Chicken Liver and Oyster Mushroom Pate

The second flush of basement grown Oyster mushrooms is here, with a couple of whopper specimens. The smaller one went into this pate, and the larger one is going into mushroom gravy for our roast chicken tonight. Another species has already started eating coffee grounds in a new one gallon glass canister we bought. My plan is to have five or six different varieties of Oyster mushrooms started by the end of the summer.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Bacon Fat (rendered from Lard de Poitrine, fatty Bacon)

1 tablespoon Butter

1 medium Oyster Mushroom, chopped

1/4 pound Chicken Livers

1 crushed clove of Garlic

Salt

2 tablespoons Brandy (or more)

Melt the butter and bacon fat, and briefly saute the chopped mushrooms. Add the chicken livers and cook until they are done to your liking–four or five minutes. cook the garlic for about a minute, and then set the whole thing on fire with the brandy. Whoosh! It’s as much fun as the Leo DiCaprio character had at the end of the movie Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

The finished product, before it heads for the refrigernator for an overnight visit:

I must have used more livers than I thought, as that looks like about seven ounces of pate. It was zapped in a food processor with a few drops of cream, and will be covered in plastic wrap so it will be ready to be devoured beginning tomorrow.That big Oyster mushroom next to it? Not so lucky. It’s on the chopping block for tonight.

Lunch Poems, Part Two–Eating Poetry, by Mark Strand

A real classic here, and a GOAT. Mark Strand was the US poet laureate, though Mark Twain would have said “Poet Lariat.”

Eating Poetry

BY MARK STRAND

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.

Her eyes are sad

and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.

The light is dim.

The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,

their blond legs burn like brush.

The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.

When I get on my knees and lick her hand,

she screams.

I am a new man.

I snarl at her and bark.

I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Those last two words are what literary types would call a “word cluster,” or a combination of words that are unforgettable. Poetry–It’s what’s for lunch.

I’m Exhausted of Being Exhausted

Every expert in the cable news media tends to think that I, and most other people, are exhausted. We’re exhausted by (blank)–just fill in your least favorite word–war, politics, masks, Covid. So here is a poem for our times, entitled “Poem”, by Frank O’Hara, from his book called Lunch Poems. Not poetry for lunch again, Mom!

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Thanks to the American Academy of Poets for this one. I could sing a French song about ennui, or talk about herd mentality instead of herd immunity, but instead I will say to my fellow citizens: we love you. Now get up.

1963–Three Reverends Walk into a Restaurant in Georgia

Wait–Those are anti-war Russian Kids who were Sent to the Slammer this Week–see the NPR Story about Them

There were no midgets in this group of clergy–alphabetically, they were Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr, and Fred Shuttlesworth. I learned about this incident reading the brilliant book Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter. Here’s the cover.

Looks Familiar–Birmingham Kids Headed to the Slammer in 1963

The brains of the group, Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, had gone to Georgia to propose a protest, that was to become one of the most famous in world history, which he called Project C. It involved occupying the lunch counters in Birmingham, using his trademark tactic of “direct action.” Neither of the other two had ever participated in a direct action protest. Unfortunately, Shuttlesworth missed his plane back to Alabama.

I’ll quote McWhorter from this point:

Chafing to catch his flight back to Birmingham, Shuttlesworth asked King and Abernathy to drive him to Savannah. Arriving at the airport just as the plane for Birmingham was taking off, King said with humorous sympathy, “Ralph, I believe Fred has missed his plane.” Inside the terminal, Shuttlesworth said, “Gentlemen, I’m powerful hungry,” and led them into the all-white lunch room, instructing them, “Leave some stools between us. Some white folks may want to sit down.” To the waitress who was sullenly ignoring the leaders of the civil rights movement, Shuttlesworth called, “Little lady, if you don’t want your airport to make the history books, you better serve me.” But the only record for posterity was the rolls of surveillance film that the FBI shot of the SCLC member’s coming and goings at the airport, assuming the revolutionary plot being hatched at Dorchester to be Marxist-Leninist.
Carry Me Home

J. Edgar Hoover was something like the Putin of American history–that is, when he wasn’t playing dress up with his boyfriend. The line between the Klan, the FBI, and the police was practically invisible in Birmingham in the early 60’s, which was often compared to Berlin in the late 1930’s. All wanted to portray the civil rights movement as being communists, who wanted to take away white people’s places at the lunch counter. Thus few of the fifty bombings that happened there were ever solved, the last notable one claiming the life of Federal Judge Robert Vance. His daughter in law Joyce is now a news analyst for MSNBC.

I have to admire all the kids in those two pictures, but my favorite is the girl wearing the toboggan. She looks like she is mad enough to eat Putin’s lunch. I hope she does.

Stay Away from Farmers Insurance–Very Far Away

According to Farmers, This May or May not be a Building

Building or outdoor equipment? You can decide, but our insurance adjuster said this could be considered either–depending on what his boss says. Outdoor equipment means much less money for replacement. Go figure.

The good cop-bad cop ploy was as transparent as plastic wrap. Here’s what he saw:

Five days later, after the storm/tornado laid one tree on this and one on our house, we have nary a penny out of Farmers. We have no timeline for when they might cover our property. We hired a tree service and paid out of our pocket for the two trees to be removed. No notice on when we might be reimbursed.

Our policy from Met Life–excellent insurance–was bought out as Met Life Home and Auto was sold to Farmers in a corporate takeover last fall. A tree service owner said his two worst insurance companies to deal with are-drum roll-Farmers and Allstate. As Groucho would say, make a note of that, Jameson.

Farmers. Anyone who stays with them is dumb-dumb-dumb, dumb-dumb-dumb, DUMB.

Axe Me Again Tomorrow

I have been blessed and/or cursed with a lifetime supply of wood, and it only took about fifteen seconds. To make it a very short story, I now have around fifty storm damaged trees to work with.

2/23, Melanie Jane’s birthday, a loud WHOOSE sound woke us up around four o’clock, followed by some heavy rain. We had heard the same sound in the tornado outbreak of 2011, and it meant only one thing–blown down trees. Sure enough, there is a leaner on our house right now.

The brick oven got the worst of it, with the chimney knocked off, the dome cracked, and the enclosure destroyed by a mature pine tree. However, Jose and his crew of landscapers are coming by tomorrow to get rid of the two trees, and the insurance adjuster is scheduled for Monday. And as usual, I have plans.

If I were the character from the movie Bull Durham, who had to work on his cliches, I would say I am going to give it 110 percent and make some lemonade, but I don’t even like lemonade. My new pine chopping block came from my driveway, and I have multiples candidates for the second one. Then there is the plan for an even fancier brick oven, with an enclosure with pine shingles, and a roof covered with pine shakes. When life gives you wood, make shingles.

Making Rubbed Sage

Supermarket Sage can be a sorry thing, with as many stems as leaves. A high quality rubbed Sage like this can get pricey, and usually can only be found via mail order. So I grabbed the Sage by the leaves and made my own.

I clipped these leaves of Berggarten with a small pair of pruners, but scissors will work just as well. The leaves of this cultivar are large and strong of flavor. Clipping individual leaves is tedious, but spring growth is about a month away, and I want as many leaves for the fall as possible–think cornbread dressing for Thanksgiving. Then entire branches will be sacrificed, and I can clip off all those stems while sitting, and enjoying a beverage.

Our convection oven has a pre-programmed dehydration setting, which is 120 degrees F for six hours. That is perfect for this many leaves, and I left plenty of room to avoid crowding. The same setting could be used for any oven.

Rubbing is simple. Add a handful of leaves into the palm of your non-dominant hand, and commence rubbing the dried leaves between two fingers of your dominant hand. Collect them in your palm, and funnel them into a spice jar. This amount of leaves made one third of a standard spice jar, as pictured.

I leave mine uncovered for a week or so to make certain they are perfectly dried. Then it is into the spice cabinet, next to some ground sage. That’s when you notice that this is like a whole different herb.

Growing Mushrooms, Part Four–Mushrooms for Life

I admit to being skeptical of the sites on the inter webs that claim you can grow mushrooms from stems on moist cardboard, but I will kiss your butt on Twentieth Street in Birmingham if they’re not right. Those white furry things you see are mycelium, which are the mushroom equivalent of roots–only they grow incredibly fast. In fact, oyster mushrooms will feed on almost any kind of cellulose, including cardboard.

Being of an experimental nature, and having a workshop full of hardwood sawdust, I decided to try this. The base of this mixture is about three fourths of a cup of sawdust. On top of that is a layer of Amazon box cardboard. Then there are two clumps of King Blue Oyster mushroom bases, from the Oyster mushrooms that I recently grew. Both clumps cloned themselves, and when they hit the sawdust, it was all she wrote.

Another moist layer of cardboard is on the top, and I fear that it is not aware of the death penalty that it faces. Mushrooms are more like animals than vegetables, and Oyster mushrooms are documented to have killed both nematodes and various bacteria, and then eat them. And then, all things made of wood are on the menu.

I did manage to kill off a sourdough starter that I nursed for more than a decade, but that was just negligence. As we both love fresh mushrooms, I think these are keepers. So there it is–$13.99 for a lifetime supply of mushrooms, plus some ingredients that would have ended up in the compost bin.

Smokehouse, Part Four–It’s Almost Finito Mussolini

Friday, 2/11, was a warm 68 degrees F, so we smoked some wild Salmon in the new smokehouse. Life is hard.

I snaked the recipe from Hank Shaw, who has the great website Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. It’s simple and delicious.

Smoked Salmon

1 medium wild Salmon Fillet

Marinade of Sea Salt, brown Sugar, and Water

Start about six hours before smoking, and marry-nate the salmon in this mixture. Then let it dry, skin side down, for another two hours.

This is a warm smoke cook, so here are the rough guidelines. Cold smoke is from about 70-100F, warm smoke is 100-130F, and hot smoke is 130-190F. These rough guidelines are for people who happen to own cooking thermometers.

Not us. Old timers around here would laugh at the idea of wasting money on a thermometer, when you can just open the damn door and stick your hand inside to see how warm the smokehouse is. Besides, they had those free advertising thermometers nailed up on the front porch (usually Coca-Cola). They would have pulled that down and used it. A lack of money leads to a surplus of creativity.

At any rate, the Salmon smokes for around two hours. After an hour, brush on some sweetener. Shaw uses birch syrup; we went with honey, as we have a beekeeper who lives a mile from here, as the bee flies. We have already seen one of his bees on some blooming crocus we have.

Naturally, after an hour and a half we got impatient and hungry, and finished the Salmon in the oven. It was a bit dry and overcooked, but still nice and smoky. It made superb Salmon cakes as well.

The last bit is fitting this thing for real winter cold smoking, which is going to take some serious labor, hooking up an old steel wood stove to this smoke mansion, in a way that will result in the whole thing not burning to the ground. Good thing my labor is free.

The Gazpacho Police Are Coming for You

The South is famous for such things as laid back folks, college sports, good food, a variable climate, and elected officials of questionable intellectual capacity. One, in fact, fears that a Spanish soup is trying to hunt her down.

The honorable US Representative for northwest Georgia apparently doesn’t know from Gazpacho. She stated, in her typical ranting fashion, that the Speaker of the House was sicking the Gazpacho police on her. I am of the firm conviction that a Gazpacho bath would be the best remedy for removing any skunk smell that a person might have.

Some countries do in fact have food police, in particular, Italy (sorry Spain, but we had to switch countries). The Carabinieri (think Italian FBI), which is actually part of the Italian Army, in fact has an agricultural division, that enforces Italian and EU food laws. Olive oil fraud is a major illegal activity in Italy, (author Tom Mueller estimates that 75-80% of the extra virgin oil sold in the US is fake) and wine is the number ten export. So the Carabinieri are charged with everything from dealing with organized crime to enforcing European Union Egg Directive 1028, which requires inspection and labeling of eggs. Italians really hate that last one.

Which in a round about way brings me to the topic of Ur-Fascism, a term coined by the great Italian writer Umberto Eco. His 1995 essay of the same title, published in The New York Review of Books, has become justifiably famous. Eco recalls winning a writing award given by the Italian Fascistas when he was only ten. He said all he had to do was agree with them.

The distinction Eco makes is between Italian Ur-Fascism and Nazism. Ur-Fascists are dangerous, but almost comically incompetent. Unlike the single minded and ruthlessly efficient Nazi party, the Ur-Fascists were and are primarily interested in lining their pockets and running off at the mouth. My favorite sentence from the essay has to be the following: “Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric.” From that point, Eco outlines his analysis of fascist rhetoric, now usually called the Fascist playbook. Don’t read it and then watch the news, and really don’t dare to watch C-span afterward.

So we should probably add one party rule and Ur-Fascism as a Southern trait. Recently both Alabama and Mississippi were ranked as two of the most corrupt states in the Union by a good government group. Alabama is using Covid relief money to build new prisons, while having a former football coach as a senator, who couldn’t name the three branches of the US government when asked. He should have punted.

The South, everything from soup to nuts. Especially the nuts.

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Eating Poetry

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