A Moment of Peace

I wonder if I'm not finally learning how to relax. I also wonder how much of the stress and tension in my life is caused by hormones. Really.
I suspect that hormones essentially run the planet, (along with fungi) and that we have no actual control over either of these things.
Tonight I was cutting up vegetables in the kitchen and listening to the radio and I had the sudden realization that I was happy. Just happy in the moment, listening to the radio and having a glass of red wine and dicing a chunk of rutabaga. The dogs were lying around watching because I am cooking a beef stew, which is a rare occasion at my house. I gave them some tidbits of beef and wondered, as they licked my fingers clean, why I felt so good.

Part of it is definitely feeling some sense of order in the universe. Cooking usually does that for me; the order implicit in cutting things up and adding them to the pot, the sensibility of seasonings. Imposing order on the chaos. No doubt I find the familiar voices on CBC radio soothing and the smells of food cooking comforting. Wine always makes me happy. The presence of my calm, attentive dogs pleases and comforts me.

But mainly I think that my hormones are taking a break from their nearly constant driving mission to fuck with my mind. What a relief! How pleasant to just enjoy the sights and smells of cooking a beef stew, slowly in the oven, while listening to the radio and enjoying the quiet company of two old dogs. How restful to sip a glass of red wine and listen to Johnny Cash singing "One", in his gravelly old man's voice or Kiri Te Kanawa belting out a Puccini aria, without breaking into tears and wishing I was dead! A blessed moment of peace in a turmoily universe!

How lucky I feel at this moment.

Things that Suck

Some Things that Suck:

- Waking up with a sore throat.
- Monsanto
- BP
- Buying the "bale" of 20 bus tickets in order to *save money* then only using 2 of them.
- Trying to sell them to your friends, who don't want them.
- Discovering you're the only person in your circle who takes the bus to Toronto.
- Lying in bed, coughing.
- Then spitting.
- War
- Pesticides
- Vomiting
- Colony Collapse Disorder
- Sad dogs
- Feeling too crappy to fix yourself a can of soup.

Mushrooms for dinner again...

So, it would seem to be a *STELLAR* year for wild mushrooms, at least for me.
I bragged in my last post that I finally found white matsutakes in Temagami, after looking for them in vain for about 25 years. Then, yesterday, while walking my dogs at a favourite park, I noticed what appeared to be a rather large, well-organized squirrels nest, lying on the ground under an oak tree. My heart went pit-a-pat.
What IS that? I asked the dogs, who didn't answer. But I wondered if it might not be the polypore called "hen of the woods" and I approached the thing with bated breath.

To make a long story short, we have been eating mushrooms for about 24 hours now and I, for one, am full. The thing weighed thirteen pounds and was nearly all usable; we gave some away and made a huge soup yesterday. There is talk of frying some up, later tonight as we still have a huge chunk in the fridge. I've been bragging non-stop to my long-suffering family.

As a forager, I feel fulfilled.

Pictured above: thirteen pounds of "hen of the woods" or Grifola frondosa. Also known as "maitake", it is one of the mushrooms that has been used medicinally by the Japanese for time immemorial.

Back from the woods

Hey, we're back from our canoe trip!
We were in Temagami for 20 days.
We were rained on for 19 of them.
We ate 12 different species of wild mushrooms! (Not all at the same meal...)
I did not find it warm enough to swim, even once. One day I was almost going to do it, then the wind picked up again and I came to my senses.
We stayed at 12 different campsites.
We made 12 portages.

Highlights:

I found white matsutakes, for the first time ever. I have been looking for them for about twenty years.
We ate a lot of boletes and suillus mushrooms. When fried in ghee and salted, they taste a lot like bacon, or chicken skin or something very meat-like, fatty and satisfying.
River otters: What could be more thrilling?