These days, sandwich building is in decline across the board. Most are being sold in corner stores, gas stations, drug stores and supermarkets. Sales from delicatessens, restaurants and other specialists are in decline. While there are a few great spots out there to get a good sandwich, they are fewer and farther between.

I learned how to make sandwiches from serious sandwich folks. And I learned to love their approach and the logic behind it. So, I think my way is a good way. I put a lot of weight on edibility: the ability to eat the sandwich with one or two hands, in its entirety, without the aid of foil, paper, prosthetics or other gimmicks.

There are unique challenges for “sandwiches” on wraps, one piece sub rolls, pita bread, naan etc,… For our purposes in this post, we aren’t going to go there nor will we take up the debate: “what is a sandwich?” That is a fun debate though. Google the question to see endless and highly variable takes on the subject.

Also, see ’s piece on a potential Illinois State sandwich:

Edzo's Chicagomatic

Trigger Warning - Politics

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22 days ago · 9 likes · 5 comments · Eddie Lakin

Today, let’s look at traditional “sandwiches” enclosed between two pieces of bread or a two-piece bun/roll. Here are my thoughts:

History

My second job was a work study job during high school at the Amherst Delicatessen. Prior to that, I’d got my hands real sticky and developed some skills, thanks to a year at Friendly’s. I could cook, clean, make a plate and had learned how to hustle during a rush. I made hundreds of sandwiches for Friendly’s.

As a junior in high school, I wanted to get a high school work study job. Work study meant I could leave school early to go to work. Sounded great. I had plenty of credits to graduate, so why not? I left Friendly’s and took a job at Amherst Deli, just a short walk from school.

The Amherst Deli’s owners John, Jim and Dan, were serious sandwich guys. They had run sub shops before opening the deli and brought that experience. They layered on a positive and consistent attitude towards customers, a strong work ethic and topped it with a good sense of fun and camaraderie. We served sandwiches and many traditional deli items.

They started training me day one. They had their way of doing things and systems and methods for most everything they did. They worked me. They beat me down with care and brought me back up with new skills, knowledge and bonafide mentoring.

I loved working there. I was learning a lot, time flew by, I liked the guys.

Good times.

Sandwich Architecture

We did things a certain way. Every time.

We sold a lot of sandwiches and bagels, especially at lunch time. Thanks to work study, I could work lunches. Soon I was a regular member of the lunch team. I learned to take orders fast, extract details from the undecided and to push what the owners wanted to sell. Later I learned to build sandwiches and to prep.

With bagels, the methods for spreading cream cheese were refined, developed from years of practice. Even spread, always. No lumps or piles. We heated knishes a certain way. Liverwurst was spread just so, with a specific spreader we only used for liverwurst and chopped liver. Pastrami was heated just so.

Sandwiches were precision engineered:

The top priority for a finished sandwich was this simple idea:

The same amount of every ingredient in every bite.

It sounds so easy and obvious. But in practice, it’s difficult to accomplish. I learned quickly. But it took me a while to be consistent. On busy days when I was building, if one of the owners was taking orders, they’d often pull a sandwich I’d put up and have me remake it when the layers weren’t right.

There was an order to each build. We put meat on the bottom, next up cheese, then veggies. Largely we followed that logic. Meats and cheeses were always sliced very thin. “More surface area and thinner slices make more even and stable sandwiches.” When we had bacon, it went on top of veggies, no idea why. Condiments on top and bottom bun. If there were two condiments, there were rules for which went on top and which on the bottom.

If it was to-go, we asked if the guest wanted it dry and packets to-go to add later. Dressing was always spread across 100% of the bread, right to the edge. We sliced our lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles to be layered thinly. They could be double layered for “extra—”.

It was not perfection. Some ingredients will only cooperate so well. Lettuce is notoriously uncooperative. But, the goal was perfection; the reality was “the best we can do.”

They hated a meat pile in the center of a sandwich, especially on sliced bread. Uneven or sliding layers were considered substandard.

Nobody liked to make anything twice, we were just too busy. So we learned how to do it right. With some practice, good layers barely add any time, but they do take more focus. We believed the customer got a better experience for our trouble. I believe this today.

Eating Our Sandwiches

I was converted from the beginning. I loved the look of the even layers of meat, cheese, veggies. If you knew how to hold it and eat it, each bite had it all, right to the last bite.

In looking for good examples of sandwich architecture, I came across the page linked above. Lots of good examples of sandwich builds, exquisitely photographed by Jon Chonko.

Many of the customers recognized our layering and complimented it. A rare few seemed to want the Carnegie Deli style overstuffed huge-lump-in-the-middle pastrami things. We were allowed to politely decline to make them. I admit to giving in to a few customers. Mostly cute young women who appealed to me the right way….

We just kept on layering. Every ingredient in every bite in the same amount.

Eating Other Sandwiches

For the 4 decades since I worked there I’ve plodded through the reality of American sandwichery with steady disappointment. In recent years it’s become more a sense of miserable resignation: I accept that the level of precision and discipline I want is

1. gone forever

2. not important to owners and managers

3. beyond the ability or interest level of workers

4. accepted by the average customer, helping to lower average quality

Every now and then I’ll get a wake up call: a sandwich in an unexpected place will deliver the construction and layering I desire. I always make a point to let the staff know when that happens. Sometimes, it’s an IYKYK kind of exchange. They’ve been trained and greatly appreciate when someone recognizes that.

Mostly, I’m disappointed. Sated maybe, but that’s it. I find myself thinking, “if they’d only done this or that differently, the sandwich could have been good.” Sadly, I don’t hold much hope for the future of sandwich architecture when I eat out. I’m just keeping the flames alive at home for now.

Future Sandwiches

I wonder if the proliferation of to-go food and delivery services contributes to the decline in sandwich quality. We know that delivery services carve away profitability from brick and mortar food businesses. This incentivizes cutting corners in sandwich build time and precision. There is no in person feedback with delivery services and I think this probably reinforces half assed production quality.

Outside of major urban centers, it seems like the delicatessen has been dying for a long time. Maybe making an extra stop for quality and precision has lost it’s appeal? Pre-made sandwiches in supermarkets and gas stations sell well. They’re everywhere. I wonder if I should blame us consumers? Why don’t we stand up for good sandwiches and stop buying gas station subs on crap bread with one slice of lettuce and onions falling out the top? Is saving a few minutes here and there worth the loss of food and sandwich culture? What can we do to save the good sandwich?

Sometimes, I think the never ending goal of selling something sensational and new and different sends vendors down the wrong road. Now there are avant-garde type sandwiches, surf and turf melts, sandwiches on ramen noodle “buns.” Some of that can be entertaining, but what if I just want a good old deli sandwich?

Conclusion

My call to action is simple. Demand well built sandwiches. Make an extra stop if need be to support your better sandwich shop or delicatessen. Don’t order food for delivery if you really like the vendor. To-go is ok, but make sure to look at the food and thank the staff when you pick it up, before you leave. Eat in whenever you can.

Take the time to make your own sandwiches with care, with even layers and with thin sliced ingredients. If you have to wrap or use a one-piece bun. Do your best to make it edible and get all your ingredients in every bite. Use care, take your time.

Do not eat sandwiches in your vehicle. Please. Only as a last resort.

Best: eat with others, do not look at screens, tell stories, discuss your sandwich. Drink water.

I’ve not offered paid subscriptions and have no immediate plans to do so. But if you want to support my work, contributions for coffee and fly tying materials are welcome!

Support My Work

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

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What am I to get from this work? I’ve seen the claim that the strongest factor to good gut health/microbiome in a study was the variety of plant foods. And that people who eat more than 30 plant varieties a week have vastly more complex gut biomes.

Sure, I buy that variety is good. My gut biome is good, medical professionals and I both agree. It seems pretty common sense to me. Except for putting a numeric goal on it.

At this time of the year. I’m eating a lot of variety from the plant and fungi taxonomies. Some weeks I’m sure it might be 50 plants and a half dozen fungi. But should I worry if the next week I only get 15 plants? Will my gut go off the rails?

In my foodway, I’m not likely to hit these numbers in winter. And probably not in a lot of other weeks. Year round, it might be possible. But I think it would mean buying a lot of out of local-season foods. I reject this.

Humans are well adapted to seasonal eating. We might be better off eating plants when local plant foods are available than trying to eat some specific diet year round. Our ubiquity of plant foods year-round in markets hasn’t resulted in over-all good gut health for the average person. We’re sicker than ever.

This type of goal is oversimplification.

I say: eat well; eat as diverse a diet as you can. If you restrict your diet, make sure you are making every effort to keep an eye on variety. If you are a broad-spectrum open minded eater like me, avoid getting in a rut.

Variety, variety, variety. Fresh stuff is good. Fermented stuff is great.

‘Kraut and ‘chi. Pickles. Try pickling some mushrooms! Push yourself towards different foods. Get out of your comfort zone. This is the way!

Read . Fermented plant and mushrooms foods count exponentially more than fresh.

Eating quinoa and kale dressed with avocado oil and lemon daily is not the way.

I eat seasonally and am trying to make my plant supplies: dried, canned, fermented make it through winter every year. I’m simultaneously trying to avoid the market traps of salad greens, avocados [what is their actual season in N. America, anyway?] berries, etc,… I try to focus on roots, tubers and a few well-traveled lux items like broccoli rabe. Coming out of winter into spring, I like to go big on green things as they become available in the wild. I’m not usually focusing on market foods.

Summer is about catching and eating fish, wild plants, summer vegetables from the farmers market.

In fall, it’s everything local, more fish and the beginning of hunting season. Upland birds, waterfowl, in a lucky year deer or bear.

You probably won’t devote the time and effort to wild food that I do, but every little bit counts. A few chopped dandelion leaves improve the flavor of a rich soup or stew; their bitterness is an asset, not a distraction there. The nourishment and freshness can’t be beat by anything in a store. Same for nettles, dock, lamb’s quarter.

Wild fish are great tasting nourishment. No greater reward than catch and cook. Game birds and animals are tops for your diet—and their pursuit will always be vastly more active and healthy than driving to the market and shopping. ALWAYS!

Right now is the easiest time of year do achieve variety and diversity in wild green plants. I try to make up for the 10 months of the year in Maine where wild green plants are few. So I’m easily hitting “my 30 plants” each week. Not that I’m counting except for this post.

I’m going big right now on things like ferns, ramps and the tender leaves of early season biennials, perennials and annuals.

For this post, I wrote down what I ate for the last week. I surely will not keep doing this. But it was a fun exercise to see where I end up without trying.

Randomly, without any intent or order:

1. savoy cabbage

2. carrots

3. wood nettle

4. stinging nettle

5. evening primrose

6. fermented ostrich fern

7. ramps

8. onions

9. garlic

10. celery

11. carrot

12. bell peppers green

13. bell peppers red

14. iceberg

15. plantain

16. sheep sorrel

17. wood sorrel

18. chickweed

19. knotweed

20. lambs quarter

21. goldenrod

22. basswood

23. briar leaves

24. mustard greens

25. wintercress

26. buckwheat

27. lilac blossom

28. sedum

29. violets leaves and flowers

30. apple

31. banana

32. potato

33. corn

34. wheat

35. day lily bulb

36. burdock stems

37. dock leaves, seeds, chaff

38. oats

39. pumpkin seeds

40. sunflower seeds

41. pecans

42. peanuts

Since they aren’t plants but are probably aligned with the spirit of this concept:

1. Shiitake mushrooms

2. Wine cap mushrooms [stropharia]

3. Morels [morchella]

4. Bull nose mushrooms [Maublancomyces giga, likely korfii]

   ---

If setting concrete [if arbitrary] goals helps you. By all means, make it so. For my part, I won’t be counting to 30 after today. Maybe I’ll remember in January and try it then. I’m nearly certain I won’t be at 30 most weeks.

But in the big picture, variety is good. Be a variety-vore. Whatever foodway you choose, make it as diverse as possible. Maxxing plant and fungi variety will help your gut. And it will keep things interesting.

Try some foods you haven’t before. Revisit some foods you might struggle with…brussels sprouts are in season still in December! And learn some of the edible wild plants [and mushrooms] that grow in your area. They can be the freshest, best tasting and most nourishing foods if you know the what, where and how.

I’ve not offered paid subscriptions and have no immediate plans to do so. But if you want to support my work, contributions for coffee and fly tying materials are welcome!

Support My Work

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

Re-learning how much time a bird dog puppy requires. And how fulfilling it is.

The shedding of good things accumulated with intent that sit without use. Hard but true.

The subtle acceptance that there are good objectives ahead, but what was before can’t be again.

Love is essential for real change. Desire is what endures; passion is ephemeral.

Finding solace in managing today’s difficulties that were once handled with ease. Aging is a thing.

April into May. I started posts. Good ideas. But I stopped writing each one. They languish, like good things accumulated with intent, but sit unfinished, without use. What happens to good intent?

My desire to publish kept losing on balance against, puppy, life and spring.

But I think now, the desire is found. So here goes.

On a recent visit, and I discussed posts based on anecdotes: his “ploughman’s lunch.” A ploughman’s lunch is a simple, hearty platter with a mix of textures and flavors. Here today, a mix of textures and flavors: food, fishing, dogs.

So on offer today, a hearty platter of anecdotes from the Maine Guide life.

My ploughman’s lunch.

Food

I’m happy to report that I’ve found a source for oysters in the shell where I live; now I avoid absurd drives out to the coast to get them.

I’ve picked up 10-12, shucking them a few at a time. I eat them without adornment. To me, they are a nearly perfect food. I put mignonette on a few after seeing a mouth-watering post by :

Wild Dispatch

The April Trio: Three Spring Mignonette Recipes for Oysters

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a month ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Josh Crumpton

Here is my version:

You should read “Consider the Oyster” by MFK Fisher. I’ve written about them and how I got started eating them:

And then read “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace and also “I’m Considering the Lobster” by .

The Unmoored

I'm Considering the Lobster

‘Anthropomorphism’ is defined as “the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.” Very well. I’m engaged in the sport right now. Let me bring you along…

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3 months ago · 33 likes · 3 comments · Emily Bernay

The oyster is amongst the few farmed foods that appears to be mostly beneficial in its impact, before we eat them. Oysters can be raised in the wild without toxic effects. Water quality is improved. Farmers can make a living. Everyone seems to benefit. And then they are a marvelous food.

The oyster’s significance can’t be overestimated. And its historical value is documented across cultures.

Not everyone will love eating them. But for those of us that do, the reward is ours.

This is the season for wild greens. I’ve not been out foraging as much as prior years: puppy, turkey hunting, fishing. That’s my short list of excuses. For the time I’ve put in, I’ve been rewarded.

I have made some salads of ferns, trout lilies and dandelions, but found no drive to make internet-quality picts. So you’ll have to take my word for it. Also used up my pickled ostrich ferns from last year and lacto-daikon radishes with shallots.

I’m going to take the gallon-ish of ostrich ferns from this year’s foraging and lacto-ferment them. I’m pretty over them as a “fresh vegetable.” Call me a heretic, they’re ok, but not worthy of too much doting.

Bracken ferns, which are coming now and freak the shit out of Americans due to the presence of a water-soluble carcinogen, are far better to eat and I don’t fear them. See the rest of the world whom also do not fear them.

Each year around this time, I have a bit of a love affair with iceberg. The point of iceberg is visual and textural. Fuck the nourishment factors. It’s crunchy-good, lasts for a good while and helps with hydration. It might have a bit of flavor even, but that’s not the point.

You definitely want to avoid my lecturing you: “…about the lost nourishment in plasto-packed arugula, spinach and mixed salad greens with the fancy marketing labels that was picked two weeks ago in the lands that are draining the Colorado river every winter so northerners can have their salads in winter and spring.” But you know that’s true, right?

The wedge is a divine invention. Wedge of iceberg, vinaigrette, blue cheese, bacon bits, walnuts. Genius. I make the wedge about 4 times every year in April and May. This salad just makes me happy. Credit Marion Harris Neil who first included the recipe in print in her cookbook “Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing Dish Recipes” in 1916. And oldie but goodie for sure.

I suffer from Freezer Tyranny. wrote a whole, excellent post about it.

To The Bone

Freezer Tyranny

I hate my full freezer. It belongs to a life I no longer live…

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4 months ago · 72 likes · 63 comments · Hank Shaw

My family is one man, 62, and two dogs, 6 years and 4 months. I have 3 freezers. I hunt, I fish, I forage. And I’m better at getting people to give me wild food than I should be, LOL. Just last weekend, my buddy Jerry gave me all of his 21lb turkey except for the breasts. There is no waste really when he breasts-out and I get the rest. “I’ve alway been more of a leg man than a breast guy…” I say. We both laugh.

“Projects” and plans accumulate in those freezers and sometimes start to haunt me.

When came to visit for a turkey hunt, I discovered that the power strip [bad idea to have in the power chain for a chest freezer when you have a puppy] had been switched off when I tried to run the vacuum to tidy up a bit. I am fortunate that it had only been a day or two and the top was at 45F and bottom still frozen. Welp, a bunch of those projects got pushed to now. And, Lou got to take home a bunch of wild food that was thawed and seems to be working through it back at home and making some great food!

So, I found 4 ruffed grouse in the freezers and decided to cook one up, this time bypassing plucking and just breaking her down, seasoning and basically shake-and-bake frying her over some broccoli rabe and corn. Good project:

I noticed for the second or third time, that grouse legs have a unique “grousy” flavor and the breasts are more like the gallus gallus taste little kids and most Americans prefer. The liver is divine and I agree with that it’s the best tasting liver, though a naturally fatty wild duck liver is right up there. More research is needed on this topic.

wrote an entire cookbook, Borderlands, that moved me to start making and stop buying tortillas. He says, get a press, get some good corn masa and Sonoran flour and make your own. I took the bait. Now armed with a Masienda press and their corn masas, together with excellent flours from Hayden Flour Mills, I’ve stepped into the world of homemade tortillas. The dough, especially the corn, is a snap. I’ve been making the flour tortillas with local black bear lard. It’s basically free for the asking here in Maine and the only real cost is the time it takes to render it. And clean up. Make sure to do this outside, lest your kitchen and home will smell like lard for about a month, LOL.

Another “casualty” of the freezer thaw was my last Vermont channel catfish. My old Burlington neighbor gave me 3 big channel cats after the Lake Champlain International Fishing Derby a few years back. I filleted it. Then vacuum packaged a bunch. Gravity took it deep in the freezer. After the thaw, I found a package of it and gave it a go. Channel cats are mild, firm, white fleshed fish [when trimmed correctly.] People routinely put catfish in the “trash fish” bucket. Their loss, our gain. So good.

I fried up a couple of pieces. Even after ~3 years in vacuum freezer world, this fish did not disappoint. Floured and fried in black bear lard [there’s a theme here, eh?]

I was frankly disappointed that my notes about these dishes didn’t get much interest. Was that the algorithm? Or do they not look good? Or do people really just not give catfish the love? Asking for a friend…

I had 3 ducks in feather at the bottom of the freezer, I sent 2 home with who reported back with tasty reports that both he and his partner loved the duck. Their first experience with wild duck, I believe. Correct me if I’m wrong, Lou. I roasted the breast from the one I kept on the fire pit today, while also en-foile poaching the the thawed Sebago Lake Salmon in butter with sea salt. I made a black sesame vinaigrette for the salmon. Excellent combo. Note to self: do that again!

I’m going to blanch and then ferment my last harvest of ostrich ferns. I’m just not as crazy for them as I used to be. Maybe I’ve transitioned to another “stage” in my foraging journey. I haven’t even cooked any fresh this season, despite 3 or 4 harvests. I’ve fallen in love with lady and bracken ferns [see salad above.]

That’s it for food stuff for now. More soon.

Fishing

I’ve been out in my favorite little stream. It doesn’t hold large trout. But it does have a wild spawned population of brook trout and landlocked salmon. I’ve caught both over the last few years and I find great pleasure in working the eddies, pools and pocket water.

So much has been written about fishing small streams. I approve. Despite years of foolish back casts, branch and shrub hangups and fiddly 3wt line and 5x tippett, I’m starting to like it a lot. A whole lot.

Taking Kato along to the stream has been great. Like his dad, he doesn’t run off. He does get cold, but he just heads, reliably, back to my truck and keeps himself busy away from the water. Since this stream is accessed by a one-way dirt road, it’s super safe for free range pups.

I’ve landed a few wild spawn fish so far. Water has been average to a bit high, but maybe a bit low for this time of year. We continue to be way behind on rainfall here in W. Maine. I saw a report that we need 12” of rain to catch up. I’d love to see us catch up, but not sure what that would be like. I’m hoping we get rain in the summer months. Last year it really didn’t rain after June and this stream all but disappeared, along with the fish.

That drought put paid to the mushroom foraging season last year too. Non-season I should call it.

While I still have a turkey tag for Maine and 2 for Vermont, I’m ready to move on to fishing. I like turkey hunting, but the black flies arrived and ticks are rampant. Top of mind, the dogs can come fishing. No pups for spring turkey hunting.

There is a bearded hen out there. She comes out late, sometimes after 7:30 and browses the hay field. Her beard is at least 6”. This morning, there’s a Jake, seemingly disinterested in everything. He spent a 1/2 hour doing nothing, not even browsing. Just standing there. I’ve been out here and there and all I hear is white-throats, crows and song sparrows.

I’ve got two cool fishing outings coming up. Next Thursday, I’ll be in Vermont for a walleye charter, followed by a night of bow hunting. Can’t wait. Walleye fishing in Lake Champlain is a crap shoot and few captains run charters for them. I was really looking for a captain to go out bow fishing with and found a captain who does both. On the same day if a sport [me] wants to do it.

For the last 4 outings of bow fishing we had a captain we liked. But something happened over the last year or so and he’s not running trips anymore. So, that’s how I found the new captain. I hope it all works out. If nothing else I get my old VT fishing crew together and we get bugs in our eyes. Woot!

Then in June, I’m going out with 3 friends on the Rita B off the coast of Maine to saltwater fish for pollock, haddock and cod. It’ll actually be the first time I’ve personally wet a line in salt water. Can't wait. Thanks to who wrote an enticing post last year about her trip to Platt’s Bank on the Rita B.

Appetites

Platts Bank

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a year ago · 13 likes · 9 comments · Jenna Rozelle

I hope to do more fly fishing this season. My mind has been on it since last fall. Somehow I can’t seem to get myself to tie flies in winter. I’ve been tying for a few years, but just haven’t found the desire to sit down and do it. My bad. Because the season is here and I have what I had at the end of last season. Waaah.

Not to worry, I’ve got a good supply and tied a fair bit in the summer when it stopped raining and the fish went on vacation.

Dogs

I put the recurve down so Lou could hang up his compound bow while he was visiting. I made the mistake of not putting it back on the hook when he left. In 15 minutes unattended, the puppy “ate” the otter fur silencers off the string and proceeded to cut enough strands to force me to retire the string. It was probably getting near time to replace it anyway [lies I tell my self.]

Kato’s sister Willow lives with my good friends Jerry and Kathy. It’s really fun to get all the pups together. Kato and Willow go at it the whole time playing. Nothing better than tired pups!

I’ll leave you with this photo of Kato, a.k.a. Handsome Boy

Thanks for reading. Obviously this wasn’t a coherent post with any particular theme, but it did help me to get to writing and thinking again after almost 2 months without a post. Know that things are brewing here in W. Maine and I’ll be sure to write about the adventures coming up.

I hope you have enjoyed this Ploughman’s Lunch.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

In the late 80’s I worked for a restaurant in Boston called Fynn’s. Today, it’s skeleton remains as the Capitol Grill on Boylston Street. Sadly now it’s without the fancy salt-water fish tank, the Toulouse-Lautrec behind the bar, the terraced dining room and a lot of the brass that was in the formerly terraced main dining room. There was an extensive collection of Guy Buffet as well and other contemporary and classic art. It was rumored to have cost 5 times what it cost to build a Hard Rock Cafe.

It was to be the first in a series of upscale restaurants owned by Hard Rock Cafe. The series never happened but for a while it was a hot spot, with reservations hard to come by. I worked there for about a year before moving on to further culinary adventures as I sought more and more greener grass.

We had stars, politicians, rockers, models: Richard Gere, Ted Kennedy Jr and his priests, Ric Ocasek and Paulina with their kids. It was quite a scene. The restaurant was shiny, the food shiny and the people were shiny. The executive chef was Beany Macgregor, a southerner who developed a timely, flavorful and urban menu—perfect for the era.

His signature desert was White Chocolate Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce topped with White Chocolate Ice Cream. It was incredible. The pudding and sauce were hot, the ice cream melted over the top into the moat of hard sauce around the bowl. It was excellence in both concept and execution. Better yet, we made it from the leftover dinner bread [shhh.] Even people who didn’t want desert could be coerced to order “one for the table.” It often resulted in an additional bowl or two.

Greener Grass

I moved downtown from back bay and took a job as a server at Cornucopia on West Street. More nouveau, designed and owned by architects, and with brothers Ross and Stuart Cameron as Executive Chef and Chef-de-Cuisine, we had great food, little to no yelling, nor humiliation of waitstaff. Those were good times. Though the money wasn't near what I made in the dining room, after a couple of seasons on the floor, I started to work one night a week doing desserts. Why? I can’t remember really, but I know I loved to swirl a pair of sauce anglaises under a dessert and the chefs liked my plates. They were cool and I wanted to be cool too.

At some point while working desserts, I brought up the Fynn’s bread pudding. We were serving bread at Cornucopia that was going to waste [still a thing in the early 90’s.] Stuart wanted to try it. I had never made it at Fynn’s, I was just a waiter there. But I’d seen it done. Stuart told me to wing it. So I did. We swapped out the bourbon for a more WASPy brandy/rum sauce and we used Vanilla Ice cream that we were already making vs the white chocolate ice cream at Fynn’s [too much work.]

My initial stab at it was a big hit: owners, cooks and servers all loved it. Stuart tweaked it a bit and came up with the clever idea to separate the eggs and add a meringue. We made the custard for the overnight soak of the bread with just the yolks. In the morning we’d make a meringue from the whites, fold it in to the soaked bread and go immediately to bake. It makes the outstanding pudding more cake-like and springy.

On to the menu it went. It sold well and made me barely-famous. At least in the kitchen and with the servers. I carefully guarded the restaurant scaled batch recipe that Stuart gave me when I left the restaurant [more greener pastures] and managed to hold on to it.

I’d been telling myself for 35 years to scale it down to a home-sized batch and make it for some friends. I finally did it over the last couple of weeks for last Sunday’s Wild and Local Potluck. The potluck was a hit and the dessert was a stunner. Many compliments and “I wish I hadn’t eaten so much so I could have some more pudding” comments were heard.

So here you go:

Ingredients

Custard and Meringue

• 15 dinner rolls or 2 7” round loaves - I used rye for my recent potluck

• 500 g whole milk

• 650 g heavy cream

• 500 g white chocolate

• 350 g cane sugar

• 25 g table molasses

• 10 g vanilla [2t]

• 4 large eggs, divided

Cognac Rum Hard Sauce

• 240 g cane sugar

• 225 g butter, salted

• 112 g cognac

• 55 g dark rum

• 2 eggs beaten

Plating

• Vanilla Ice Cream or White Chocolate Ice Cream [you’ll have to make it, no one sells it]

• Shaved white chocolate

Method

Custard and Meringue

1. Cut the bread into rough but even pieces. I like about 3/4” cubes.

2. In double boiler, melt white chocolate.

3. Fold in cream and milk, set at aside at room temperature when incorporated

4. Separately, cream the sugar and eggs until the mixture ribbons well

5. Add vanilla and fold in

6. Stir the two mixtures together until well combined

7. Pour over bread and cover. Refrigerate overnight. Re-mix once or twice if you can, liquid can pool at the bottom before it’s fully absorbed.

8. Pre-heat oven to 375F. Butter your baking container[s]. I used buttered bread pans and later cut the pudding after refrigerating and re-heated to serve. You can also bake in soufflé dishes, ramekins or 9 x 13. You will want to adjust bake times depending on your baking dish.

9. In the AM, whip the egg whites to barely stiff peaks—you can use a bit of confectioners sugar as you whip to assist in forming the meringue.

   

10. Fold in to soaked break mixture.

11. Portion immediately and bake off until browned and set. For my bread pan bake, this was about 45 minutes.

12. Cool, cover and refrigerate.

Cognac Rum Hard Sauce

1. Heat the cooled and portioned bread pudding in the oven [or microwave, it works] You don’t want to make the sauce until your pudding is hot or heating up, it doesn’t keep well unless monitored and stirred continuously.

2. Beat the eggs until smooth, set aside

3. Over a double boiler, cream sugar and butter until melted

4. Add the spirits and bring to a boil. It really does boil easily in the double boiler…your mostly boiling the alcohol.

5. Boil 2 minutes

6. Temper the eggs by adding a bit of the spirit, butter and sugar mixture while whipping

7. While whipping, pour the tempered eggs back into the remaining heated liquor mixture never letting it sit. After a few minutes it will be relatively stable.

Plating

1. Put the hot pudding in the center of deep, wide bowl. You want a “moat” of sauce around the pudding.

2. Pour a generous moat of sauce over and around the pudding.

3. Quickly scoop your ice cream and place it on top of the hot pudding. It should start to melt into the moat.

4. Top with shaved white chocolate and serve. Do not let it sit, the ice cream will slide into the moat and the sky will fall, your partner will leave you and of course your presentation is ruined.

5. Enjoy the ridiculousness of this crazy dessert.

This is an intermediate level dessert and it’s hard to get the amount of bread to custard/meringue ratio exact because bread varies in density and absorbency. Know that the result will taste fantastic whether the pudding is custardy, falling apart or perfect.

Good luck and enjoy this fantastic adaptation of Beany Macgregor’s Whiskey Bread Pudding.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

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I will not add to the pile-on. My thinking is responsibility is shared and that like so many incendiary “news” events, the truth is nowhere to be read. I know that when I was getting a dress-down in my gardemanger days, I owned responsibility for sub-standard drug and alcohol related work. And I repeated those mistakes more than once. Did I deserve the treatment I received? Endless debate cycles wouldn’t get us closer to an altruistic resolution. I learned things; the boss might have learned things.

Sometimes it takes other writers’ words to nudge me to get some thoughts together.

In ’s newsletter today, her refreshing viewpoint asks, why does one high-tone restaurant, NOMA, make news all over the world—headline level news? At the same time, there are billions of people working in the world’s food systems, millions of whom are likely more exploited, more abused and less seen than interns at NOMA.

re-stacked his prescient article about this topic today that is well worth a read. He describes how grenade-headed chefs can set the tone for everything about an intern’s experience and yet how other chefs can run Michelin-starred kitchens without having to yell.

I’ve seen first hand how a level-headed chef can run a great kitchen a few times in my career, though admittedly this was after I crossed over from the kitchen to the dining room. So my memories are only as good as I could see from the other side of the pass. That said, if things were bad, the pass was usually no filter for any abuse or intimidation that might have gone on. I cannot un-see or un-hear the horrific things that happened.

Here’s my point:

I believe people willingly are drawn to incendiary viral “news” like the NOMA LA/Redzepi situation because they don’t have to discount their own involvement or guilt. How many people got a reservation at $1,500/seat for the LA pop-up? I read they sold out in 10 minutes. But the vast majority of people caught up in the story aren’t holding the magic ticket. The outrage machine is easy to hop on when you’re not playing in the sandbox.

It’s easy to target exploitation and harassment in the production of luxuries. People have piled-on this story because they think they deserve to have a hot take on it, though they won’t eat at NOMA and they will never work as a stage, commis, chef-de-partie or plongeur.

In contrast, the thousands or millions of workers exploited, injured or killed in meat packing, vegetable growing and distribution, grain farming etc,…don’t often make front page news even when the scale of the impact is magnitudes greater and worse than at NOMA.

Why?

Because most people who depend on modern food systems are culpable and have some responsibility for supporting and perpetuating the status quo. I love to hate on cheap chicken, in part because I know about the supply chain and its horrors. I’ve seen some things and I can’t un-see them. So it’s pretty easy for me to be anti-big-chicken. The majority of people however, choose to discount these issues in part because they are dependent on “affordable chicken” and these exploitive food systems. They often have no choice.

If you are reading this on your phone, tablet or laptop, you are tied to the systems of exploitation that produce copper, nickel, cobalt and the entire line-up of rare-earth metals. There aren’t any organic, fair-trade, healthy versions of these resources. Every new upgraded product means more of these metals in the dump. Remember, only one metal maybe two at best, are captured in recycling electronics, the rest become waste—often toxic waste. Look at some photos of the conditions of workers in metals recycling. Why isn’t their exploitation front-page news?

I don’t condone the brigade system in the kitchen. But, it’s also not hard to understand how it evolved. Escoffier was military and built his large-hotel kitchen brigade to produce world-class, consistent food from a very large and diverse workforce. At the time, there was little if any culture of aspiring young chefs ready to stage and intern. There was a poor, diverse pre-WWII pool of workers, who were to be expected to produce refined food at a large scale. The brigade system produced workers who could produce as expected, under pressure. Within a given role, the workers were easily interchangeable. The similarity to a military fighting force is obvious.

Now a century later this seems brutal, oppressive and exploitive. Yet, none of us reading this fought in a World War. We mostly know the ease and bountiful world of post-WWII ammonia-based fertilizer raised crops, factory meat and flavored potato chips. So many things today are done by machines replacing spirit-breaking work by people, that we’ve long forgotten why things were the way they were.

The production of food in fine dining is one place where the machines have yet to replace the suffering of women and men. Is our inability to grasp this is why we are so offended by unpaid interns at NOMA working 80 hours a week?

I offer this: Look inward and ask yourself what exploitation you support through your use of energy, water, food, shelter. What resources are you depending on that offer lower impact supply chains? Take an honest look at where your money is going. Can you afford to make changes to your consumption to reduce exploitation and harassment? How many times do you plan to eat at NOMA this year? Next year? Does it make sense to burn energy being upset about high end chef’s who are [admittedly] abusing, harassing, exploitive pricks?

Organize a potluck.

Volunteer as at a public garden. Better yet become a Master Gardener.

Teach a cooking class.

Join a food coop.

Grow some tomatoes.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

Convenience, check.

Easy to eat, check.

Available everywhere, check.

But are they actually good? I mean, do they taste great? What are they made from? What are the best ways to make them? What are the key factors that make up a great breakfast sandwich [BS]? Can we just throw anything in there and have it come out good?

I’m not sure about the answers. I’ve made a lot of DIY breakfasts sandwiches [BS] in my time and I have a pretty good idea of what I like and why. But I’m interested in what you think. Let’s just jump right in.

Architecture

In today’s post, we look at the architecture and common elements of a BS. You only need have a look at google images for “breakfast sandwich” to see the incredible array of variations out there. I even saw one with an egg on the top [funny] and another on the inside. I wasn’t sure how you’d eat it. It still looked interesting. Go figure.

I’m assuming for this discussion, a container [bun, biscuit, muffin, bagel etc,…] with a top and bottom piece. There are open face variations and wraps [burritos.] I’ve also made BS in a hot dog style bun. The element analysis mostly works regardless of the container and is based on a two-piece version with a top and a bottom.

Let’s jump right in.

Here is a basic BS schematic:

For discussion purposes, broadly we’ll define the elements:

1. Container

2. Condiments

3. Hash brown

4. Cheese

5. Meat

6. Egg

#1 Container

Some people, as an example, love to eat directly from hand to mouth. The BS for the most part is a direct, hand-to-mouth meal. The container is the vessel of transmission. It is key to the easy-to-eat aspect of the BS.

Requirements for the container IMO:

1. Structure. If the container falls apart while eating, mess is imminent. Things fall apart. Swearing, missed expectations, crying. Silverware might be needed or parts of the BS discarded. The container can’t be too brittle. It needs to hold together to the last bite. Traditional brioche is not good for this. Heaven forbid you’d use a real croissant, which if good quality, should shatter and explode crumbs all over and collapse. Unnamed fast food chain “croissants” aren’t croissants, they’re baking war crimes. The container must also be able to absorb but not decompose in the presence of condiments: ketchup, mayo?, bbq sauce, etc,…

2. Firmness. Depending what’s in the sandwich, the density, crust if any and overall firmness matter. I like to use a bagel, which when toasted, resists bite-through in such a way as to cause side-eject of sliced avocado, tomatoes, kraut, kim-chi and many other ingredients that are not laterally bound. Side-eject is a total failure in architecture IMO. If you want to use sliced avocado that’s not rock hard, you’ll need a very soft container that won’t side-eject as you bite-through. I’ve mostly abandoned avocado to the side, unless the container-du-jour is a tortilla. I also will use my custom well-structured potato brioche buns that are engineered to pass the structure test in #1.

3. Flavor. Probably the most underrated aspect of the BS container. Those made-at-3-am gas station BS with the microwaved eggs on soggy, flavorless english muffins that have been sitting-in-the-pizza-warmer-for-4-hours have trained us to accept limp, flavorless and semolina-grit covered containers. A sad state of affairs indeed. With the exception of a sandwich with a focaccia container I had in Vegas at the Wynn [$27] I rarely find any notable flavor in the container of convenience or restaurant BS. Other low points:

   1. Crappy flour tortillas in breakfast burritos [I consider it a sandwich]

   2. Those gawd-awful “croissant” things

   3. Flavorless biscuits that barely resemble actual biscuits [because they would fail #1 and #2 if they were actually really good flaky biscuits]

   4. Weak burger buns a la McDonalds. No taste except maybe the sesame seeds if present

   5. Sub rolls: flaccid enriched bleached flour flab

   6. Hash browns as a bun. This container can work, but usually will fail #1. Why not just put it inside, where it can be sublime and its unstable structure won’t end in a collapse?

Recommended options:

1. Good toast! Not offered in commercial outlets often, but can be great

   

2. Good english muffins. Also, not wrapped in placed in pizza warmer

3. Holland rusks

4. Good bagels, especially my DIY rye/caraway and DIY pumpernickel

5. My DIY buckwheat potato buns

6. My famous DIY sesame seed brioche buns [see below]

7. Good quality flour tortillas [I make them at home now, so good!]

8. Pita or naan

9. Grilled cheese on good bread. I don’t know why this isn’t more popular except maybe that it adds prep time

   

10. [not tested] French Toast

    ---

#2 Condiments

For whatever reason, I usually go without or maybe with a bit of good butter. I do occasionally add ketchup, especially when a hash brown is involved. [See #3 below.] From an architecture standpoint the moisture and side-ejectability of condiments need evaluation. Structural integrity is a must, so the planned use of condiments should be considered in the container, stack order and overall build.

I’m not against condiments on a BS and I’m honestly not sure what people are doing here. Please help me understand how you use condiments with your BS. Use the comments if you’re answer isn’t available.

Another thought: are additions like sauerkraut, kimchi and pickles condiments or what? And what about veggies and fruits [tomatoes]?

Nomenclature aside, I tend to put “liquid” condiments on the container. Tomatoes, kimchi, avocado etc,…if I dare put them inside, go above the hash brown or cheese. Architectural challenge: fermented or not, veggies are notorious for the dreaded side-ejection fail or side-eject for short:

I hate to waste avocado—I feel it’s a conflicted, delicious, luxury food. As a result, I’m always pushing myself to eat the avocado runs and turds that result from side-eject. I think: “What did that avocado turd just land in on my desk? Can I eat that?” and “Shit, the avocado runs got all over my white t-shirt that I just got today!”

Guacamole might be slightly safer, so long as it’s spread thin!

Side-eject is a serious issue with runny yolks too. And ripe [real] tomatoes. Kimchi shrapnel stains bad.

#3 Hash Brown

I first came across this tasty layer when I lived in VT. The local after-bar sandwich shop “Kountry Kart Deli” had various BS with names like “early riser” and “eye opener”… most of which came with hash brown layer. Though I’m not always in the mood for a carboverload first thing or late night, I eventually gave it a try and I liked it.

I’ve gone on to fabricating my own. I did try the ones in the frozen food section of the market: weirdly cheap potato things with like 20 ingredients when there should be 5 or less, and frankly grossly greasy and salty. I moved on quickly to DIY latkes and hash brown patties. Easy. Full ingredient and quality control. I make them on 1/2 sheet pans, baked and then cut with a pizza cutter. Then I freeze them; they’re ready to be browned right from the freezer bag when I’m so inclined.

Architecture: I like the hash brown above the cheese and below the top of the container. Not sure why. Open to ideas about stack order. Thoughts? How do you feel about the hash brown?

#4 Cheese

I want cheese on my sandwich. Below the hash brown if present. Always above the egg. I usually put meat over egg. Or I think I do. Now, having second thoughts….So, hash brown over cheese over meat.

For cheese I usually want some kind of alpine style cheese: fake swiss, real swiss, gruyère, comté if I can. Second tier would be chedduh. I usually have wicked shawp Maine chedduh around the kitchen which can overpower an egg. That said, I use it anyway. On rare occasions, cream cheese if I’m trying to use some up. Also, asiago.

Unless there are no other options, no American cheese [product] for this guy. There’s something sketchy about it. It’s almost melted at room temp, but when hot and melted, it’s still not completely runny. What’s in that shit anyway? So—I pass on that. Except when starving on long drives and that’s what’s on the ugly BS at the gas station.

As I mentioned, I do have a BS without cheese on occasion. It’s usually because I’m just not up for the wicked-shawp chedduh. Or I just don’t have any appropriate cheese.

#4 Meat

Probably the most variety of taste is in play with meat on a BS and lots of options will work well. I go for meat about half the time, with just egg and cheese otherwise. Sometimes I just don’t want all the protein and flavor of the meat layer. Sometimes I don’t have anything thawed out to work with.

Good choices, assuming decent quality:

1. Bacon, DIY local if you have it. Otherwise the best you can afford.

2. Ham. I like black forest, but many kinds work.

3. Sausage. I love sausage on a BS when I’ve made it, know who made and how, or when the reputation of a place is really good. Otherwise I’ll go with bacon or ham.

4. Fried baloney. Emily uses a lot of fried baloney in this pretty funny Video on 4 levels of BSes by Epicurious. Recommended!

5. Smoked meat/pastrami. Don’t knock it until you try it. I prefer my own DIY, especially my DIY hog shoulder smoked meat!

Despite people calling me out, I have not added fried SPAM to a BS. Let me know how that is if you know, OK?

#5 Egg

It goes without saying, though I’m saying it, that there are good eggs and there are bad eggs. And there are not-so-good eggs. If you are making your own breakfast sandwich, use good farm eggs. The fresher the better. Duck eggs also are an excellent choice.

Avoid any eggs that come from chickens on a “vegetarian diet.” It shocks me to see this used as a “benefit.” Anyone who has ever raised layers knows they are not “vegetarians” and will go out of their way to eat meat, fish, insects. No veggie fed eggs puleez.

I like over-medium. Some like scrambled, some sunny side up [too runny], over easy [too runny], basted [takes too long, but SOOOO good] and lastly microwaved [ugh.] I remember going to a local bagel shop in VT and was horrified to see them crack fresh eggs into a small dish and zap it, slap it and wrap it. Just no. But yeah. It’s a thing.

How do you like your egg?

The Convenience Summary

Edibility.

The genesis of the BS as convenience food for factory workers was synergistic: street vendors make them fast, hearty, affordable. Workers can eat them on the fly, on the way to work and with one hand.

These factors have to come together since the middle of the 19th century for the BS to work. And the growth and ubiquity of the BS has progressed since. They are satisfying, functional, affordable [except in Las Vegas.] Who knows where they will go in the future, right?

I’ve been surprised how satisfying an absolutely soggy, stale, stuck to the wrapper BS can hit the spot when I’ve been on the road, with a lot more road ahead and I’m starving. I gulp the thing down and it hits the spot. I’m remorseful, sure, but I feel better. My concentration on the drive improves. The road BS abides. Sigh.

But when more time is available, a rewarding BS can be had. Usually that’s from scratch, but there are known commercial outlets with fulfilling BS. You just have to know where to go. IYKYK.

The Polls

So, I hope you don’t mind the polls and maybe filled them out. Hopefully I’ll learn from the surveys a bit more about how y’all like to make and eat your BS. In asking friends I find that favorites are very personal and pretty varied. Hot sauce for example, not too many people like it either way. It’s “hell yeah” or “no way.” Bacon v sausage is street fight. Big swings get taken in defense of favorites. I do find some people who go both ways. I mean I do. Cheese, all over the map. The most variation is probably in the container:

“Breakfast burritos rule!”

“Egg McMuffins!” — ugly but true

“Croissant”

“Everything Bagel”

I’m not taking sides. I like a variety, but please no non-biscuit “biscuits” or bread-like unflakey “croissants.” That stuff is bear poo. Seriously.

In the end, I find people choose more about where and when than what. Convenience is [sadly] the biggest driver of choice. Of course, my usual take is that I avoid convenience for local and wild and food I can tell the real story of. But in fairness, I have time that most don’t.

Enjoy your BS, however you like it and wherever you get it…although if the where is McDonald’s you are damned to all eternity to be surrounded by vipers and dragons and Coldplay singing death-metal covers.

I’ll be ranting again about the BS [breakfast sandwich] again in the future for sure.

Thanks again.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

I’m trying to escape my winter delirium. Hypocritical and nonsensical literature exuding.

Incoming—>

Should you trigger my irascible side—consider yourself warned! The beast’s head will rear up in a dervish of rage shooting flames and smoke with frightening fury. A cacophony of caustic words will reign down on your ears and impale your soul.“

“Though shalt eat that!!!”

“You are guilty of believing the hype!!!”

“All food marketers are liars and should be burned at the stake!!!”

“Eat only as I say or feel my wrath!!!”

“Macros are for Excel, not for eating!!!”

My Foodway

Truth be told, it’s been a long time since I argued with anyone about what to eat. Or told them how they should eat. Sometimes I really want to, but I’m neither a food evangelist nor a diet advisor. I mean, no matter how compelling an argument may be, it’s rare that anyone can be convinced to change the way they think about food or what they eat.

Change my mind? Nope.

I believe everyone should to be comfortable in their own foodway. Peoples’ priorities vary a lot. What works for me probably won’t work for you.

I am fortunate that I don’t hear food noise. What I’ve read and heard over the years has rarely caused me to rethink my diet. Though I have always eaten “everything,” I’ve modified my “diet” a couple of times for short periods, returning to my inclusive foodway quickly. And that foodway is diverse: plants, fungi, some insects now and then [intentional and unintentional,] marine life, poultry and game birds, livestock and wild game. Variety and quality.

WTF Does Healthy Mean?

The mere fact that foods, food products or diet guidelines have marketing and/or social media advocates nearly guarantees that I’ll ignore them. I cringe when I see descriptions of food that include “healthy.” You won’t succeed in convincing me to buy “healthy, high-protein, low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free” pancake mix in a box that you “only need to add oat milk to.” No fucking chance.

Here on Substack I avoid a lot of food and diet articles and notes:

“Healthy skinless chicken breast stir fry with kale and cauliflower rice.”

Just, no.

“How I’m getting more protein from pulses into my mostly keto diet.”

Non starter.

I’m interested in the getting, the growing, the prepping, the cooking and the eating. Also, preserving. I don’t think about or want to read about how “healthy” a food is. What does that mean? And who exactly is in charge of defining what that means? At best it’s a relative term. If we look back over the last 40 or 50 years, it’s meaning has changed repeatedly. Often with a 180 degree change of view. Meh.

Disclaimer: I could probably tolerate “healthier than xxx” as long as the writer or speaker qualifies clearly and specifically. Maybe.

If you’re on a desert island and starving to death…is a pint of Haagen-Dazs healthy? Hell yes it is!!! And in the same situation: Velveeta and Doritos? Yup.

‘Nuff said.

Diet Labels

I despise our language of diet. Exclusionary thinking and language create division and tension I think we can and should live without. “I’m a v_____, I don’t eat any m____ or any f____ or any d____. I’m doing my part to make the world better by reducing my ______.” Those kinds of declarations are self-serving; mostly virtue signaling without any actual virtue. And that kind of food noise, both internal and external, probably stresses our digestive systems and brains enough to negatively offset any [perceived] benefit those restrictions provide.

For the listener or reader they force a judgment:

Are you with me? or are you one of them?

I’m making every effort not to use foodway terms like that which normalize restricted and/or exclusionary diets. They create divisiveness in food discourse and conversation that is doing none of us any good. I don’t care that they are well established in our food lexicons.

You are welcome to use those words and that language. And you are welcome to eat within those foodways for yourself and your family. I’m going to stick with inclusionary language. And my inclusionary diet. Even if you feel that your restricted diet is good for you or your family, in conversation and in writing it’s still exclusionary language that has a negative impact socially by creating division.

Think about it. I’m not the first to write about it.

Exclusion:

• I am different than you because I don’t eat x

• I am better than you because I don’t eat y

• You shouldn’t eat x

• You are more guilty than me because you eat y that has impact z on the world

• Eating less or no x is the most impactful dietary change you can make to reduce impact z

Inclusion:

• Salad of beets, walnuts, pickled milkweed, avocado, vinaigrette

• Salad of buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, olive oil

• Salad of anchovies, smoked mussels, apples, bittercress, lemon

• I like to eat a variety of foods

• I eat plants and fungi

• I eat anything edible, at least once anyway

I like the precision and judgement-free approach to just list the ingredients. I like to hear what people eat. I prefer not to hear lists of what people don’t eat, unless they address allergies—a rare good reason to talk and write about exclusions.

My Mantra

I believe: if it’s a whole food, doesn’t come with an FDA label and has been eaten by humans for a long time—it’s a safe nourishment and can have a place in my diet. How much of it and how to eat it are the only questions that need consideration. If it has fancy packaging with marketing speak and an FDA label, most of the time I don’t want to eat it. It’s a food product more than it is a food.

I’ve never really changed how I view what to eat. I did try a few things in my 20s: I didn’t eat any meat or fish for a few months in the late 80’s. But after that underwhelming experiment, I’ve eaten as broad a spectrum of food as possible. I’m naturally curious. If other people eat it, I’ll try it. If I like it and it makes sense in my regional foodway, I’ll keep eating it.

Diversity in food keeps things interesting and frankly, homo sapiens are very well adapted to eat a complex and varied diet that changes throughout the year.

I like to say that everything safe to eat is fair game—at least once. There are only a few things I’ve tried that I don’t want to try again. Many foods took me a long time to appreciate and enjoy, like sauerkraut and lacto-fermented foods. Some others I tolerate and eat occasionally, but don’t adore: BBQ, hot food, wings. A few things I really enjoy and appreciate make most people squirm like liver, sweetbreads and gizzards.

I like it this way.

I’m fortunate. My only dependent is a dog. I was successful in business. I can afford to eat seasonal foods that are more expensive than the lowest price version. I don’t have any picky eaters to deal with. The dog eats raw and Dr. Tims. He doesn’t complain.

I support local farmers whenever possible and regional when necessary. I harvest wild plants, fungi, fish and animals. I process everything myself when possible. I can, dry, freeze, pickle, cure, smoke and cook. I try to control or know the entire journey of my food from flourishing through death and into nourishment. I believe this is the way.

I don’t have any “I don’t eat” foods to speak of. There are a number of foods though I avoid as much as possible, but I really don’t have absolutes. If I’ve been hiking all day and didn’t bring enough food, I just might eat a Twinkie. Probably not, but maybe. I have done it.

Once every year or so, I make marshmallows and graham crackers from scratch. A bit messy, sure. But then I can have DIY s’mores:

Now My Hypocritical Exclusions

Despite my ranting about inclusive food language, here are some of those foods I prefer to exclude with a focus on: why.

Chicken

By now, if you’ve been reading along with me, you know that I don’t eat much chicken. In 2025 I cooked 2 whole chickens-with-a-life and I had 2 fried chicken sandwiches of unknown provenance while traveling. That’s it.

[Ed.] I have already eaten two slow-growing pastured chickens, Freedom Rangers, this year. So I’m a bit ahead of my normal pace. I have a local farmer who I like to support. She and her family raise superb pastured chickens. [Hipocrisy example #1.]

Why not eat more chicken?

1. I mostly avoid convenience chicken. Gas stations, McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell. Earlier in my life I ate in those places too often. While still convenient, they no longer offer notable affordability. And while in the moment they cause your senses to trigger endorphins, we all know the hidden horrors.

2. Unless I can get real pastured chicken, ideally that lived 3 months or more, I say no. To find one, you usually have to know the farmer on a first name basis and ask a lot of questions. Not quite Portlandia, but in the same spirit.

3. The modern broiler chicken lives 5-7 weeks before slaughter, also known as self-destruct. While a marvel of goal-oriented poultry breeding in some ways, I see this as a convenience, profitability and short-term low price accomplishment. Know that commercial broiler chickens consume a lot of GMO corn and soy. The majority of it in fact in the US.1

4. I avoid tech-processing when possible. If you have ever plucked a bird and prepared it by hand for eating, you understand how much work is being done on your behalf with supermarket poultry. Your cheap chicken is the best example of this. Fancy machinery stuns, kills, scalds, plucks, eviscerates, cools and shrink wraps your bird—all in a matter of minutes, possibly even seconds. At my best, I can take one pheasant [a good down-less proxy for a chicken] from freshly killed to ready to cook in about an hour. There are more skilled people who can do all that by hand in 20-30 minutes. Breasting out is not an option—pluck, eviscerate, burn pin feathers are to be done by hand. [warning graphic] Watch this video which has been used as a training video within the USDA, hosted on an anti-meat physicians group site.

5. Factory chicken is gross when alive. If you’ve been [un]lucky enough to see broiler chickens being raised, you know they are bred to have barely sufficient feathers for survival in good [or controlled indoor] conditions. They’re a motley crew; so hungry they are mean and fight over food. This makes them easier to pluck, since no consumers except homesteaders ever pluck a chicken by hand. Even then many homesteaders by or rent a barrel plucker and scalder.

6. Quality. I know 2 producers in my area in central Maine who raise chickens-with-a-life. They live 12-16 weeks. They truly get to free-range to scratch, forage, eat bugs, get fed vegetable and fruit trimmings and other compost-adjacent human cast-offs. They both currently charge $5/lb for whole chickens [no giblets.] I can [and have] roasted a supermarket bird vs a true pastured bird side by side using the same method and then ate them side by side to compare. I could write a whole post on the differences. No, there is not likely a huge difference in net nourishment and your factory chicken wins by a magnitude in nourishment/dollar. But qualitatively there is a difference: texture, color, flavor, skin, drippings.

   

7. Deaths per meal. As a hunter and former rabbit raiser, I measure meat in part by how many lives taken/animals processed for each meal. Once you have slaughtered animals that you raised and cared for, each death matters. IYKYK. If you eat a dozen boneless chicken wings, you’ve killed 6 chickens. One whitetail deer produces about 40-80 lbs of edible meat. One steer killed will net about 500 lbs of trimmed and edible meat. One typical chicken nets about 2.5 lbs of usable meat with some bone. I read recently that one steer produces about 135-150 chickens worth of meat. A white tail deer equals 15-25 chickens. I think about these things. Most people would never consider killing the food they eat, so they don’t think about these things. I do. And it’s important.

8. Nourishment and health. I hope that the “white meat” vs “red meat” debate is dying off. I’ve not seen any compelling evidence showing “white meat” is in any way significantly better than “red meat” and in many ways white meat is the low bar for “welfare.” Here is an excellent discussion on this topic. The terms themselves seem to be context specific; they vary by author, researcher and cook.

Enough on chicken. I encourage you to make your own decisions and recommend doing some open minded research go forward, regardless of where your thinking about chicken is today.

Those $0.99 per lb drumstick thighs at the market just seem to good to be true? They probably are….

Fresh Berries and Bananas

I eat fresh berries that I harvest with my hands: wild strawberries, wild raspberries, wild blackberries. Also occasionally wild blueberries, farmed strawberries, currants. Local and in season. Where I live it’s 2 months and then it’s over. Frozen wild blueberries I eat year round. They are reasonably priced here and support local growers.

I don’t need fresh berries at any point in the year for nourishment, but they are a delight in season and are an excellent “excuse” for taking walks in the wild.

Frozen local berries are an excellent alternative if you need berries in your foodway in winter.

Why not fresh?

1. If you live in Maine, or most of the US, fresh berries the rest of the year have been on an airplane.

2. The berries likely came from Driscoll’s, a giant corporation.

3. They are in polystyrene or other suspect plastic packaging, likely adding to toxicity and micro plastics to your foodway.

4. They taste like nothing, be honest. Especially the blueberries and strawberries. If you “love” blueberries on your yogurt in North America in winter, I’m sorry you think they taste good. They don’t.

5. I’ve given up the rationale “because I like them and because I can.” Just because they’re in the supermarket isn’t a good reason to justify buying them.

6. Bananas have been bred from largely inedible to what they are today.

7. Over many years, they’ve been bred so that they can be harvested year round, shipped green and oxidized/ripened in market.

8. Their peak nourishment is likely when you can barely peel them. At that point they are hard and acrid, not sweet. Yay!

9. When they are ripe they are too sugary, more like dessert.

Leafy Greens in Winter

In spite of the endless praise from nutritionists, marketers loosely citing research and online food writers, leafy greens are not a critical part of nourishment throughout the year. In reading ’s book The Blue Plate he writes of his research:

I see elsewhere in the book a clarification: 90% of leafy greens and 50% of vegetables. Winter agriculture in the southwest US adds to the massive overuse of the once bountiful water in the Colorado River drainage. It’s bad enough just the western states impact, without the rest of North America doing a pile-on.

Keep in mind that the reservoirs created in the Colorado that make that irrigation possible are massive producers of methane gas. The electric power turbines also enhance methane release by pulling water from the bottoms of those reservoirs and churning it to release the the methane suspended in it.

This is the same Colorado river that used to flow into Mexico and sustain massive wetlands that supported a complex ecosystem teaming with life. It represented a huge carbon sink. This is 90% gone today.2 You can read a marvelous descriptive narrative about what used to be there in Aldo Leopold’s The Green Lagoons.3

Broadly speaking, I try to avoid supporting the massive industrial AG machine for vegetables. I do my best to eat seasonal, local and regional vegetables, greens and fruits. In Maine, that’s a short season from summer into fall, supplemented by a small amount of hoop-house and greenhouse produce available into early winter. Once or twice a year I fall from my bully pulpit and buy something green. This week: a head of iceberg lettuce [Hipocrisy #2.] I just had to have a wedge salad. And to remind myself that I’m not perfect as I preach.

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Thousands of years of history appear to show that eating the same foods year round in northern environments is not necessary for humans to thrive. And leafy greens in most of the US have a short season.

1. Eat mostly tubers, canned and frozen local vegetables. Prior to ~1930s, most everyone in New England survived with canned vegetables in winter or tubers from a root cellar. Or none at all. The incidence of chronic disease by most measures was lower then.

2. While salads with fresh vegetables seem to be essential in modernity to year round eating, they are not. Preference doesn’t justify convenience for me. I like salads, but I don’t crave them. If I end up eating vegetables and tubers and no salad greens I’m happy.

3. Leafy greens have traveled by truck at least 2500 miles in winter if they are in plastic shells and have fancy marketing labels. I don’t buy that stuff, except for special occasions.

4. The food value in greens diminishes with time. Within a week much of the nourishment is lost. After 2 weeks, which is sometimes the age for “fresh looking” greens in those plastic tubs with fancy labels, even more has been lost.

5. Caveat: it is possible to get some greenhouse greens like tatsoi and spinach here that are locally grown and I may indulge when that shows up at the winter farmers’ market. But mostly I go without. Until I have to have the wedge, LOL.

Olive Loaf

Because WTF is it anyway? I had a college roommate who would eat Wonder Bread with thick slices of Olive Loaf and Cream Cheese. True story. [Barry, sorry if you ever read this but it still grosses me out!]

Summary

If you’ve made it this far, I’m quite impressed. You obviously enjoy irascible food language pandering. I obfuscated any points I was trying to make and ended up going on about exclusions after extolling inclusion. Such is live action therapy.

I wonder if there is a way I can add a “send me a refund” button so I could pay for this therapy? I’m feeling better already and probably would send a few bucks before coming to my senses.

If there was one thing I hoped to get across—it’s that for me, there are good reasons to eat things and maybe a few specific quality and sustainability reasons not to. But I’m tired of hearing and reading about the reasoning and rationale behind the swimlanes we create for our foodways. And it was time to air my grievances out. Thanks for indulging me.

Coming Soon

Methods for Utilizing Sourdough Divisions…a.k.a. Discard

Methods for Smooth Liver Mousse

Puppy 2.0

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

I’ve been quiet; I’ve been thoughtful. I’ve hiked, I’ve fished, I’ve observed.

Planning has been done. Not too much, mostly planting seeds.

There have been days when I felt a reflex to write and publish something. There weren’t any good words. Bundles of drafts. Good ideas. Nothing finished.

I’ve been planning my teaching season. This year: sausage making, wild game cooking, turkey hunting and guiding, hunter safety and in the fall—grouse hunting. I’m taking on less than last year, making room for new challenges and mental space. As a first year rookie guide, I know I need extra time to prepare.

I’m starting a series of potlucks at our local Grange hall. I want to enhance community connection through food: food made to be shared from local, regional and wild ingredients. I’m excited for the potential; I’m trying to temper my expectations. I’ve had success getting friends together to eat for many years. But the goal now is to connect strangers. They live right next to each other or down the street, but aren’t really connected. There is resistance. I can feel it. But I will move forward and be confident in the goal. Little steps will be needed.

Learning

I gave more time to volunteer work last year than I should have. I ended 2025 feeling some burnout. My expectations got the better of me. I thought I’d have built more connections, made more friends, felt more satisfaction in the effort. I set myself up.

There were so many positives. Tangible results, great classes, delicious food, goals met. People learned, developed new skills, cultivated their curiosity.

I’m still not sure what I expected beyond the real. But I’m certain that I felt empty in ways I didn’t expect. Time will pass and more understanding will come. For now I’m embracing the uncertainties of moving forward on my path. I will continue.

Tracking

Stories in the snow become more vivid each year. I see tracks and I see potential stories. My years in the field have shaped my vocabulary, my thinking, my awareness.

The tracks tell a narrative of speed, direction, urgency or ease, fight or flight. The more I read tracks, the clearer and more compelling the stories become. Tracks are the language of our relations who don’t speak.

Snow allows us to develop our reading skills in ways we can’t with dry ground. I’m deeply grateful to live where we still have dependable snow each winter allowing my tracking to improve each winter. My feelings change each winter; the joy remains in every walk in the fields and woods. For me cold winters stratify my seeds for the growing season ahead.

Here in Maine, it’s often said that if the bird is on the ground, it’s a “pahtridge,” but off the ground it’s a grouse. Where I live they are shy, only by their tracks do I know we share this land.

Grouse apparently can get enough to eat in 10 minutes a day in winter. They roost the rest of the time. At times they are known to dive into the snow and “roost” there until they go out to feed again. But here and there, when the conditions are just so, they walk. And so I know they are here and doing their thing. Their feet are adaptable and grow “feathers” for the winter that allow them to float on top of the snow vs sinking.

Wild turkeys are big birds. Here in the east, they are by far our heaviest bird. I’m often surprised how deeply they sink in the snow. It must be tiring to post-hole all day.

While they can fly with impressive grace for short distances, they search for food on foot. Winters like this year have got to be tough. We’ve had deep snow without any major thaw/freeze to firm it up since December. Doggo was sinking up to his belly on his off-trail forays today. It’s hard to imagine being a turkey and walking in it every day. But they persist. I’ve been seeing them along melting road edges this week. Tough.

Who is out the making the tracks I study?

Deer, moose, bobcats and lynx. Fisher, the foxes, minks and pine martens. Of course the squirrels and mice.

Here in Maine, there are only 3 true hibernating mammals: woodchucks, bats and jumping meadow mice. The rest are out to one degree or another all winter.

Porcupines, skunks and raccoons are active but maintain limited activity, especially during deep snow and extreme cold. They do move around during breaks in the normal weather pattern. They all have relatively short legs and compact tracks. They don’t tend to travel far.

Deep in the woods I see a few two-legged feathered friend tracks: crows, ravens, grouse and turkeys. Sometimes I see where an owl has swept in for a catch.

Doggo likes to come tracking too. Though he is more likely to run through the tracks before I get to them. I guess he reads the stories faster than me…

Ice Fishing

Being out on frozen lakes and ponds is a thing. It’s a discipline; a test of meddle. Wet hands and wind make fingers of stone, quickly. The prevailing north and northwest winds we here in central Maine remove heat from your neck so fast it is hard to grasp. Hoods are good. Neck gaiters too.

Because your hands will get wet, especially setting traps, I’ve found using a hand muff is the best way to keep re-warming hands. Gloves and mittens work, but are hard to put on and take off once your hands get wet. The hand muff is much better at dealing with this. Putting heater packs in makes the experience even better.

Setting up gets you warm: drilling holes, dragging your sled through drifted transformed snow, dipping for bait and setting your traps generate some heat.

Then you wait.

And you don’t stay warm some days.

And you wait some more.

Flags don’t equal fish. Unlike rod fishing, fishing with traps is basically hand lining. You have to set the hook with your arms; mistakes and lost fish are common. It’s fishing in a pure form, when you get a good hook set, you bring in the line with your arms. Exasperating or rewarding. Nothing is certain until your fish is above the hole. [Even then, fish have a way of getting back in the water…]

Sometimes you fish with a short little ice rod and reel. I like to drill a hole inside my shelter when I set it up and use the rod there. It’s more active than waiting for flags. And here where I live you can have 5 lines or 4 traps and 1 rod. The rod fishing keeps me active while I wait for flags on the traps. For catching panfish that school like perch and crappie, rod fishing is the way to go.

Likely I have a better bite/landing ratio with the rod than the traps. And it keeps your mind on what you’re doing.

On good days there’ll be flags often enough to keep you busy, and warmish. On average days and especially slow days, you’ll want some shelter. Maybe a heater. I have a folding shelter and small heater. Some people have shanties with wood stoves and cooktops and benches and cots.

You can make it as complicated or as simple as you like. I don’t have a snow machine or ATV, I like to walk out. So to bring all my gear and a heater and a shelter in wind blown snow is a ruck. A serious one if you have some distance to go. This year the ice is so good that many lakes have plowed roads. I’ve driven my Tacoma on the ice once. It makes me a little nervous, even with 20” of ice. It’s a great and comfortable shelter; of course I got skunked that day.

When fish are caught the day is transformed. 2 hours of no-action fishing is forgotten as fast as the first good fish is iced. I’ve had more than a few days this year with just one fish. They’re all good memories looking back. I don’t remember or reflect on the quiet hours, just the caught fish. And maybe the spot where I caught it.

I cook nearly all my trout and salmon whole, bones in. Lately, I’ve been wrapping in parchment with some sea salt, white wine vinegar and a bit of fancy butter. 18 minutes at 375F. Perfect. Then I carefully pull out the spine. On my best days I barely damage the filets [see above.] Simple. Good.

came out with me in late February for his first time fishing on the ice. It was a refreshing change to fish with a good partner. I spend a lot of time fishing alone or with my doggo because there is a lake near my cabin. Most of my fishing buddies live a ways off and aren’t as flexible on time as I am.

I’ll write more about our outing in a future post, but what has stayed with me is his enthusiasm, mad skills cooking whitetail steaks on the ice in the wind and how much fun we had. Note-to-self: get out more with others. Makes the waiting times a lot better.

I got out to fish another favorite local pond that doesn’t see too many winter anglers. I managed to land a nice fish and cooked it up in a parchment wrap with some butter and DIY wine vinegar. Divine.

There is up to 24” of ice around my local spots. I’m hoping to get some more days in before my teaching schedule starts to pick up this month. And in mid-March I’ll also have my hands full with a new family member.

Puppies

Well, we all love puppies.

But sometime around the 18th of March. This guy is coming to join me and my doggo at the cabin:

So, that’s what’s been happening during my quiet time: some thinking, some fishing, getting outside and getting ready for a puppy. Feels good to get a post out, even if my writing still feels disconnected. More soon.

Buy me some bait

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

Food for thought.

I came across this post recently by my friend and mentor, Arthur Haines:

When I was born in 1970, the world population was approximately 3.6 billion people. Now, in 2026, it is 8.3 billion people—it has more than doubled in my lifetime. And during that time, there have been many changes to how humans engage with each other and the world around them.

As I hiked through a forest in New York recently, I could see the eastern hemlock trees losing their leaves and vigor due to the hemlock woolly adelgid, a small insect native to eastern Asia. The white ash trees were also in the process of dying, due to the emerald ash borer, a beetle native to northeastern Asia. The white walnuts had already died, this due to the butternut canker, a fungus that is also believed to be native to Asia. Now, the American beech trees are suffering from a parasitic nematode that feeds on the leaves causing beech leaf disease. The origin of this worm—eastern Asia. Of course, other trees such as American chestnut and American elm had already suffered immensely prior to my birth. Many important forest trees are under severe threat, and the composition of the forests is undergoing immense and rapid change.

Many people glorify global trade and travel networks. Citizens of financially affluent countries, like the United States, can get various manufactured goods more cheaply because they come from countries, like China, where the workers are paid much less than here and there are few environmental protections in place. But, with those trade and travel networks come hitchhikers. The new invasive species that are killing important trees that support more than just humans but also feed the wildlife that lives on this North American continent. You can’t get the products without the invasive species—they come together. And, the new invasions are increasing in frequency. In my lifetime, the forests here may change to something very different than what I experienced when I was a child.

The threat to our forests can be summarized as follows:

There are too many people, who want too many things, and they don’t care where the things come from.

We rarely think about the consequences of these imported goods. Rather than focus on environmental costs, we mostly pay attention to what makes our lives more comfortable and more convenient. In fact, those two items (comfort and convenience) seem to be very important factors in decision-making. What hitches a ride with these goods, how many species we lose because of these goods, and the volume of spent goods we pour into landfills—these are all subordinate to an easy life. A cozy, comfy, safe life. Local (i.e., place-based) really does matter. For those that grieve what is happening to our forests—you are not alone. While it may be of small consolation, that sadness you feel is felt by others. We may be few in number, but we are not continually distracted by our smart phones, which means we might be able to accomplish something together. But it will require relearning the Old Ways.

The message in his post is nearly complete. I want to let it speak for itself, since I can’t find much to add or comment on it.

Please consider what you need v. want. Do your best to practice reciprocity with the shared natural world that supports us all.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

• “I would never be comfortable enough to forage myself.”

• “I’m afraid I’d eat the wrong thing.”

It’s become hard for me to listen to the excuses these days. People are very creative in avoiding wild food. I’m out of patience.

• “I don’t have the courage or confidence to pick anything wild and eat it!”

• “I don’t like bugs.”

• “I’m uncomfortable walking where plants brush up against my bare arms and legs. I got into some nettles once and it itched terribly.”

• “I don’t want to die from eating wild mushrooms.”

Botanophobic and mycophobic concerns that people share usually have some basis in fact. Granted.

• People have been known to kill their in-laws with wild mushrooms.

• Conditions recently have contributed recently to the poisoning of at least 30 Californians, killing three, that confused death cap mushrooms with something else.

Our ancestors possessed detailed knowledge of the what, where, when, how and why of wild food and fungi. In the annals of every culture around the world are stories and writings about the fauna of the land with prescriptions for consumption and use. Everywhere I’ve foraged, it’s been pretty easy to find locals, usually elders, who have detailed knowledge of goodies to forage and eat. Mostly, I’ve found them quite forthcoming with insights on what’s in season and where to find it. Of course, you won’t be told the very best and most special of their known sites, but some wild foods are plentiful and often you’ll be directed to good spots.

It strikes me as odd that these days most of us don’t learn the edible plants and fungi around where we live. OK, being completely honest it’s beyond odd, it’s outright offensive. Young people are said to know more brands than they know trees, plants, flowers, birds. Adults are so set in their ways about food, it’s rare that they will make meaningful change.

For a few hundred thousand years, homo sapiens acquired hard-earned wisdom about the flora of our world. The young were taught this wisdom by their elders. People of all ages practiced foraging and sustained themselves with nourishment and medicine. Everyone alive todays has millions of ancestors who foraged.

Why are we forgetting what our ancestors knew in detail? Why do we so willingly assume that what we can buy is what we should eat? Why is it so scary to learn about the flora that has supported us for our entire existence—at least until the present?

I mean, everything you can buy in a market was once wild. Fact.

It’s very popular to talk about “eating local.”

I ask: “what plants and animals that you can buy locally actually are native to your area???”

Among foods the average person buys and eats in most of the US, that is a very short list: bison, turkey, ducks, squash, berries, hazelnuts, pecans. Maybe a few other things in small quantities through specialty stores. How much of what you eat throughout the year comes from that list?

Everything else has been naturalized from elsewhere.

For now, I won’t even take up the impact those imports have had.

So, if you want to eat local, really local, you should consider foraging for food. There are many great foods in the US that don’t cultivate well [read: profitably,] that are still abundant and can be harvested for nourishment and/or medicine. The process of learning, finding, harvesting, cleaning and eating wild food is in itself, a healthy practice. It requires exercise, continual learning, seasonal awareness, ruggedness, an open mind and a sense of humor [very important.] Very little equipment needs to be purchased.

Here are is a sample of fantastic wild foods you can harvest in the US:

Wild mushrooms, wild rice, hazelnuts, acorns, hickory nuts, black walnuts.

Blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, raspberries.

Sunflower seeds, squash seeds.

Dandelions, lamb’s quarter, goose foot, nettles, ramps, ferns, rumex.

These are local foods that can provide outstanding nourishment, excellent flavor and great adventures in their pursuit. If you haven’t looked into it, wild foods contain far more nourishment by volume and by weight than commercially grown foods. Euell Gibbons was one of the first to show this. There are many other researchers who’ve studied the matter since.

Just about anywhere in America and around the world, you can find friendly, outgoing people who will help you learn to forage. Those of us who forage all started at some point with limited knowledge and worked at it; many of us owe most of our knowledge to others who’ve helped along the way. I teach a few foraging workshops and wild food processing and cooking classes every year. And I count amongst my friends many who do the same.

All you need is some motivation and intent. Open your mind to think outside the supermarket. Consider this: of all life on earth, humans and our pets/animals are the only species that don’t get all of our food directly ourselves. Sure, people feed the birds and sometimes animals, but all of the birds and the animals would be fine without what we feed them—probably better off.

Tired of having to “pay the man?” Take responsibility to obtain some of your food with your own hands, not by an exchange of money, but by using your eyes, your mind, your hands, your experience.

Modernity and technology so often ask us to place our faith in software and machines. We’ve become dependent. Because our “science” focuses so much on relationships that can be profited from and so rarely on resources of the commons, do we ignore the vast resources that are available to us just out our doors? What we need is not technology dependence, it’s natural interdependence. We need to build our connection, our interdependence on the natural world while decreasing our internet connections, our dependence.

Near you are places to learn to forage. You just need to get started. Sure, city dwellers may have only concrete and steel and glass nearby, but wild resources are no farther away than the food you buy that is trucked in each day. For those of us in suburban and rural areas, access to food and medicine in nature is nearly certain. Why don’t we, collectively, teach ourselves to recognize and utilize these plants and fungi? Get out there!

I encourage everyone to take a foraging class, even if you never harvest yourself, you’ll have a better understanding of the flora in your area, get some exercise and meet some other curious people. And if you do pursue foraging, you’ll be at the beginning of a fun, humorous and healthy journey towards more local nourishment and health.

Don’t let your conditioning and socialization keep you from opening your mind to new ways to fuel your life. Everyone can learn to forage if they are willing to be open minded, develop self-trust and to get outside regularly.

Be well.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

Because onion rings, when good, are very compelling.

One thing I discovered right away. Good onion rings are some work. And like french fries, the really good ones are even more work. But, once or twice a year I have a go anyway. I find extra motivation when I see that sweet onions like Vidalia are around and in season.

You should plan on some clean up, as the breading process is messy. At least for me it is. No matter how many improvements I come up with, there is always flour everywhere and drips of binder. You may be better at keeping your workspace clean than me. But you’ve been warned.

Ingredients

• Onions

  • I’ve used yellow, white, red, Vidalia. All work well. I’m particularly fond of the sweet onions like Vidalia

• Breading

  • Use what you like or have time for

  • Panko make great rings, but I hate buying breadcrumbs

  • I use flours:

    • All purpose

    • Semolina

    • Buckwheat

    • Whole wheat, sometimes fresh ground

    • Oat flour, sometimes fresh ground

    • KAB, measure for measure

    • Corn Meal

  • I often mix to make a “multi-grain”

  • Recent batch was 1/3 Measure for Measure, 1/3 buckwheat, 1/3 corn masa

  • Add seasonings to the breading for fun [I put the salt on the onions separately]

• Binder

  • Milk or cream

  • Eggs or egg whites

  • Water

• Salt

  • Pink Salt. I’ve been using a fine ground version. It has a nice flavor and unlike kosher salt, it tends to stick to food.

• Oil, Tallow or Lard for frying

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 400F

2. Peel your onions

3. Cut to desired width

4. Disassemble the rings

5. Lay out rings on flat baking sheet, salt them fairly well

6. Bake 15-20 minutes until they’ve lost water and shrunk. Do not burn them, a little browning on the edge is good.

7. Mix your binder in a large bowl. I use 1 whole egg with about 2T of water [tap-stock.]

8. Mix your breading and place in large container for tossing

9. Heat your frying oil to 375F. You can shallow pan fry onion rings, you probably will have to turn them.

10. Dip rings in binder, lift and let drip with “wet hand”

11. Drop in breading and toss. I often get them covered and then press with my “dry hand.”

12. Lift carefully trying to shake free any excess breading as it will end up in the fat and after a few batches will burn

13. If you want thick breaded rings, go back to step 10.

14. Once you have the breading thickness you want, fry the rings in small batches until they are golden brown.

15. Pull from fryer and drain quickly on cloths, paper towels or napkins

16. Eat one to check seasoning then season to taste if needed.

Variations:

1. For intermediate breading, you can place the dry onions in the breading mixture without the binder, shake and remove. Then go to step 10 and dip in binder, then bread.

2. You can cut onions fine for thin rings and skip the baking step. Moisture evaporates more effectively from skinny rings.

Be patient as you start out. Rushing your process usually results in substandard rings. I find that mid-winter in N. America is an ideal time as the fall harvested onions have lost a good amount of their moisture by winter, which helps to get the best results. Water is something you are trying to get rid of in frying, which is why the baking step is important. Letting natural evaporation reduce moisture helps too.

That’s it for now.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

I’m here to poke fun at our food language. I’m here to poke fun at my delirium over food language. Because it’s part of my therapy.

If this one drives you to unsubscribe, I forgive you in advance. This is who I am.

I apologize in advance to people who eat venison and like jalapeños.

Here we go.

I sip my coffee. Words race around the topographies of my consciousness. I wonder often of the words we use for things we eat. Words are symbols. They allow us to communicate in both simple and complex ways about the world we experience. But the words we use to communicate about food are sometimes just complicated and confusing. They send me mixed messages.

When I think about food words, I try to visualize what the food looks like when it’s alive and growing. Mostly, I can connect the words with the images in my head. But sometimes I can’t. Why do we have words for foods when they’re alive, but different words for when they’re dead and ready to eat? I’m confused.

We use alive versus dead words in part to allow our minds to disconnect from the realities of our food. We do this to further our growing affinity for disconnecting from nature and avoiding reality. We’ve outsourced so much of the handling of our food that we have become uncomfortable using the living names for that food. Once it’s dead, cleaned up and shrink-wrapped for market we give an appetizing food name. It’s all good, right?

I ask myself questions for fun.

If I was pointing at the calf in the photo, would you tell me it’s a beef if I asked? More likely you’d laugh and tell me its a cow.

What does a beef look like? I’m sure I’ve never seen a beef on a farm. And I’ve been to a few farms. More than a few. I’ve even been impish enough to ask a friendly farmer: “Where are your beefs?” “Do you raise your beefs entirely on grass?”

Do you eat swine? A lot of people don’t; I bet a lot of people that do would say they don’t.

If I stopped people on the street and asked them how they liked to eat their swine, many would seize up and not answer. They’d find a way to pretend that the sow hog chops they eat and the barrow ham sandwiches they love didn’t come from swine. “What the fuck are you talking about, fool?”

Even the farmers I work with are all over the place with the language of swine. Farmers say “hogs, pigs, sows, boars, barrows, gilts”….I haven’t heard a farmer yet say “swine.” But when I read the state and federal regulations, guess what? They’re written for swine. “We sell swine,” said no farmer ever that I know of.

What I usually hear is “we raise pigs” and “we sell pork.”

When I’m shopping in a market, what if I ask: “Where is the swine section?”

“Do you have any hog barrow roasts?”

“You don’t have any uncured [raw] hog sow hams do you?”

This is all the actual language of the food. But when Americans and most other English speakers talk about swine as food, it somehow becomes pork. I have yet to see a pork on a farm. Have you?

“Where are the porks?”

“Are your porks pastured?”

The curious will find, going down the rabbit hole, that this contextual language swapping is probably rooted in the lifeways and spoken languages of the elite vs the peasants in the Middle Ages. The conquering of the British Isles by the Normans in 1066 had the effect of English speakers playing the role of farmer [the conquered] while the Normand elites whom ruled them spoke French [the conquerors.] Since the rulers were only eating the end product their common terms were boeuf and porc while the people who raised the animals [and didn’t get to eat them] called them cattle and swine.

Over time, I think people have adopted this duality because it feels better to use the aristocratic words. Beef and pork are things that the ruling class eat. We don’t handle the animals, kill them, butcher them or package them. That’s the labor class. And they use those other words. We aspire to be elite and use the appetizing language.

“We be elite with our porks and beefs.”

In the last century, colloquialisms have crept in too. We like to use the term cow or cows to describe cattle. But a cow is specifically a female cattle that has had a calf. Cow doesn’t mean cattle. A steer is not a cow. But we regularly use the term, depending on the context.

Have you ever heard anyone [besides me] say or write “I had an excellent dry-aged 7 year old dairy cow rib steak.” Or “these meatballs are made with ground steer, ground sow hog and some raccoon sausage”??? I like to be very specific.

I annoy people with this language, but it’s who I am.

I volunteer on a diversified farm and when I’m talking with them, we switch back and forth between the colloquial “cow” and “pig” and the specifics: “heifer, cow, steer, bull, hog, bullock, gilt, sow, barrow, boar.” I don’t think they use the terms cattle or swine. They look at me a bit funny as if I’m a foreigner who learned their language in school when I say “cattle” or “swine.”

But they get it. They’re well aware of the gap between livestock farming and consuming.

Venison. Above all other context-switching food words, this is my trigger word. It’s so ingrained in English language culture that venison means deer meat, that whenever I complain about it, people, especially deer hunters, look at me with contempt. I go to therapy to deal with it.

“I saw a gorgeous 8-point venison…” says no one, ever.

I read this morning while doing some research for this post that the Broken Arrow Ranch actually worked with the USDA to clarify that in the US, venison = deer. Without further research this seems like a marketing move but it doesn’t make me feel any better. They sell wild whitetail deer, farmed-raised fallow deer and other ruminants.

Venison’s etymology goes back to the verb “to hunt” and historically meant the “meat from the hunt” which could be deer, bear, reindeer, rabbit. By the ~17th century, English speakers were primarily using it to mean deer meat, though its use as a more generic term continued into the 19th century.

Part of my neurosis probably stems from my time in the fancy restaurant business in the 90’s, when vanity labeling on menus was really becoming a thing. Instead of saying:

Ribeye Steak

menus started saying:

Nimen-Schell Grass-Fed Black Angus Bone-In Ribeye Steak

Vanity aside, this specificity of place, breed, method and intent changed for the better the way fine food was presented. It celebrated the producer for the first time as much as the restaurant and the chef. It gave precision to terroir and merroir. It’s been adopted at all levels of restaurants, usually anywhere the business wants to promote their suppliers by name.

I embrace the specificity.

So, for me, I want to be very specific in my food labeling. Venison lacks that specificity. I use whitetail.

I avoid venison as if it were purest expression of toxic masculinity: the male trophy hunter dick-size bravado of killing a stinky old whitetail buck used after a downing a few [too many] Pappy Van Winkles. Then in bragging about another cliché backstrap steak criminally overcooked and eaten with store-bought steak sauce.

[Warning: this is me going full asshole now—all of these meals could be good or even great, but likely would be not be good. I know they would absolutely be better in every way if they used “deer” or “whitetail” instead of venison]

Venison social media posts that are killing me:

“Check out my [overcooked and likely tough and stanky] bacon-wrapped venison backstraps with jalapeños and cheddar and potato chips”

“That buck that scored 199 and I had the processor cut it ASAP and froze it up so it’d be all fresh venison to my freezer.” [cringe]

“I made some venison chili with [more] jalapeños!”

“Venison nachos with [still more] jalapeños and [hot runny Velveeta] cheese!”

Sorry for that, my therapist encouraged me to get all this out in the hope that I can finally move past my obsession with the word venison.

I’m not making a case for you to change the way you write or speak about your food. In fact, I slip up myself every now and then and dead-name food, sometimes even intentionally, to avoid disrupting a conversation. I get tired of explaining myself.

My personal direction is to directly source my own food from the wild, locally and regionally. I want a direct personal connection with my food. I know it with its live name. I’m not interested in the language of dead food. I don’t eat beef or pork or venison. I eat steer, heifer, [maybe] cow, hog sow, pig, whitetail deer, mule deer etc,…

I call it what it is and what it was—same words.

There is an honesty component; there is a reciprocity component. I can’t volunteer my time to improve venison habitat for the farmers that let me hunt. I put my time into improving their deer habitat. When I want to make bacon, I get in the queue to get hog sow belly from the farm I volunteer for. They don’t laugh at me anymore when I call it that.

So, I’m done dead-naming my food. Really, I’ve been this way for a while. Neurotic, OCD, grumpy. Call it what you will. At the end of the day, I’m healthier and quieter in my relationship with my food. And I have a lot of fun doing a parody of myself: ranting about food words.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

It’s May. Another New England winter melted behind me. I’m out walking, eyes wide, heart open. I’m out there in my new story, making moments into memories. Hopeful, newly.

I wander. I feel breezes crescendo and fade. I see trees I now know. I talk to them. Some buds unfurl. Some need more time. I introduce myself out loud. Terminal branches glow rose-colored with raging sap. Verdant life blasts through sepia leaf litter below. I am part of this awakening.

I take it all in. I hear and see flying bipeds, our feathered micro-dinosaurs. Many have flown far and busy themselves being hungry and loud.

I round a corner on the earthen path. Suddenly, I’m more alert: a pattern match with my eyes. I freeze. I’m stricken. Do I know this plant?

That moment. Soloing in the woods, somewhere; registering a pattern match in memory, there they are.

Uncertainty rustles in to me.

I try to remember the things: stem color, leaf shapes and attachment, texture, habit. I feel more certain. Then it hits me: aroma. I less than gently rub a leaf. Anticipation, excitement, fear of disappointment. Fingers to nose. Inhale!

Yes! That unmistakable and magical aroma. It’s not garlic, not onion, not leek…but kind of.

Ramps!

The first unaccompanied find in the wild. When you first realize you can trust yourself, trust your training, trust your senses. For me that moment was a few years in the making.

I’d sold them to customers in restaurants. I could sing their praises.

I’d bought them.

I’d cooked them.

I’d served them to my most discerning.

But until that moment, I’d not found them in the wild without help.

Accompanied only by my instincts, learnings from a few outings with experienced foragers and with a few decent ideas where to look. I’d found them.

I saw them.

I touched them.

I considered the environment, other plants nearby, the trees.

And then I smelled them. In that moment a language I’d been struggling to learn became for a moment, pellucid.

Foraging for ramps in May—I become myself—part of nature. I curate my spots, not taking too much. I park my truck stealthily. I’m not hiding my spots, but I’m not advertising them either. I organize my gear more carefully than at any other time. It’s a rite. It’s a ceremony. Reciprocity is center of mind.

“How can I harvest today and support the health of this patch?”

“What can I do with my harvest to enrich and nourish myself and others?”

I re-introduce myself. I ask for permission. I selectively harvest to encourage patch health. I harvest mostly leaves. Bulbs I come back for in summer, though I will take a few in May from the richest spots.

When I’m finished I thank the plants and promise to see them soon. And the story continues.

Share

Learning to forage is a journey. For me, it’s not a linear narrative with a clear beginning, middle or end. Parallel threads intertwine: cooking, being outdoors, moving more slowly, seeing what is there. An intention sprouting for a new foodway. A desire for an understanding of nourishment. An embrace of interdependence and reciprocity.

Elements to my method:

• Study: books, internet, maps

• People: friends, strangers, foragers, botanists, mycologists, arborists, foresters, anglers, hunters, trappers

• Field time: walking, seeing, listening, smelling, touching, tasting, remembering

• Harvesting: considering my needs, limiting harvests, sharing, carrying, cleaning, cooking, preserving.

• Storytelling: sharing the food and stories, teaching, workshops, campfires

  ---

That moment of a first find can be transformative. Often, it arrives as a culmination of things to create your awareness: both active and passive, specific and open-minded, present and detached. There is a yang and a ying to it. You can seek something, but must be open to finding something else: another gift may be yours though not that which you intend.

As a forager, think of seeing as listening versus hearing with your ears. Your attention is focused on receiving the visuals and understanding their meaning. This will be more than just the impulses racing through your optic nerves. Your ability to see as a forager is interdependent and parallel threads of experience, place, sensation and focus. We humans are wired for this from millions of years of foraging for food, water, shelter and safety. The journey of foraging today is to unlock your innate ability with training, intent and reciprocity.

For my first unaccompanied ramp find I was indeed out looking for ramps. On other occasions, including before that first find, I found mushrooms instead. On a couple of occasions I found morels. It’s hard to emphasize how important it is to be open minded and hearted when foraging. Nature’s gifts are often not the gifts you seek, but the gifts that are there for you to receive. I do an acknowledgment of this before heading out: “I will see what is there, even if it is not what I’m looking for.”

If you are an outdoor writer with an interest in connecting the landscapes of foraging, angling and hunting to outdoor narratives, Maine writers and Ryan Brod are hosting a writing workshop in Portland, ME on February 7 and 8: Ground Beneath Your Feet: Leveraging Landscape in Narrative Writing.

This post honors, I hope, the focus of this writing workshop. Thanks for the inspiration!

Practice reciprocity, with intent and an open heart.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

I’m not a “hot” food person, so I tend to be drawn to low to medium heat levels. I do like hot food when I’m in a hot climate, but I avoid the tropics. Even Florida is too much for me except in winter.

So I came a across a method for Walnut and Cauliflower Curry. I was immediately drawn to this pairing, something I had not seen before. I adapted the recipe ingredients to align with using one whole cauliflower’s worth of florets. Since I pureed the cauliflower, you could use all and not just the florets by upping the rest of the ingredients by about 10-15% in weight. I also adapted to grams of measure—because I am traumatized by volume/SAE measurements. At home I don’t even use teaspoons or tablespoon measures anymore. But I’ve included them for you [this time.]

In this recipe I used cayenne instead of Nik’s Thai chilies. The Thai chilies are out of my comfort zone. heat-wise. Sub those back in if you like that kind of heat and have access to them. Where I live there are zero pan-Asian food stores, so without ordering dried products I’m a bit stuck. As I mentioned, they’re a bit too hot for me, so I ran for the exit on those.

I like this recipe because it brings cauliflower [romanesco, which is actually a cauliflower in Nik’s original] and walnuts together as the base. It’s genius IMO.

Creamy and flavorful. I would say it’s quite subtle compared to most curries, so plan accordingly.

Ingredients

• 8g [2t] kosher sea salt

• 580g cauliflower, cut the florets, ~1 cauliflower trimmed

• 200g [2+ cups] chopped raw walnuts

• 700g [3+] cups stock

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 25g [1 inch] root of ginger, grated

• 65g [1/2 cup] shallot, minced

• 2g [1/2 t] nigella seeds or cumin

• 2 g [1/2 t] cayenne ground, hot [Nik’s recipe: 2 green Thai chili peppers (use one if you prefer it less hot, you can also leave the seeds out)]

• 1 g [1/4 t] ground cloves

• 1 g [4 peppercorns] ground black pepper

• 2 g [1/2 t] cinnamon, ground

• 14g [1 T ] vegetable oil

• walnuts toasted for garnish (optional)

Method

1. Add 1/2 of the salt to a large pot of water to boil. Add the cauliflower florets to the water and boil for about 8-10 minutes until tender. When they are soft enough to blend, remove from heat and drain, set aside. You can use the cauliflower liquid instead of stock if you don’t have any. Adjust the salt accordingly.

2. Blend walnuts, 1/2 the stock, garlic, shallot, ginger, onion, cumin, cayenne, cloves, peppercorns, 1/2 salt and cinnamon. Pulse until you get a fine and smooth paste. You might need to add more stock to keep things moving in the blender.

3. Add the cauliflower and remaining stock to the walnut paste and puree. You may need additional stock or water, but be mindful of thickness. I added just enough liquid so that my hand blender would circulate the curry. If you want a thinner curry, use more liquid.

4. Cook on low-medium heat about 10 minutes, stirring constantly to avoid burning.

5. I made the curry mid-day and when reheated at 5 pm it was more flavorful and better integrated, so make it ahead if you can. Even better the next day.

Adapted from Nik Sharma cooks.

Make a Meal

I made a dinner by cooking some large shrimp with garlic, ginger and sea salt, served on top of the curry with a chopped mixed greens bed. Side of sage flavored Caroline Gold rice.

This was a nice change of pace from my normal crazy foodways. I hope you give it a try and enjoy it.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

Before hunting seasons open, I make time to honor the lives I will take. They are my relations in life and in death. They will provide nourishment and warmth for me and mine. When it is our time to die, if we were prey, would we be honored to be taken for nourishment? In our last moments will we cling desperately to life or embrace death giving life without fear and with love?

I think back over past seasons to revisit and rethink the stories: the failures and successes, the highs and lows, the mistakes made and the lessons learned. I accept my roles: flawed but intentional, prepared and resourceful. I remember well times that I gained some wisdom, mostly when things didn’t go as planned or expected and adventures began. I have learned. I will continue to learn.

I think about how precious every day is. I remind myself how fortunate I am just being out there, no matter how things go. I try to be present and feel everything. For I know my time is limited and for now I am mobile and capable. I am a predator and I embrace that. To respect my time and my opportunities, I accept my future death and wish that my body may nourish other life when I die.

My thoughts as the sun sinks southward and deeper each day: I respect all life and I honor death. I respect and love fall. It is my season:

October

“The tamaracks change from green to yellow when the first frosts have brought woodcock, fox sparrows, and juncos out of the north. Troops of robins are stripping the last white berries from dogwood thickets, leaving the empty stems as a pink haze against the hill. The creekside alders have shed their leaves exposing here and there an eyeful of holly. Brambles are aglow, lighting your footsteps grouseward.

The dog knows what is grouseward better than you do. You will do well to follow him closely, reading from the cock of his ears, the story the breeze is telling. When at last he stops stock-still, and says with a sideward glance, “Well, get ready,” the question is ready for what? A twittering woodcock, or the rising roar of a grouse, or perhaps only a rabbit? In this moment of uncertainty is condensed much of the virtue of grouse hunting. He who must know what to get ready for should go and hunt pheasants.”1

If summer’s harvests have filled the larder and pantry, or even if not: fall means the long tail of produce: apples and winter squash, alliums and tubers. So many foods to cook and bake, holidays of sharing, communities of abundance. Also fall means it is time to hunt. In October in Maine, hunting begins in earnest. It’s overload: upland birds, ducks and geese, wild turkeys, black bears, hares, archery for deer and moose for the lucky.

For me, game nourishments taken in the fall season can last a year or more. They’re core to my foodway. So I prepare to hunt, to process and to package. Freezers are organized; spelunking surprises are cooked or gifted or used for a class. I try to be confident and I try to be humble. I go forth with my gifted bird dog, a gun and an open mind ready for what comes.

I belong to my bird dog. You’ve probably seen him here. My time is his time in October. The grouse and the woodcock are his milieu. He is a specialist. He at most sniffs the air with an elegant disregard for most of our avian spectrum. Only woodcock, grouse, turkeys and ducks can get his attention when their scent is on the wind.

This year, 2025, was not the best year for the birds here in Maine, with cool wet weather in May/June and then a brutal drought. Nonetheless, I followed the dog around as best I could and he found birds. Dependably.

I shot better than usual, but wayward shots let many birds fly. His look was all wonder. How could you miss? I never know what to say. I think he forgives me; he gets over it; he runs back to his search.

We had a good bird season this fall, bagging grouse and a limit of fall turkeys. Somehow, I did not take a woodcock. I think I only saw 2 with the gun. I missed both. Bird hunting elates and exasperates. And it’s all the emotions in between. The arts of patience and quickness balanced on a knife’s edge. Wait hours, focused, for opportunities that last 1/10ths of seconds. Even with a perfect point, the flush rarely fails to startle. Stocky birds get aloft making sounds that you never get used to. After each frustrating miss when a bird goes up, I want more. I want more. Dog wants more. Should I make the shot, I want more. Much has been already written about this.

Core goal: keeping hunting birds and be aware of my blessing to be able to. Branch goal: more days in the field with dog and scatter gun, more birds in the woods, more birds off of points, more birds in the bag. Dog goal: watch fewer misses off good points and be a bit more cautious [he sometimes acts like a lab, flushing at full speed 100 yards off.]

Any grouse taken is a worthy celebration. They rarely fail to surprise you, they fly fast and turn quickly. Each year I shoot a bit better but they are more than my match.

No October in Maine would be complete without some turkey hunts. I’d be hard pressed to surpass 2025, when I filled 5 turkey tags in just a few weeks. All of the birds this fall were hens. So I’ll keep it simple and make the goal: 3-5 turkeys including at least one bearded turkey. Simple. Rewarding. And the dog gets to help.

November

“Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a far-away dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ears at that sound, wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on.

The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.”2

I enjoy waterfowl hunting. It’s obscenely challenging. Just getting set up and ready can get you killed, easily send you into hypothermia and at minimum turn your hands to ice cubes.

Conversely, the magic of cooking a fat duck or goose is just that. Magical. You need only absorb a bit of Duck, Duck, Goose by to appreciate the joys of waterfowl cooking. [BTW, you can get his other cookbooks including his new Borderlands direct from his website, but for some reason Duck, Duck, Goose is only available elsewhere ATM.] Honestly as much as I love to eat grouse, nothing beats a fat duck breast scored, seared and sauced. I like it rare. Or medium-rare. Never more than that. I like a berry gastric, but there are infinite ways to serve them.

Since I moved from the world-class waterfowl hunting zone of Lake Champlain [VT and NY and QC] I’ve not been able to get out for the ducks and geese but a few times, partly due to leaving behind my best waterfowling friends and mentors—those with boats and blinds and an unending lust to see me freeze my ass off. I miss them cheering when I whiffed on lay-ups or went 0/3 on a flaring pack of big geese. I’ll get back there soon to catch up and miss some more birds. Here, I need to put some time into meeting [and ingratiating] myself. The birds and the hunters are here, I just need to reach out and build those relations. And make time to get out.

Branch goal: get connected to waterfowlers, build friendships, make promises to cook in return for taking me out, hunt some ducks and geese. And hopefully not become a popsicle or worse.

Well dear, um, I mean, well, deer. I’ll just say I’ll commit to some effort next year, 2026. Here is my confessional on deer hunting:

Now that I’ve outed myself as a fair-weather whitetail hunter, I owe you honesty about my branch goals: I want to hunt whitetails near my cabin again as I did in 2024. And I’d like to get a deer, but I want to put less time in than in 2025. So archery is probably out, hopefully a doe tag is in. If it comes together, it does. More time chasing woodcock, grouse and turkeys, less time on deer. It’s just who I am.

Consider the Oyster. For whatever reason, maybe my new obsession with oyster stuffing at Thanksgiving, I want to eat oysters in November. It’s a good month for them, but really it’s the month every year I’m most enthusiastic to get them and eat them.

Now that I’m writing about it, I wonder about adding oysters to gravy—just sounds like a great idea now that I think about it. Hmm. Check out this oyster gravy! The wheels a’ turnin’.

I read all of “Consider the Oyster,” by MFK Fisher this year and ate at least 5 dozen in November. I even made oyster bisque and oyster stew. Anyone who knows me knows I like my oysters raw. But when you read MFK Fisher, you want to try oysters all the ways.

Goal: eat more oysters. Branch goal: actually make oyster stuffing for a holiday bird. I went to someone else’s for the holiday this year and didn’t see any good way to put my stuffing in their bird. So, 2026 is the year. Holiday bird [usually chicken #2 for the year if I’m cooking] with oyster stuffing. And maybe oysters Rockefeller or more stew!

Goal: more inspired liver cooking. I’m already on this path, but some of the things I came up with in 2025 were nice surprises. I discovered that I like liver with eggs, liver on a burger, liver with sliced steak. I learned that once a body adapts to the nourishment of liver, the aroma, the texture, the flavor become attractive. The body knows; the brain and socialization will be quieted with time and training. I will cook and eat more liver. And maybe actually get a convert.

How did kimchi smell the first time you put your nose over it? What about natto? If you’re curious, you owe it to yourself to retrain your brain and body to enjoy liver. It is it’s own reward. There I said it.

Thanks for reading this PSA. Now back to our regular programming.

Goal: improve consistency and focus.

In everything.

Even if I never take a longbow or recurve into a stand or hunt, the discipline works. Even if I never draw to end a life, the practice works. Even if I never get three good arrows in a row, the focus works.

Branch goal: get 3 arrows in a the center [10] at 15 yards or more with the recurve.

December

“There were no tracks under or near the down top. Obviously these birds had flown in, but from where? Grouse must eat, especially in frozen weather, so I examined the droppings for a clue. Among much unrecognizable debris, I found bud-scales, and also the tough yellow skins of frozen nightshade berries.

In a thicket of young soft maple I had noticed, in summer, an abundant growth of nightshade. I went there and, after a search, found grouse tracks on a log. The birds had not waded the soft snow; they had walked the logs and picked the berries projecting with their reach. This was a quarter mile east of the down oak.

That evening, at sunset, I saw a grouse budding in a popple thicket a quarter mile west. There were no tracks. This completed the story. These birds, for the duration of the soft snow, were covering their home range a-wing, not afoot, and the range was half a mile across.”3

While my writing and photos have been associated with “this dark age of zombie performance fooding,” I’m undeterred. I’ll continue to write, share and teach about wild foodways. As a guide and as a cook, I will explore a repertoire of finding, collecting, processing and cooking. I will share that in person, in workshops and classes, and here on Substack. While I don’t attract hundreds of subscribers and have no hopes of that for the future, the feedback and interest I do get is sustaining and appreciated. I will keep foraging and cooking and writing about it.

Core goal: deepen and broaden my focus on wild foods and local cultivations. I’ll keep teaching and helping others to broaden their knowledge and use of wild foods. I’ll share the responsibility and obligation I have for wildness with any who will accept it themselves. I’ll find ways to give back and honor all of my relations on whom I depend. I’ll continue to explore my interdependence with all beings I am connected to.

I look forward to continuing to bake: some desserts, my bagels, my tortillas, my buns, my bread. Aside from last minute buys for classes, I’ve not purchased breads for years. And now store bought tortillas are out the door. Blek, they’re awful here in Maine anyway. Broadly speaking, a branch goal is to consume fewer cereal grains. So the good news is that those things I make will last longer. As much as I love this stuff, as I get older, I should be eating less of it.

I’ve always been active. Here in Maine, I’ve increased my time in the outdoors. This will continue. Since the dog tells me when to go, and I mostly comply, I’ve adapted my interests to suit him. So trails and fields: sun, rain, snow, wind—we go. I don’t always love it, but I [almost] always go. I thank him after, because he always wants to go. It’s good for both of us.

Goal: more active time, more miles, though no hard objectives. We’ll ski together and snowshoe together. We’ll forage, scout, fish and hunt. Sometimes we’ll just walk. A few times we’ll paddle. We’ll do an overnight hike. We’ll do truck camping.

Flex branch goal: art. Between 2008 and 2017, I had art studio space. I drew, sketched, painted, sculpted. In 2016, exhausted, I left my high tech marketing job. My art, which had been my creative outlet, went full torpor. That energy, I’m certain, moved to the kitchen. With COVID, there it stayed. I’m hoping to branch back into painting: to sketch and then paint a project, a series of paintings, that have been in my mind for a decade.

I’ve been sharing some older work here and thinking 2026 may be the year to take the fork in the road, climb the branch in the tree. I’m hesitant to commit fully, but the urge is there. My heart is open to it, so if it is to be, it will be.

Summary:

If you’ve read this far and made it through parts I - III, thank you! Way over 10,000 words in four posts inspired by loosely framed goals and photos over the last year. 2025 gave up so many moments and memories I’m thankful for. There were a few sketchy adventures too.

Having put it in words has been cathartic and inspiring. While I’m not taking on a lot that is new, clarity has been given to what were just ideas last week. I’m emboldened having passed my Maine Guide exams and by the feedback from the classes and workshops I taught in 2025. Moving into 2026 I’ll be keeping on the same dirt road of wild and local food while exploring many branches when time permits.

I hope you can find enjoyment and inspiration in all these words. While I know my path is not unique, I trust my writing about it shares colorful glimpses of my view. My faith in all my relations has grown on this old road: people, plants, fungi, marine life, avian friends and all the animals. And as I get to know these relations more closely and they get to know me—our mutual reciprocity will grow.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yours,

You can help me with some espresso if you are so inclined.

Tips

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

To reconnect with all my relations, I’m on a rewilding journey. Slowly, but surely, I’m building relationships with skies, waters, winds and lands. The beings that inhabit these places are my connections, my relations, my gifts. Gifts are not possessions, they do not belong to me: they are obligations accepted.

The blessing of gifts one receives through our connections begets personal responsibility. That responsibility is reciprocity. Action and intent with time and giving complete the circle of reciprocity. My commitment is to maintain the circle.

I’ve always had some tendrils of connection to the wild, but in middle age my yearning to better know the interdependencies of humanness has branched and rooted. My unbound curiosity sends me traveling on a branch through the nuanced seasonal paths of wild food foraging.

From my restaurant background, foods like ramps, ostrich ferns, chanterelles and porcinis were acquaintances I knew well enough. In meeting them in fields and forest and at rivers edge, they have becmme closer connections. Friends. I learn their likes and dislikes, seasonal habits and appearances. In places I find them impoverished, I try to help or to leave them be. Where they flourish, with their permission and acknowledgement, I allow myself to harvest.

In the kitchen, wild foods join local cultivated foods through simple and thoughtful preparation, cooking and preservation. Every foodway culture I learn about has methods and uses for seasonal wild foods. While looking through recent cookbooks with cultural and regional themes, you might conclude wild foods aren’t included in these foodways, but the truth is they have always been. The methods and traditions are there, but the knowledge is dispersed. Older books and quiet elders hold the wisdom; they need us to be curious to preserve and honor our wild foodways.

I’m not a cookbook collector, but I read older cookbooks when I can and I do own a few too. They contain sensible and enjoyable methods for using wild foods. With some experience, anyone can learn to cook wild foods in their home. You can integrate wild things in dishes you already make; you can learn new methods to cook and eat them; you can create your own improvised dishes with them.

I teach wild food foraging and cooking. My students vary in skills from expert to “I can boil noodles!” Everyone of them learns how to integrate wild foods in to their foodway. It only takes intent and some effort building relations and familiarity with the plants and fungi. It’s also important to engage in reciprocity for these blessings. Wild foods are ingredients not really different from cultivated foods in the kitchen, though they do need a lot more cleaning than what comes from the market.

I invite you to take the branch less traveled and add wild things to your foodways!

“Perhaps most harmful to our health is the attitude that we are no longer wild animals. We see ourselves as civilized, risen up out of the savagery that was life prior to the advent of society. In fact, we are domesticated, not civilized. Our steady march away from natural living has cost us dearly. However, we can not truly see this disconnection from nature for what it is because a bias against nature has been designed into society for countless generations.”1

Homo sapiens today exhibit all the hallmarks of a domesticated species. In fact, we continue down the domesticity road by increasingly adapting to nature divorcement, inactivity, dependency on institutions, a highly altered diet and massively altered social structures. All things that are sold to us as things we should aspire to.

Goal: resist movement towards industrial food and food conformity. Build resilience skills, both for self-reliance and for family and community support.

July

“This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of this progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.”2

Long walks in fields and woods, along streams and brooks, on ridges and in hollers nourish all my relations. I see fruits and flowers, blades and leaves, hear songbirds and corvids, watch the swoops of woodpeckers to the legato tune of whitethroats’ descending flutes.

I want to be present to hear and see and smell and feel the breeze. I want to lay in the grass and have the sky overwhelm me. I want to be drenched by the rain and dried by the sun and wind. I want to swim with the fish and watch the dog wade and stalk the minnows and frogs.

Branch goal: attempt to get to the beaver flow in Vermont that I miss so much!

Goal: paddle more, swim more, fish more, hike more. Teach less, well a bit less. I don’t plan to guide fishing this year, saving time for more miles with the dog, more mushrooming if it rains [please] and more camping up north. I want to find more bird hunting covers, small streams to fish, blackberries to come back for and trails of moments and memories.

Goal: cook more fish. I had a lot of game in the freezer this year. Next year, since I didn’t get any deer or a bear this year, I will focus more on catching and cooking fish. I’m a solid fish cook, but I know there is more I can do. As much as I’ve heard it’s focused on species in Australian waters, I’m thinking about The Whole Fish Cookbook by Josh Niland. He’s expertly designed methods for utilizing the most in a fish. As good as I am at utilizing all of birds and mammals, I have room for improvement with marine foods.

In 2025, my first home cooked chicken happened in July. Short version: I love to hate on chicken, especially when I see hundreds [literally] of notes and posts on Substack for chicken this and chicken that and chicken with broccoli and so-and-so’s best ever roast chicken.

Please. No. More. Chicken. Recipes.

Hypocritically, I like a good chicken. This is in spite of loathing to see, read or even think about chicken recipes. To me, the goal is to actually find a chicken that had a life, ate some bugs, walked a lot, maybe actually flew a few yards here and there or up into a tree. Then, you roast it whole, with salt, in a good manner [viewed from my subjective and critical viewpoint.] You are allowed and encouraged to make a pan/pot/dutch oven gravy. Something like that. Then you eat it and praise its actual chicken flavor, not-stringy-ness, moistness, etc,…No other options will be considered.

Well, when traveling certain fried chicken sandwiches may be consumed with written approval from the war office. [I had one today at the Root Down Market in New Sharon, ME. Very good with house made bun, pickles and slaw.]

Goal: cook the first [of my annual allotment of 2 chickens] in July. This is maintaining the status quo, no change needed or wanted.

August

“I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human views. After that it exists only in my minds eye.

Like other artists, my river is temperamental; there is no predicting when the mood to paint will come upon him, or how long it will last. But in midsummer, when the great white fleets cruise the sky for day after flawless day, it is worth strolling down to the sandbars just to see whether he has been at work.”3

I’m writhing as I write this, imagining myself doing a rain dance. Last summer was so dry here that my creeks dried up. My dearest brook trout-I don’t know where they went and I left them alone until September. I couldn’t find the pocket water and holes and eddies that they had inhabited. I couldn’t even find the stream. There were some puddles. It was so sad. But I’m hopeful the trout and the salmon will be still there this year. Please let it rain. Core goal: do rain dances all year, so that it keeps raining through the summer.

Partly due to the drought, there were no black trumpets. While seasons are all different, I could move amongst so many spots in 2024. I could harvest with enthusiasm and not be touching the majority of the flushes. This year, I found 2 or 3 black trumpets total, not spots. That was in July and I didn’t see any more all year. So the branch goal: manage expectations! Be thankful and open to what is there; lust not after that which does not present itself. Expectations are the thief of receiving gifts when we can only see and think about the gifts we thought we wanted.

Like rivers, the wilds are artists: whimsical, unpredictable and sometimes unforgiving. Through seeing and listening instead of talking and demanding, we can receive the gifts of all our relations as they give them. We can be reciprocal and thankful for their blessings, whatever they may be. We are free to choose how we engage with all our relations.

While weather wasn’t so cooperative for foraging in 2025, there were other gifts. Without getting deep in the weeds on roadkill ethics, though I don’t think there are any challenges there, I did capitalize on a wild turkey poult I saw dead in the road near my cabin. It was early in the day, not hot. When I saw the bird, pulled over and had a quick look. Seemed like a head injury. I called the warden and he gave me a tag number over the phone. I turned around, picked up the young turkey and went back to the cabin and dressed her. I would say she was about 2 months old and 2 1/2 lbs. If you have experience cooking wild turkey, generally speaking, when mature they are not the best game bird to cook whole. While the breast meat is fairly tender, the legs of mature birds will be tough and full of sharp tendons and strong connective tissue. After some thought, I decided with this young poult it was worth trying to roast it whole like a broiler chicken. Short version: it was delightful. Tender and delicious throughout. It had some muscle development in the legs for sure, but they were still cooked just right and eaten as they were. So the goal here is just to be open minded. Gifts often arrive quietly or with nuance.

Separately, I used the giblets to make a fine batch of dirty rice, an offal rice dish [pun intended] from Louisiana. For the giblet-challenged, this is my go-to when attempting a convert. Not sure it’s ever worked, but I keep trying. [Ed. - A convert is when I intentionally get a liver-hater or liver-skeptic to enjoy some liver and they start to eat it on their own without my prompting. I’m about 1-for-24 on converts to date.]

September

“By September, the day breaks with little help from birds. A song sparrow may give a single half-hearted song, a woodcock may twitter overhead en route to his daytime thicket, a barred owl may terminate the night’s argument with one last wavering call, but few other birds have anything to say or sing about.4

Even if the birds are silent, September gives; in September I give. In the beginning of September, before fall, the time given is for teaching. It is a time for careful harvests of our cultivations. It is a time for preservation. It is both a time to be present and a time to bury nuts for the future. It is a time for sharing knowledge, and should we have any at all, a time for sharing wisdom with the curious: our children, our youth, our seekers. Elders are important. In our society, people have lost connection to our elders. We must make time to talk with them, honor them, learn from them. And they must not abdicate their responsibility to those whose future wisdom is within them.

“No man is tired of receiving what is useful. But it is useful to act according to nature. Do not then be tired of receiving what is useful by doing it to others.5

Our club hosts at least one hunter safety class in September, giving young and old a basic understanding of how to be safe while handling firearms in the home, the field and the forest. This year, myself and another instructor [Jerry] I co-teach with, became certified to teach archery safety and as archery range safety officers. Archery is growing in participation amongst active hunters for a variety of reasons, but in large part due to more and more states allowing restricted and unrestricted use of crossbows during their archery hunting seasons. Goal: hold at least one archery safety class and one live archery range day in September. As a bonus, in our club, we’ll likely get support from the membership to purchase some related equipment so that we can leverage our existing archery range for classes.

I make a pilgrimage back to Vermont each September to teach at a specialized Learn to Deer Hunt/Whitetail Weekend camp for aspiring deer hunters. Once you’ve taken an entry-level firearms hunter safety class in Vermont, you get invited to attend [free] 2 1/2 day immersive workshop. It’s held at a conservation camp that the state of Vermont maintains in Hardwick, VT. It’s a special place. 2025 was my 3rd time teaching wild food processing and cooking there. It was the best camp yet. 9 instructors, 24 enthusiastic and motivated participants and perfect weather. This year as a group we made wild game sausage [a regular theme with me.] Everyone was able to take home 3 kinds of sausage we made as a group: black bear sweet and hot Italian sausages and whitetail breakfast sausage. I think that’s right, can’t remember for sure, it was a blur. do you remember?

As a part of the camp, I usually offer a mushroom foraging walk. The camp property surrounds beautiful Buck Lake. It makes a fine “classroom” for budding mycologists. This year, despite the drought in New England, nature delivered for us and we had a good walk and talk. There is a unique mound-in-a-swamp thing there that has produced Matsutake mushrooms during the camp every time I’ve been there in September and it dependably produced again this year. So tasty and a special find to be able to share with the group. We also found ramaria [coral] and armarillia [honey] mushrooms that went along with the moose taco meal we made for dinner as a group. Good times. Goal: go back in 2026. Also, catch more fish while I’m there.

After my adventures in 2025 getting licensed as a Maine Guide, both failed and successful, 2026 goals include working with paid clients for hunting. I’ll be working on my business plans doing the grunt work: insurance, website, marketing, filtering clients, bookings and disciplined scouting work before getting in the field. I will start small, with just a few grouse hunting clients in the fall.

I’m tempted to go for getting some outfitter experience, working as a guide and as a camp cook. When I talk with moose and bear outfitters they usually try to recruit me immediately. Since I love to cook, have a Maine Guide license, have endured many trials-by-fire and can cook in the middle of nowhere in just about any weather, I guess I’m hot stuff. The pay is terrible and the expectations are high. As long as they house me and the dog, pay me at least some money and bring me out for some actual guide time, I’ll probably do it. I’ve heard the non-cash comp is infinite.

September will hopefully see a good amount of preserving going on. Really, canning and pickling and fermenting start in May and continue each month well into October. September is the month I have specific goals this year: fermented mushroom things: a new area for me that I have only a little experience with. Fermented green tomatoes: something I discovered in 2025 that absolutely rocked my world. Local farmers will pretty much give away green tomatoes or make trades or charge silly-low prices. Cut, put in 3-4% salt brine and follow the ferment. So good.

I’d also like to try to ferment some fish sauce. I got a good overview at Friendsgiving with Arthur, so I’m hoping to jar up some salt and fish guts and let ‘er rip. Can’t hurt to try, as long as there’s a lid on it, right?

To wind down this chapter of seasonal food goals: the cured fish and self-caught salt water fish.

I’m going on a sea fishing charter next summer. Inspired by this post by and years of salt water fishing lust [it’s a thing, believe me.] I committed. I’ve got the charter 1/2 full at this point and even if no one else goes, we’re in. In a comment she joked that I shouldn’t be mislead by captains saying mackerel is bait. I’ve been curing and cooking them with love and joy for a while. I’ll just let them captains believe what they want to believe and I’ll just keep making tasty mackerel stuff. Just yesterday I was reading a note with mackerel being roasted hanging over a wood fire, just sea salt and fish—of course now I can’t find it [too bad has no notes search function.] Sure, mackerel are probably not for everybody in this pale, creamy, mild pollack world we live in. Goal: cook more fish and cure more and fish eat more fish, especially mackerel..

So, I went [just a bit] long on this chapter as there were so many memories from 2025 to set goals for 2026. And I put a lot into the photo captions too, hopefully they earned a chuckle or a belly laugh.

This look-back, look-forward exercise is lighting up dark December for me pre-XMAS, I hope you are enjoying it too. I’m thinking about the 2026 class and workshop schedule and I hope you’ll come out and cook, ferment or preserve with me. Maybe even sign up for some guided bird hunting.

Get outside!

Namaste

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

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Eat wild food! Ferment, ferment, ferment. Butter, butter, always butter. 86 McDonalds.

• Eating seasonally

• Preserving through fermentation, canning, drying, freezing

• Harvesting honorably and with due respect from the wilds

• Shopping farmers markets, befriending growers, buying food locally and regionally, talking and sharing with other localvores

• Cooking simply and deliciously without unnecessary complexity

• Providing guidance and instruction to others through workshops, classes and mentoring.

April

“It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them.”1

I sense the arrival of geese with my ears long before I see them. They lift my soul. My ears perk at the first encounter each season. That unmistakeable honk, a cross between a 1930’s wagon horn and squeegee braking on clean glass, shatters my consciousness into spring. Migrating birds are here! Harbingers of hope, Branta canadensis, arrive in formation.

April is a time I want to rely on stored foods. While spring is coming, wild foods are few. I might find some yellow rocket or early dandelions. But using stored foods is the branch goal. Last year while spelunking the chest freezer, my mining efforts were well rewarded. Tongues were hidden in small gaps near the bottom: whitetail, black bear, cattle and beaver. I’m a tongue fan, especially the flavor profiles. Others find the texture a put off. Always wanting to please others, not just myself, I wanted to make them more appealing. So I decided to try corning them.

I’d had corned cattle tongue as a special at Duck Fat in Portland, ME on my most recent visit. The texture was softer and wantingly less granular, certainly more likely to please the finicky. From the corned, steamed and shaved tongues, I made some tacos that were to die for. Goal: corn [and maybe smoke] any shanks and tongues leftover in April.

Other foods in the kitchen: keep up the improvisation with local winter ingredients. I made some GF buckwheat noodles experimentally. They came out pretty good. Put together with some local hoop house pea tendrils, black bear ham from my fall bear and local onion, they made a fine pasta:

Using local spuds, cheese curds, wild turkey leg and corned deer tongue, I made a top poutine. More of this is a target:

And stock making. Here I used wild turkey and mallard duck carcasses to make a poultry stock:

Not too much new on the goal list in April as 2025 was a model year. I hope to be able to use my freezer resources and local winter farmer’s market product again to good use. We do have a local mushroom grower and he produces through most of the winter. He doesn’t get much in January and February, but in March and April he produces oysters and lions manes. Yum.

April is also the month I scout wild turkeys. Here in central Maine, that sometimes means not driving off the road while driving, since turkeys are everywhere as the snow melts. They are tired of buds and dry leaves. An occasional late acorn is not enough. So, mostly I’m just making notes about where they are as the snow melts out. Last year was a longish snowpack, which ended keeping the turkeys lower down the hill than the year before. That made my spots not as populated as the year before during mating and nesting seasons. I ended up without a spring turkey. Hoping things melt out faster so they’re in the fields around my cabin again. Last year I was studying for my guide exams which kept me out of the turkey game more than I’d like. Not this year.

🤞

Other things to focus on are scouting for and checking on plants that we harvest later. Both of my ramp spots were showing towards the 3rd week of April in 2025. Nothing is more uplifting to find a new spot. Even though I have some good spots, new ones are always exciting. Rub the leaf and give a sniff and WOW!!! Besides ramps, I’m seeing ostrich ferns, hesperus, trout lilies

and rhubarb. I feel joy my heart with each find.

May

“In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch. Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies too.”2

Gobble, gobble. By May, the gobbling has started and focus eludes me when I hear those sounds. Outside my cabin are hayfields backed by woods of varying density: prime habitat for wild turkey breeding and nesting. I’ll be drinking my coffee and they start before the sun is up. It’s haunting in the best way. Goal: Take 2 bearded turkeys and guide at least one new hunter to their first [and maybe second.] I’m working on permission to hunt and guide on some new nearby land to improve my options and my clients.

More goals: trout and salmon. And lots of green things: ramps, ostrich ferns, dandelions, rosettes of evening primrose, milkweed shoots. Baking, before it gets too warm. Replenish the stores before the no-bueno baking months.

Teaching: wild greens class. Too many wild green foods to list and so many people just walking right by. Ask yourself this: how many little green plants that grow in May where you live are edible? Why would you want to learn them and harvest them? Do you know them by name? To deepen your awareness, your giving, your reciprocity with nature, don’t you need to know whom you’re reciprocating with? Robin Wall Kimmerer contemplated masterfully how giving name [and/or sex] to other-than-human beings changes our relationship to them/her/him. If you think of a plant as “it” versus “they,” you’re likely to feel less connection. Knowing your plants and fungi and their names will go a long way to deepen your relationship with them. Makes sense, right?

Learning: more about ferns. Last year I started going beyond ostrich fern into lady ferns, wood ferns, bracken ferns. I wan’t to know them better and use them to broaden my cooking repertoire. Variety counts.

Enjoying: Mud. I will play in the rain, wear my boots, laugh in and with the mud.

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

June

“I shall now confess to you that none of those three trout had to be beheaded, or folded double, to fit in their casket. What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory.”3

In June 2025, the magic of fly fishing for trout unclosed itself. The spell transformed my fingers as if petal by petal a magnificent rose opened. What had been Greek and Latin to me, like some indecipherable classic, became a basic understanding of what fly to put where and when. That incomprehensible link between brain and body powered by neurons and intent found function. Fish were caught, thrills were had, memories forged indelibly.

Of course, this year I’m trying to keep my britches on and not let the enemies: thinking too big or being overconfident, become devilish setters of unrealistic expectations. I’ve had a lifetime of trying to grok disappointment and be able to feel it and understand its beauties and pains, but I’m not its master. Goal: improve my fly tying, fly selection and general rod and line handling. And catch more fish. And fish more streams, rivers and ponds.

Disclosure: I’m not a catch and release angler. I like to catch what I want to eat and then stop fishing. We’ll see if as I continue to improve if I take more to catching and releasing fish. It’s a hot topic. Some anglers I know never keep fish unless they have to [injured during landing.] Others keep a few good eaters and release the rest. I’ve met quite a few here in my part of Maine that frown heavily at the idea of letting a good fish go. The debate can be as bad as politics. More on this topic in the future.

Goal: keep cooking fresh fish-simply. Eat more fish.

I want to continue to develop my tailgate camp/cook set up. This is a deep branch of the rabbit burrow. You need only take a few minutes on YouTube to see how deep it goes. For now, I’m doing fine with what I have. Organization is really the challenge, how to keep switching tailgate from load/unload to clean fish, cook fish, eat fish, etc…The 6lb 1gal propane tank is a winner. I got it for ice fishing and it rocks vs the big 20lb for keeping in the truck. If they explode it’s not quite as bad as a 20lb.

Spruce tip soda. I tried a recipe from this year and it was great. My mistake was adding a bit more yeast than I should have and two of the bottles exploded. At least it happened on the floor in the kitchen. I got another tip from to use corks instead of the locking caps. If the fit isn’t crazy tight, the corks should below before the glass breaks. I’m also thinking about trying to find a restaurant that will save sparkling wine bottles for me. By design they are strong. Goal: more natural fun things. I should make more homemade teas: camomile, mint, bramble, nettle. Even if I said “nothing but water, coffee, kombucha.” These are goals, not rules. And since I don’t drink beer or wine, I’m holding a hall pass for an occasional wild flavored beverage.

After reading ’s post about fishing on a charter in Casco Bay [I think it was.] I’ve been rallying the troops to get a charter set up this summer. I’ve got two others lined up and I think if I can get two more, the money and the company are right-sized. Let’s go!

Ocean fishing. Can be rough out there. It’s a whole different ballgame than the Sebago Lake charter we did in 2025, but I’m down. Try new stuff. Goal: catch saltwater fish. Eat some, store some to eat later. Make memories. Get some stories, maybe tell some lies. Take dramamine or similar. Don’t pretend to be tough or have sea legs.

Also, unlike the freshwater fish, saltwater fish can be filleted [even on the boat before reaching the dock] and stored without issue. Yay! From the few charter operators I’ve talked to, it’s part of the trip [tips are separate from the daily fee and expected of course.]

Wild turkey cooking. Goal: teach a class on how to cook utilizing legs, wings and neck. And giblets of course. It pains me deeply when I talk to turkey hunters who breast out their birds. In their defense, it’s true that if you leave the rest in a field or in the woods, it will not go to waste. But to me, why give great food like that to the first eagle, raven, coyote, raccoon, and/or skunk that comes along when a just a little skill and some patience will get you delicious pull-apart slow cooked meat, a delicious broth and you’ll have giblets ready to go for dirty rice. There is no better starting point in my world for dirty rice than wild turkey giblets. I love teaching slow cooking and pressure cooking methods. These are key skills to have when you are buying partial animals from farmers or by hunting game.

Goal: more time outside. Long days allow for outside time just about any day. Humans are designed to interact with “outdoors.” The more the better. June is prime wild greens season, the beginning of mushroom season where I am and wild strawberry season also. So many things out there, I just plan to get out and walk in areas where I know there is wild food and I have permission to harvest. The rest falls in to place naturally. I’m in a conversation of reciprocity with plants, fungi, fish and wildlife—all my relations that I’m connected to and interact with.

When you go out foraging for wild goodies, you might just see something like this:

Or harvest more reishi mushrooms like these:

And find spots to fish like this:

And find gorgeous edibles like this to begin the mushroom harvest season:

Abundance is June. I’ve had to learn to harvest selectively. There is a learning curve in foraging where when become confident in ID, you want to harvest everything that you see that you know. But you shouldn’t. You can quickly get into harvesting more than you can cook, preserve and gift. Then you have the unenviable role of disposer of excess wild harvest. Compost? OK, but doesn’t feel great. Gift to strangers? Good luck with that. Trash? No bueno.

I try to follow an adaptation of the Potawatomi honorable harvest as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her seminal book Braiding Sweetgrass:

• Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.

• Introduce yourself.

• Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.

• Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.

• Never take the first. Never take the last.

• Take only what you need. Take only that which is given.

• Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

• Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully.

• Never waste what you have taken. Share.

• Give thanks for what you have been given.

• Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.

• Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

I really do my best to teach this philosophy as well as practice it. Sometimes I struggle, which I think is normal: what do I do when there is only one? This happens often with mushrooms. You find one porcini, or one hericium, or one American caesar? How do I take half? Or do I not take it because it’s the first one?

I make a choice each time. I think mindful harvest is what matters, even if it’s not exactly as she writes it. I think the internal discussion is the important part of reciprocity in wild harvesting. You are making conscious decisions about every harvested item. Very different than supermarket shopping. Goal: be honorable. Practice reciprocity with all relations, including humans.

Farmers markets start to blow up in a good way in June. Abundance is everywhere. I regularly buy too much. Even with years of experience. I can’t pass up things I should. I like to say that it’s made me a better canner, fermenter and cook, because I end up with too much and will stay in the kitchen for days to avoid waste. It’s a good problem. Goal: reduce over buying and over harvesting in spite of preservation skills. Preserve more and organize stored foods better.

Summary of Part II

Noticing how plants, fungi, fish, birds and animals change and grow and move as the months of the year pass is life. They are my relations. Knowing where they are, how they look, what they are doing in each month, each season is how I build reciprocity. I want to know nature. I am nature. And by committing each year to more deeply knowing the fields, forests, waters and skies, I hope my relations will know me better too.

This is a year to increase our commitments to reciprocity, to honor what supports us and nourishes us and a time we can not waste. Goal: a higher level of commitment to know the natural world and contribute as much as I can to support all my relations that support me.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

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While I’m not really one to make resolutions tied to any calendar or year, I’m drawn to the idea of putting some ideas to print now that we can look back on this time next year. This food focused calendar intends to tease you to follow along while I wander paths in food less traveled. So, let’s call these food directions “branch goals.” I don’t think I need to be “resolved” to accomplish anything specific really, these are smaller rabbit holes off the main hole in the burrow.

I have role models for eating locally and wild. What characterizes their lifeways and foodways? I align with Arthur Haines, who I trained with in 2024. His concept of being neoaboriginal, to move towards being indigenous to place, resonates with me and I model many of my objectives to his concepts.

• Eating seasonally

• Preserving through fermentation, canning, drying, freezing

• Harvesting honorably and with due respect from the wilds

• Shopping farmers markets, befriending growers, buying food locally and regionally, talking and sharing with other localvores

• Cooking simply and deliciously without unnecessary complexity

Eating seasonally is a provocative and decidedly anti-modernity approach to eating. There are some realities in this goal that many find hard to accept. If you want to really eat seasonally, you aren’t going to eat strawberries in winter. Or tomatoes. Definitely not spinach. Modern notions of eating the same mix of “healthy foods” every week, all year is toxic to the environment, burns far too much carbon fuel and likely does not nourish us better than seasonal whole foods eating. Homo sapiens are specifically adapted to eating seasonal foods. We were living in northern climates like Maine long before diesel and power plants made avocados year-round possible. Only really in the 20th and 21st centuries have we moved to eating the same foods year-round.

• Almost no “fresh” fruit or green vegetables in winter and spring

• No berries except a couple of months in summer and fall

• “Fresh” tomatoes only in season

• Few eggs in December when hens molt and need to rest

• Winter is meat, dairy, root vegetables, home canned foods

• Summer is plants, fungi and marine foods

• Drink water, good water. Few other beverages are needed.

Sure, you can freeze berries, can pears and apples, dry figs and grapes and currants. But who does that really? I usually manage to get some blackberries in the freezer and use some Maine wild blueberries that are local and available frozen, but that’s it. Strawberries in May and June.

I’m not one who wants to eat tomatoes in December or navel oranges in July. Goal: eat well. Buy locally and regionally as much as possible. Whole foods and beyond a few condiments, buy nothing with an FDA food label. There will probably be exceptions, but it’s a branch goal, not a test.

I worked with a trainer a while back who gave an hour long presentation on drinking water. Redux: the only beverage adult humans need to drink is water. Fruit juice is no better than soda he said. Or barely better. No manufactured beverages of any kind are worth the downsides: no Coke, no Red Bull, no lemonade, no sweetened cocktails especially. It’s a long list of things. You need only walk the beverage aisle in a supermarket. None of that he said. I’m on the program.

A few things that may make sense depending on your lifestyle: whole milk, tea, coffee, beer, wine, mead, kombucha. But again he argued, in very limited amounts ok, but for maximum health you are probably better without. I drink coffee, a few times a month tea and on special occasions such as coffee in the afternoon and chocolate: milk. I drink and use 5-6% raw whole milk only.

January

January brings us a higher sun than December, longer days and vignettes facing warmer times ahead. But within it, wrapping our arms around our loves, our dogs, the warmth of our shelters, we alight our inner fires. While snowflakes carefully everywhere descend quiet moments come when not for the wind. Time for books and dreams and planning are to be had. Goal: focus on planning and dreaming and eating winter food.

Exploring ponds in central Maine for ice fishing surely has produced some great adventures. This year, I caught and cooked some delicious fish. I plan to try to catch more next year armed with warmer boots, refined equipment set ups and hopefully better patience. Also, no buying, just refining with last year’s gear.

Revelation: I learned last year that ice fishing traps can fly. I had caught a fish and got it out of the water when another flag went up. I left the first fish on the ice and went to the second flag. I lost that second fish while bringing it in. I looked up and saw the first trap “flying by” bouncing occasionally off the snow and traveling at high speed through the air. A bald eagle had flown in and took the first fish off the ice that was still attached to the fishing trap. True story. I recovered the trap after a flight of about a quarter mile and repaired it. It was a lesson. And to make the lesson more poignant, I’d been warned in advance about that pond and the sneaky and hungry eagles there.

In other news, Maine has expanded the grey squirrel hunting season to include January and we’ll be taking advantage to get out in the woods to hunt, me and the dog. Goal: get a squirrel while on snowshoes with the pup.

In recent years I’ve come to realize that I’m a better canner of soup than eater. My goal is to eat more soup and free up some jars! Yum. Yeah, I’d rather do more work and cook from scratch vs open a can, heat and eat. Duh. Branch goal: eat more canned food.

February

My birthday month is short in length, but long on memories. There are old good memories and recent good memories. Sliding on snow with skis or snowboard, snowshoeing, sledding: these are tools of joy in winter. They’ve made my life greater and happier in nearly every February. California years were biking and climbing, getting high in the mountains and valleys and fields. Receiving the blessings of winter makes this month divine, religious and ceremonial. I’ll make a fire to honor my connection to everything inside and out.

I can be grumpy. A curmudgeon. A hermit. Winters are long where I live now in Maine. Goal: get sun out in the snow as much as possible. Pup is in full agreement. He’ll go full gas at -5F, winds NW 25mph. I’m cowering under blankets, need to get my ass up and out with him. [He proved this to me today, 16F, winds NW 25-45, bitter, even in the woods, pup: hold my beer]

More ice fishing. I need to get some ice fishing cohorts this year. It’s much easier to freeze your ass off when others are freezing along with you. Downside: it does make it harder to tell lies about the fish you caught [or didn’t catch.] Goal: find suckers, um, I mean friends, to fish with.

I’ve been wanting to catch a cusk/burbot/ling cod for many years. Generally they are caught at night in this part of the world. So it’s a commitment to get some serious shelter, some nutty friends and some hot coffee in a vacuum bottle and settle in for the night. It is legal to build fires on the ice in Maine, you just have to make sure they are out when you leave. I know some good spots, just need to get the knuckleheads to commit.

I’ve heard cusk called “poor man’s lobster,” but my general rule in food is: cook it myself and then decide. I like my lobster for sure, but I’m really hoping cusk has it’s own flavor and rewards. If it tastes just like lobster I’ll be disappointed. Branch goal: get a cusk or 12.

I’d love to teach another Women’s Outdoor Skills Wild Food Cooking workshop again this year. Last year, on my birthday in February I did a workshop with a group of women outside around campfire. They cooked splake [brook trout/lake trout hybrid], black bear, whitetail deer and raccoon sausage. They rocked it. Women and camp cooking are always a winning combination. Good times. The fire and lack of major wind made it all possible.

What I need to do is set a schedule for the year for teaching cooking. In 2025, I said yes too often to teaching and got a bit burned out. Goal: set limits, pick the best events, make a rough schedule. Learn to say “no.”

March

Longish days and high angled sun bring hope. Yet sometimes that hope is undermined by snowstorms and cotton-wool and sometimes epic rain. I adventure with the dog as long as he wants to stay out, motivated to burn free of my winter cobwebs. Though the gusts from the northwest still gale away, a bared cheek no longer is frostbite-adjacent. It’s a time to be thankful for harvests preserved; efforts from seasons past prove saving for the future a noble and nourishing commitment.

In 2026, I want to cure more fish caught through the ice. I’ve had good success making cured lake trout, salmon, brook trout and pike. Smoking fish is great, but setting up and running a smoker in March ain’t no walk in the park. Curing is almost as rewarding and no going outside required. I also still have lake trout [called togue heeyuh in Maine, yuht yuht] from the epic trip to Sebago Lake last summer. Need to move through those and make room in the chest freezer. Branch goal: continue to empty the freezer and cure more fish.

Note: here in Maine, all freshwater fish held in possession are required by regulation to be stored at full length with head and tail on. I.e. the fish take up a lot of space. They cannot be filleted. I’m a hater of this regulation, but as a Registered Maine Guide and Instructor, my hands are tied. I’m hoping to get a permit to hold more. Example: If I catch 2 trout and want to use them for a cooking class, I’m not allowed to catch any more. The possession limit equals the daily limit. Grrrrrh. Stay tuned.

Using up preserved foods is both a joy and a priority. I’ve got to do better at making room in the freezers as spring approaches. This year going into deer season my freezers were pretty much full. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t kill one.

In other news: who knew that pickled ostrich fern fiddleheads would be so good on pizza? No better use for whitetail Italian sausage than on a later-winter pie, right? Goal: freezer burn down, make space.

Baking for the future is something I do a lot of. After my cathartic awaking in the bread aisle of the supermarket years ago, I determined that if I want to eat breads and bread-adjacent foods, I’d have to make them from scratch. No corn-syrup, wheat gluten, enriched bleached flourlike powders. No more of that.

At first it was just bread, but then bagels and buns and english muffins and pita bread and naan and now tortillas. Net effect: decreased net and gross consumption of grains through a reduced willingness to make a mess in the kitchen and to have to package for the freezer. And because I appreciate bread so much more when I’ve done all the work to make it, bake it and pack it. For real. Goal: keep freezer stocked with homemade grain products.

Koji. I’ve developed a comfort with lacto-fermentation and yeast fermentation. I want to move into koji fermentation. Grains and pulses ferment into magically delicious things this way. I have yet to get on the bandwagon: Action goal: koji.

Coming up in Part II: April, May, June. As things thaw and the sun starts to warm the earth, green things happen, wild foods emerge, anticipation builds. It’s hard not to get ahead of yourself. Staying present in the the season is key. Here in Maine we call this mud season.

Thank you for your continued support of On Food Without Compromise.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

Subscribe now

If you look at cookbooks like Escoffier, Larousse and the like, stock has really been a base for making sauces in continental cooking, not dishes so much. But over time, regional cuisines around the world have adapted variations on the method of using aromatic vegetables and their trimmings, sea plants, herbs, spices and where appropriate, bones, shells and meat from seafood, poultry and livestock. Now you’ll see soups, stews, ragouts, pastas, grains and more with stock as a foundation in most regional cuisines. As a complement, you’ll find many revered and foundational cookbooks include methods for stock.

Basic Stock at Home

In the home kitchen, practically, it’s pretty easy to be accumulating your vegetables for most stocks. You can grow or buy aromatics for stock making, but many of us are producing vegetable trimmings in our cooking that can be used for stock instead of compost [or worse the trash bin.] I learned from watching Jacques Pépin and an ex partner who was a skilled cook, to keep a gallon bag in the freezer. Things that go in my stock bag:

1. Any allium: garlic, onion, scallion, leek, shallot: save the removed ends and papers in the bag.

2. Carrot ends, celery ends, celery root, parsnips

3. Parsley stems, ground elder stems, bases of non-bitter lettuce.

4. Corn cobs

5. Egg shells - primarily a calcium and mineral enhancement. I’ve seen some suggestion that if you use a lot of them and they retain egg whites that you can get some clarification if you manage your simmer carefully…TBD.

6. Maybe: turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, burdock root, wild carrot, evening primrose root

7. No-go: bell peppers, bitter green bases, cabbages, kale, chard etc,…[Per K. Paul, Joe Beef, Escoffier] hot peppers, radishes, beans, peas.

I’ll usually let the bag accumulate for some time unless I need some vegetable stock. Usually the trigger to make a stock is when I cook meat or poultry with bones. Occasionally I’ll use fish spines, fins, collars to make fish stock.

For meat stocks and poultry stocks, methods and ingredients can be as complicated as you want to make them. I looked at Escoffier, Larousse, Joe Beef, Joy of Cooking [c. 1975 and c. 1944,] L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook and K. Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen to prepare for this post.

Method

Here is a simplified digest:

1. Roast bones.

   1. If you say, roast a grouse, turkey, chicken or pheasant, use the carcass, necks, backs, cleaned gizzards, hearts. I use the bones from the edible parts, do what you’re comfortable with. They don’t need to be roasted again. Use wings if you don’t eat them. [Ed. - I sometimes go straight to the stock pot with wings, less than in the past, but sometimes I’m admittedly a tad lazy and wings are highly overrated.]

   2. If you bone out your meat or poultry before cooking, it’s worth browning the bones and any remaining trim before going in the pot with the aromatics.

2. Use poultry feet. They are really high in collagen and will add richness and gelatinous-ness to your stock. They often are priced well from farmers at farmers markets, when I find supermarket feet and they look gross and they are expensive….

3. Fill large stock pot with bones, feet, carcasses any random meat trimmings you have. [I often break carcasses down so I can use less water to cover everything and less space.]

4. Note: If you are hoping to get maximum extraction from bones and parts by simmering for more than 90 mins - 2 hours, I recommend leaving out your aromatics [veggies] and herbs until the last 90 minutes. Otherwise you can get bitterness and muddiness in your finished stock. You can put it all in together and cook for 2 hours and get a great result.

5. Add aromatics, herbs. Some like to add bay leaf, a few peppercorns, a single clove or two. I feel that level of seasoning gets lost as I use my stock to make rice, farro, bulgur, soups, risotto, paella, gumbo etc,…If you are going the sauce route with your stock those more subtle spices may be worth it.

6. Cover all with water. I like to just cover everything. I’ll usually add more hot water from my electric kettle to make up for evaporation, rather than start with excess. You can learn your own method for this.

7. Bring to a quick near-boil, skim and turn down. Purists will say boiling moves the water around and contributes to a cloudy stock. This is probably true. Again, since I’m not after consommé or fine sauces, it’s not too important. But if you want to be pro, only go to a near-boil.

8. Skim quickly.

9. Simmer. Up to 2 hours with aromatics, up to 24 hours or even more with just bones/meat trim. Add aromatics at the end.

   

10. Cool until safe to handle and strain.

11. Tip from if you have fat floating on the top of your stock, you can cool it in the refrigerator overnight. This will allow you to “peel” the layer off the next day when it has set.

12. Store using method for your planned purpose: glass, plastic, freezer trays, canning jars. I’ll sometimes strain it right into a pot and make rice or bulgur to save cleanup.

    

I find stock in clean glass containers will keep up to a week and a half in the fridge. When frozen, for months. Know that if you leave stock in ice cube trays it will tend to evaporate [shrink.] The jury is out on whether that is a reduction or a loss. When I’m going to freeze, I usually reduce the stock by half first, then freeze. I then pop the cubes out of the trays into freezer bags or tubes to prevent evaporation.

Random Obiter Dicta

• For fish stocks and white poultry stock, I was trained not to use carrots due to the color they add. That was fairly traditional French training. I find carrots in the recipes in Escoffier and Larousse, so go figure. If you have carrots and want to use them there, do it.

• The awesome brown gold color of the stock about is in large part from the yellow onion paper. Not so much other onions. If you love that color, buy yellow onions and save the skins and ends. True story.

• You don’t need all the stuff. If you only have onion papers and maybe some carrots and parsley, that will make a vegetable stock that is far better than none at all. Just build the habit of accumulating stuff in your freezer bag and you’ll learn what is needed over time.

• has an excellent post on making chicken stock that uses no aromatics at all. Note it is a paid post. He’s worth at least a month or better yet a year subscription, especially if you want to know he’s struggling in Finnish class and can’t donate blood because he’s a Brit.

• For meat stocks that are destined for reduced sauces or stews, consider adding tomato paste or whole tomatoes. Once tomatoes cook for some time they get cararmelly-delish and add a lot to your end product. Go sparingly until you get the hang of it. You probably don’t want to make tomato sauce from your long simmered stock

• As much as I despise the term “bone broth,” I have decided to recognize it as a distinct thing, different from both stock and broth. I came to this acceptance thanks to this superb overview from Chelsea Green Publishing: Fundamentals of Stocks and Broths1

Here is a list of reference cookbooks and links. Most of these can be had used for a lot less. I included links for new versions where I could find them. I despise the modern versions of the “Joy” because I don’t use a microwave, food processor [at the moment] or have much interest in shortcuts as I call them. A lot recipes I’m interested in are not in the newer version, they’ve “upgraded” to include more “trendy diet food” and removed classic that I care about. Things change. It is what it is.

1. The Escoffier Cookbook

2. Larousse Gastronomique

3. Surviving the Apocalypse, Joe Beef

4. Joy of Cooking, just get a version 1975 or before off eBay. I think the more recent ones are coyote poop.

5. Louisiana Kitchen, Paul Prudhomme

6. L. L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook I recommend this for so many reasons. Can be had cheap on eBay. The cookbook is ordered by animal, fish etc,… and the section intros are worth the price of the book, even without the recipes. Seriously.

You can’t go wrong with stock. And it’s easy to learn. It’s a tool in the home cook’s arsenal that adds flavor and nourishment everywhere it goes.

I almost forgot to mention. Stocks are really made almost entirely from leftovers. They are a way of getting every little bit of flavor and nourishment from food that otherwise might go to compost or worse to waste. One of the best upcycling tools we have in the kitchen.

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wandering away from supermarkets and into local and wild food. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods leftovers and reheat or reinvent them in something new. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Subscribe now

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

I’ve been known to host a kick-ass dinner party. Food and beverage and conversation for hours. We always end up in the kitchen. Me: I love to host; I love to be a guest. At least as long as we’re eating well. Please, no jalapeño poppers! For most of my life I assumed just about everybody liked eating and socializing around food and other people.

What better way is there to enjoy the company of family, friends and colleagues, right? Good food, good beer, good wine, mocktails, cocktails, oysters, caviar???

I’ve been restaurant engaged or adjacent much of my working life. So the hosting, cooking and serving are all natural to me. Even clean up is something I don’t hate. I don’t feel much pressure when I host and I certainly think I’m a pro as a guest. Most people I’ve been friends with and my family are good around food and beverage too. So I’m biased.

But even amongst my peer group, over time I’ve noticed a decline in potlucks, dinner parties, eating food in groups at restaurants, picnics…all of those foodie groupie kind of things.

Since the dawn of the smartphone age, not so much the internet age which started about a decade earlier, our “atomization” has increased. It’s as if our social molecules have been overstimulated, causing the electrons [us] to become ionized. We’re all zooming around overstimulated, the forces that previously bonded us shattered by our energy level. Maybe I should say “entropy.”

Do our digital lifestyles cause social entropy?

Atomization

We know that commensality is in decline. I wonder if this an analog to cultural decline? Homo sapiens developed language and communities in part to make the taking of animals and sharing of food more effective.

At this point in history, we have an abundance of food in North America. Is our technology and ease of meeting basic needs causing us to become atomized? Are we losing our common language and community because we’ve lost our connection to each other through food? Are we so self-absorbed that we’d rather eat alone with an iPad or a movie than sit with family or friends and talk?

Do people really prefer to eat looking at their phones instead of talking with their family, their relatives, their friends? How did this become acceptable? Culturally, in America, the decline in sharing meals aligns with our focus on the individual, the disappearing nuclear family, the diverging of foodways.

Academically, debate rages as the topic is subjected to probing study: is the dinner table a center of dysfunctionality, discomfort and abuse? Is eating together valuable for everyone?1 Does cultural development and sustainability depend on commensality? Do the incompatible foodways of family members make eating alone appropriate? I mean, if one kid is vegan, is that a good reason for them not to eat with the rest of the family who are having cheeseburgers? I have so many questions. So few answers.

I’ve read essays saying that nuclear families and eating together are elitist concepts that have run their course. That these “conventions” reinforce stereotypes that justify continued oppression of women, minorities, single-parents etc,…

Times Change

Maybe it’s generational. Technically, I’m a first year gen X. My family ate together a lot, especially at dinner time. As far as I knew, most of my peers’ families did too. In my family, we got along pretty well. Sometimes things that were tough got worked out at dinner, but usually it happened before. So by the time we sat down, there wasn’t much tension.

We ate well. Not fancy. But good quality food, from scratch, from whole foods. Sure “TV dinners” a few times a year. Ginger ale when you were sick, with saltines. By the time I was in high school, both of my parents and my sister would alternate making dinners. I was becoming a serious cook by then too.

I really liked eating as a family. By college, eating on the fly, often alone, I missed family meals. I went to college in the same town where my family lived.

Some Numbers

Statistics show that in recent history all of the following are growing:

1. % of households with 1 person

2. sq feet of space per person in their household

3. % of meals eaten in the car

4. % of ultra processed food eaten

5. % of family meals served where people are eating different things

6. % of common family meals that are eaten alone in bedrooms, living rooms etc,…vs sitting and eating together

I’ve intentionally left out the current numbers as well as an analyses of the trends. Do some internet searches if you want to know how bad these trends are.

Surely these are factors in the decline of commensality. Almost all of us, myself included, spend more and more time alone than we once did. And we spend more and more time connected to machines instead, presumably doing things we “prefer” to spending time with other humans.

Lines in the Sand

Here are a few thoughts:

1. Cooking, eating together and cleaning up require manual work, mental work, emotional work. No digital filters to make things look better, sound better, feel better.

2. Face to face takes energy, work if you will. Eating while texting with a “friend” ain’t the same.

3. When live conversation happens and people are really listening, food is eaten more slowly. More water/beverage is consumed. Digestion is improved. You can research this.

4. Eating by oneself encourages eating too fast, not chewing enough, rushing to finish so you can engage with whatever besides your nourishment.

5. You enjoy your food a lot less when you eat by yourself.

6. If you’re eating someone’s handmade food by yourself, you can’t ask about it, can’t hear their food stories, or thank them in the moment.

Ideas

I think we can make eating together fun, valuable, nourishing and important. It only really takes work. There’s no free lunch in every sense. Make the effort to take every opportunity to add people to your meals. Be bold and invite yourself to eat with others—seriously. Create events: potlucks, fund raisers, cultural celebrations, holiday meals. Don’t fall into the trap of using fatigue as an excuse to eat alone.

Sure, don’t invite mortal enemies, tormentors or your recent ex. That’s not the best way to have a good time eating or socially. But you should challenge yourself to increase your social ties at mealtime. I know that may seem hard in this day and age. But we need interaction in person. We need new perspectives, discussion, even disagreements.

I am committing to host a few potlucks, cooking classes and workshops this year that have a specific “eating together” element. I’ll be making strangers cook and eat together while they learn. And they’ll be talking about food, food stories and their stories.

I’ve been surprised when teaching classes that a common curiosity in food that people don’t have experience with creates conversation and interaction. When the food at hand is all too familiar, I don’t really see these kinds of communication and connection happening.

What does this mean? Maybe what we need is to shake up our food. Not just try to get people together to eat what we all know. Instead, make unusual or uncommon food the centerpiece. Wild foods, foods from far away cultures, fermented foods—whatever it takes to create real curiosity. Maybe even a little discomfort helps. I am always trying to get people to taste foods they have little or no experience with. It’s hard for someone to say “I don’t like xxx” when they have never had “xxx” right?

Moving Forward

I have no idea what the future holds for families, friends and feeding. I don’t know whether we’ll all be in pods with virtual reality headsets and feeding tubes or in the Matrix or sitting around fires eating roasted fresh caught fish and rabbits.

I’m no prophet.

But I know this:

When a group eats food, together, and there is a powerful story with it: the nourishment, the moment, the place, the people are bonded by the experience and the memory. The electrons are no longer ionized, the molecule comes together as intended. We are wired for connection.

Summary

We are in the holiday season, one of the best times for making memories. Try to be present, honor your family and friends. Take time to tell the whole story of the nourishment in front of you. Make it ceremonial. Talk more, eat slowly, drink water. Be together. Be thankful.

Celebrate commensality!

Happy Holidays, your correspondent

JG

As always, thank you for reading my food pandering and my wanderings away from supermarkets and into local and wild food worlds. It inspires me that people follow me and subscribe. Know that I am honored by your attention and feel blessed too.

Start with whole foods and cook them yourself. Or sucker your children into cooking like my mom did. Eat slowly, together mostly and deeply enjoy your food—no matter what the rest of the world thinks. Food is life.

Good cooking, good eating, good loving - K. Paul

Happy cooking - Jacques Pépin

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