fresh produce, meat, bread, and milk (814A East Broadway): local, local, local! They were kind enough to let me take pictures in their shop: Thanks a lot!

Black Walnut Flowers

We’ve been having a fairly wet spring. The grass is growing like Topsy. And the black walnut tree in the backyard is covered with catkins. When you combine it with all the oak flowers, we’re having a pretty “good” allergy season, too.

Last night a line of stiff spring thunderstorms pushed through central Missouri; they had 70 mph winds next door in Callaway County. Even if it wasn’t spinning like a tornado, that’s bad enough.

Luckily, the only “damage” we seemed to have was a few dead branches (small ones) fell out of some of the trees.

The sun came out this afternoon and things started to dry off. We had lovely golden light this evening, and the skies were blue and crystal clear because the rains had cleaned the air.

So the walnut tree has loads of flowers on it this spring—the male catkins are hanging from the branches in such quantities it almost looks like Spanish moss. I hope this means we’ll have a bumper crop of walnuts this fall. Oh, joy!

If you don’t know—Missouri is the number one producer of black walnuts. I’ll talk more about it in the fall, but for now you can educate yourself on Hammons Web site.

Here are some pictures of the tree I took this evening. First, a view of the female flowers, which grow in small clusters at the tips of branches.

Here, some of the dangling catkins of male flowers, followed by a closer look at some that are releasing pollen. If you suffer from allergies, don’t spend a lot of time looking at these!

Here is a view of one of the boughs; hopefully you can see both the male catkins as well as a few female flowers against the sky at the branch tip.

At the top of this post, of course, is a view looking up into the tree. I love black walnut trees, and I love look upward into any tree; for me, leafy canopies are the stained glass of nature’s cathedral.

Whoop-Whoop and Woohoo!

Sue provided the title for this post—it’s how she characterizes my Aunt Carole’s exclamations upon finding morel mushrooms. And yes, Sue got to use her Whoop-Whoop hoot yesterday afternoon when she picked me up after my hike at Gans Creek Wild Area. (Why am I telling you where I found these? I must be nuts. Well, it’s a big area, and I just won’t be more specific than that.)

I will write soon about the journey—the hike, the rain, the mud, the flowers, the copperhead, and all the other fun stuff I stumbled upon—but let’s just say I found a nice patch of yellow morels, filled my little bag, and had plenty for our dinner. My total “haul” was 41 mushrooms—all yellow, except for one black or gray one. All the yellow ones from a single, glorious patch. I could have looked for more, but really . . . one nice dinner at a time is enough to suit me. Maybe I’ll find more in the next week or so. Or maybe not.

But tonight I just want to share with you some cooking tips for morels. First, of course, make sure you have actual morels. Once you know what they look like, you won’t mistake them for anything else. To harvest them, use a pocket knife to cut them right at the base of the little trunk.

Step 1 is to trim and debug them. Cut away any bad bits, cut them in half lengthwise (which assists in making sure you’ve properly identified them), rinse and inspect, and put them into a big bowl or bucket of salted water. The saltwater encourages any remaining bugs ’n’ slugs to exit the many nooks and hollows. Rinse with fresh water, drain, and they’re ready to cook.

Idea #1 is the time-honored Missouri way: Fried. Dip them in egg and then in corn meal, and deep-fry them. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with salt, and serve immediately. You can’t go wrong with this method; this is the way most people cook them. An alternative would be to use cracker crumbs. My only objection to fried morels is that the breading and frying can obscure the flavor of the mushrooms themselves. But you can’t argue with tradition.

Idea #2 builds on an ancient, awesome equation invented by the earliest human civilizations: Mushrooms + garlic + butter = delicioso magnifico. I cut chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks and sauté in butter supplemented with olive oil until they’re starting to get done. Add minced or crushed garlic and the mushrooms and continue to sauté. (If you want even more of the morel flavor to come through, consider using shallots instead of garlic.) As they cook, the morels will give off a lot of moisture, and you might want to supplement with a bit of white wine; let that cook down and reduce.

The chicken, morels, and their juice go well with roasted potatoes. Also, may I recommend a side of fresh steamed asparagus with, say, a light lemon sauce? It goes well with this meal, being so seasonal, as does a green salad decorated with redbud blossoms and violets from the backyard.

Mmmm. . . . Getting hungry yet? Here’s another one.

Idea #3 is an appetizer. It’s good if you only managed to find a few morels, and you want to do something special to celebrate them. After you’ve halved and cleaned them, carefully steam them until they’re cooked. Then, stuff them with one of the following: A small clove of roasted garlic; a small piece of bacon; a little wad of prosciutto . . . Hmmm. All kinds of lovely things would fit in that little cavity. Greek olives, capers, feta, goat cheese . . . My. Then, reunite the halves and secure with a chive leaf tied in a little knot, or sushi-style with a little ribbon of nori.

Serve drizzled with more melted butter, or concoct a mayonnaise-based dip, or make up a cream sauce of some kind. Oh, joy! In the big city, a small platter of these fresh little babies, properly garnished, would put you back thirty dollars, I’ll bet.

Happy hunting, morel lovers.

Favorite Spring Salad

It’s bright and light and it features seasonal ingredients—morel mushrooms, asparagus, redbud blossoms—in a salad of bowtie pasta, sautéed chicken, with a lemony vinaigrette with extra virgin olive oil and rosemary. It’s good at just about any temperature, so it’s perfect for a spring picnic. Like we had today.

Yes. It goes well with good friends, a beautiful view, and a bottle of Hermannhof Spring Blush wine.

By the way, this is a play-it-by-ear thing. You should adjust the quantities of everything to your own tastes.

Julie’s Own Blessings-of-April Pasta Salad

1 bunch of asparagus broken into two- or three-inch pieces (steamed briefly; shock in ice water to stop cooking if necessary; it’s better to slightly undercook; don’t overcook)

Morel mushrooms (halved, soaked briefly in salty water to debug, rinsed, and steamed) (if fresh morels are not available, try shiitakes, cut into slices, and steamed) Quantity? Well, as many as you can find or afford! (Play it by ear.)

12 oz. bowtie pasta, cooked to al dente (rotini works well, too) (don’t overcook) (rinse with cold water to prevent sticking)

3 boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces. Sauté with extra virgin olive oil, a minced shallot, and about four sprigs of fresh rosemary. (Discard the rosemary once the chicken is cooked.) The chicken and cooked shallots can go into the salad.

For the dressing—combine the following in a Mason or jelly jar and shake vigorously to emulsify:

--zest from one small lemon (microplane graters work great for this)

--juice from the lemon, plus enough white wine vinegar to equal 1/3 cup

--2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

--1 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary

--1 minced shallot (about 1 Tbsp.)

--salt and pepper to taste

Pour the dressing over the salad ingredients and toss gently to combine. Adjust seasoning if necessary. Can serve chilled or at room temperature.

Serve on a bed of fresh baby spinach or lettuce greens; garnish with redbud blossoms just prior to serving.

Dandelion Wine per Johnny Renner

Okay, while we’re on the subject of libation:

one gallon of Blossoms thoroughly washed. pour over them one gallon of boiling water and let stand for forty eight hours. strain and add peel and all three oranges, two lemons. with two lbs of seeded raisins. three and one half lbs. white sugar. and one cake of compressed yeast. Let stand for 48 hours more strain again and put in a large earthen jar to ferment covering with a cloth. Keep in a warm place untill fermentation has finished, and it is clear then dip off and bottle. do not skim just let settle.

. . . Right. That’s exactly verbatim from what I have on a little piece of ruled notepaper, written in pencil by my Grandpa Renner, who died in 1975 when I was nine.

The paper with his recipe is carefully folded and looked very flattened, as if he had kept it in his wallet for a long time. Mom gave it to me several years ago, along with another recipe (for cherry wine).

So after pondering the idea for years, we finally did make dandelion wine a few years ago, using flowers from our own yard (which we never sprayed, much to the irritation of our neighbors). We based our wine on Grandpa’s recipe, and we filled in our knowledge gaps using other dandelion wine recipes gleaned from the Internet. And we updated some stuff; for instance, we used our home-brew beer-making equipment (a big plastic bucket with spigot, bottle capper, etc.) instead of a “large earthen jar” and “a cloth.”

I’m not going to spell out the entire recipe for you, but I am going to tell you it made yummy, delicious, golden wine. Sweet springtime sunshine in a bottle.

Note: When we first tried the product of our labors, it was pretty awful; it was too sweet and thick. You could have poured it over pancakes. It was gross. It languished in our cellar for a year. When we tasted it next, it tasted much, much better. Yummy.

So I’m sharing this with you, now, in hopes that this might be the year that you take the plunge—once it gets a little warmer, and that won’t be too long from now—the first golden crop of dandelions will start blooming out on your lawn. Maybe this year, instead of cussing at them, you’ll greet them with a smile, and think about your new little chemistry project you’re gonna do down in the basement.