Living off the Land

Travelling by car or on foot, it seems to me, there's plenty of stuff out there to keep us fed and alive if we want to actually scrape it up off the ground and eat it.

While driving the backroads of Markdale, I came across three small pumpkins along the side of a road where they'd obviously fallen from a wagon, so I took them home and made a delicious pie out of one of them. I still have the other two which will yield me a couple of equally tasty desserts.

On a walking trail through the woods, my wife and I stumbled upon a giant puffball -- about 5 of them, actually -- and all in plain view. Never having seen one in person before, I'd only heard about them as a very large and edible member of the mushroom family.

They are quite strange. They feel like a big rubber ball and when you cut through them, they are like a solid mushroom -- all flesh, pristine and white. They are covered with a skin that peels like latex.

Not knowing what to do with this enormous fungus, I searched the internet to find a recipe that could use up a few pounds of this stuff. I found directions for a potato puffball soup, "Perfect," I thought, as my wife had just harvested some fresh potatoes from the garden.

Puffball and Potato Soup

3 tablespoons olive oil -- (45 mL)
2 tablespoons butter -- (30 mL)
4 medium potatoes -- diced
1 large onion -- roughly chopped
4 cups diced giant puffball mushroom -- (1 liter) diced
1 teaspoon kosher salt -- (5 mL)
Milled pepper to taste
2 sprigs fresh tarragon -- leaves only, minced
3 dashes Jalapeno pepper sauce -- or to taste
3 garlic cloves -- minced
1/2 cup all-purpose flour -- (125 mL)
4 cups chicken stock -- (1 liter)
3 cups 2% milk -- (750 mL)
1/2 cup canned milk -- (125 mL)
[not sweetened]
1/4 cup dry sherry -- (60 mL)

Please note that all quantities are approximate and to taste - this is
just a soup, not rocket science.

Heat a large pot; add the oil and butter. When sizzling toss in the diced
potatoes. Cook, stirring, until the potatoes are partially cooked then add
the chopped onions and diced mushrooms. Cook, stirring frequently, until
the onions are translucent and the potatoes test just cooked. Add the
salt, pepper, tarragon (optional), jalapeno sauce and garlic. Stir in the
flour until everything is coated then add the chicken stock. Bring back to
the simmer for a few minutes and cook until it thickens up. Add the milk;
stir. Bring back to just starting to simmer and add the sherry. Give it a
final stir and remove from the heat.

Serve in bowls with a garnish of minced green onion or chives and some
parsley if desired.

Serves 4 generously.

You can also slice them like steaks and grill them with butter, salt and garlic or use them like I did in any recipe that uses mushrooms as an ingredient. They don't have much taste but they are full of nutrients and take on the flavor of whatever you cook them with.

The potato puffball soup I made was delicious and we didn't have any psychadellic reaction to it at all. You have to eat them when they're immature like the one we found. When they mature, they get a little brown and crusty and contain millions of spores inside them. If you see one like this, you can run up and kick it like a football causing it to explode and all the spores to be released. (I've never done this, of course, but I read about it on the internet and you must believe everything you read on the internet.)

If you're not sure about it, you shouldn't eat it but there's something very organic about getting your sustenance from the land and you gotta love free food! I feel like some kind of mountain man, living off the scavenges of the trails and roadways near my home. The next step for me is to get more proactive about it and not rely on accidentally finding my food. I don't own a gun so I'll have to go out and catch a deer with my bare hands, club it to death with my shoe and drag it home for supper. Or maybe that's a little beyond me just yet.