in my autumn kitchen

A backyard dinner. [RECIPE]

Cr drive home from Maine on Sunday was long —

I often make Donner Party jokes during this schlep, which can be anywhere from five hours to ten, depending upon what’s happening with the drivers in Massachusetts (no offense, but). When we pulled into the driveway, it had been eight hours, give or take, and we were all exhausted. Susan walked Pete around the house a few times so that he could reacquaint himself with the smells of his home and garden. I stepped out onto the deck — it’s starting to collapse, so this is yet another massive fly in our increasingly problematic writer/designer financial ointment — looked out into the backyard, and saw them: gorgeous Chicken of the Woods mushrooms, hanging off the side of a narrow split oak that’s been threatening to fall for two decades. My mood went from feh to YES in a matter of seconds.

More on the gift of trees:

Two years ago, after a very warm, wet summer, the same tree sprouted the same mushrooms from the same place. I will never (ever) trust myself when it comes to the foraging of mushrooms, or anything else for that matter, so I was loathe to harvest them until I spoke with my next door neighbor, who knows about this kind of thing (and has often left us with bags of oyster mushrooms, chanterelles, Hen of the Woods, and puffballs on our front stoop). She told me what to do: slice the mushroom from the tree, leaving enough of a base attached to the trunk that it will return the following year. Clean the mushrooms, and proceed with your recipe, she said.

I sliced them off as instructed, I cleaned and sauteed them, and waited for them to reappear the following year. Nothing.

Which is why, after a very long trip home from Maine on Sunday, finding this bounty again in the same place was thrilling. I hadn’t even considered that they might return because they hadn’t last year, and all the mushrooms that traveled through my kitchen were bought from local mushroom purveyors and foragers.

Favorite Opinel knife, purchased in 1996

Late yesterday afternoon, after getting home from an appointment, Susan and I went out into the yard, knife in hand — I can get very weird about knives; I use a tiny folding Opinel knife, purchased one night before attending a picnic at Opera in the Park in New York City (Rigoletto, 1996) when I realized that I had nothing to cut my saucisson with — sliced the mushrooms, and ended up with around five pounds of them. And then I thought: what the hell am I going to do with five pounds of really massive wild mushrooms?