You know Purple Asparagus wraps up their mission statement in a few sentences. “A non-profit dedicated to bringing families back to the table by promoting and enjoying all the things associated with good eating,” but when you see all the places Melissa and Purple Asparagus are, you know it is more than that.  They are crusading for healthy schools and promoting sustainable, local living.  Sure, they have programs, but especially, they are about being out there, meeting, teaching, providing a face for positive change.  To help keep all these things happening, Purple Asparagus holds a yearly fundraiser at UnCommon Ground called Corks and Crayons.

Corks and Crayons gives you a chance to meet Melissa and all the others involved with Purple Asparagus.  It gives you a chance to taste the delicious food of UnCommon Ground and see the amazing roof-top garden there, and it gives you a chance to bid on some fantastic (and very usable) items with their silent auction.  It also gives you a chance to support Purple Asparagus.

It’s Sunday, August 29 from 4 – 7 PM.  Go here to get your tickets (now).

After Alderman Gene Schulter’s office stepped in to explain to the department that the family was not selling the produce (for which they’d apparently need a license), the department shot back that, regardless, it was illegal for them to “warehouse” the CSA boxes at their home.

If your mouth is agape at the City’s attempt to stop the distribution of vegetables — yes, vegetables — to families who subscribe to this CSA, you’ll be relieved to know that they seemed to have done an about-face, and have since withdrawn the cease-and-desist order. Hopefully this ends this embarrassing episode for food regulation enforcement by the City of Chicago.

The event starts in Chicago with a pre-event local snack and beverage tasting at Green Grocer Chicago (1402 West Grand Avenue). A shuttle bus will transport Chicago residents to the event. The dinner will feature cocktails from Death’s Door Spirits, and attendees are also welcome to BYOB to enjoy with your meal. Vegetarian menu is available. For further information and to purchase tickets, visit http://www.learngrowconnect.org/farmdinner.

I tried to explain that charm to my wife.  See, you could eat apples all year long, but you could only eat these apples now.  Two things make a summer apple.  First, they possess bright, sharp, especially intense flavors, not really found in later ripening apples.  These are the citrus crop of apples so to speak.  Second, they are not built for lasting.  You cannot find a cold spot and keep your lodi, your transparent, around.  You need to eat them now.  Need more?  When ever we need apple info, we go to the Vintage Virginia apple site.  They say this about the yellow transparent:

YELLOW TRANSPARENT has the synonyms Grand Sultan, White Transparent, Russian Transparent and Early Transparent. It originated in Russia or one of the Baltic States and was introduced into Europe in the early 1800s, and into the United States in 1870. Medium in size and round in shape, the smooth skin is a greenish-white that ripens to a pale-yellow with inconspicuous dots, russet or green in color. The white flesh is crisp and juicy with an acid flavor. Refreshing, well-flavored, soft, pale-cream flesh, whose acidity can make it too sharp for some tastes. Cooks to a cream puree, sweet, balanced, flavorsome. The medium-sized tree grows upright and vigorously and is exceptionally hardy, with short and crooked branches that are heavily spurred. The oval to ovate shaped leaves are medium to yellowish-green with dull serrations. Yellow Transparent is subject to both scab and fireblight. The fruit is easily bruised, and thinning is necessary to increase the size. It will store for only a few weeks, and ripens in late June and early July over a 3 to 4 week period.

Or not.  Summer apples are classically made into apple sauce.  They may be sauce apples because of how quickly they go soft, but they are also sauce apples because of their complex flavors stand up to saucing.  Remember, you can freeze apple sauce as well as can it for a taste of summer, apple style.  We should say buy local apples now.

Summer apples are one of those things you pretty much have to go to a farmer’s market to find, but you can find them around town now.  Eat local apples all the time.

It would not be a Seven Generations Ahead event if it was just about beer.  Putting their commitment to green living forward, they are making sure that micro-waste goes with micro-brews.   Only Seven Generations Ahead has pulled off a zero waste event at an event like this.  Come for the beer, stay for an education in reducing your footprint.

We cannot resist all those local beers, and we cannot resist a cause like Seven Generations.  See you in Oak Park on August 21.

Caputo’s – Usually your best place to get local foods in a grocery store, advertises no local food

Ultra Foods – No local food

Food4Less – No local food

Jewel – Plenty of local food

• Michigan blueberries
• Michigan celery
• Michigan green peppers
• Michigan cucumbers
• Illinois herbs
• Illinois mushrooms
• Illinois corn
• Indiana watermelon

Dominick’s – One indeterminate local item

• Summer squash (yellow crookneck and zucchini)

The inaugural year of the Forest Park Farmers Market is in full swing!

Billed as “Friday Night Fun”, the market is the only one in the Chicago area that runs on Friday evenings.

In addition to emphasizing local farmers and food artisans from the 4-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, the primary mission of the market is funding and stocking the Forest Park Food Pantry.  The food pantry has seen a huge uptick in demand over the past two years, and has struggled to provide fresh food and produce to its patrons.  Part of the vendor fee is a per-market donation of $10 worth of fresh product, which has been a boon for the food pantry and very well received by its patrons.

With over 20 vendors, the market offers everything from knife sharpening to gourmet chocolates and ice cream, to the locally-famous Mirai Sweet Corn from Twin Garden Farms.  Meat, eggs, milk, bread, fresh fruits and veggies, pasta and sauces, honey, tomato and mushroom products, caramel corn and organic skincare products round out the assortment.  The Farmers Market Grill serves up burgers, brats, kebabs and other goodies supplied by the vendors.  All Grill proceeds benefit the Forest Park Food Pantry.

The market runs every other Friday, June 4 – October 22 from 3:30 pm to 7:30 pm at the parking lot of the Howard Mohr Community Center, 7640 Jackson Blvd.  The next market date is Friday, July 30^th.  At the corner of Jackson Blvd and Des Plaines Ave., the market is also conveniently located one block North of the Forest Park stop of the Blue Line.

For more information, search for ‘Forest Park Farmers Market’ on Facebook, or call 708-771-7737

Fungal Abundance

Foraging for Mushrooms in Western Michigan

The whirring of annual cicadas fills the air and monarchs flitter about the garden. The table is piled with voluptuous peaches and tomatoes. It’s the time of the season we around here call “deep summer”. It’s the time when the land is expressing itself in ripe displays of abundance. Edible mushrooms are popping up in spectacular numbers. Mushrooms are actually the fruiting sexual organs of unseemly vast and complex organisms that primarily exist as networks of silky webbing called mycelium which are embedded in decaying organic matter. Fungus for much of its lifespan is invisible to our immediate sight. The mushrooming season started somewhat slowly this year with an unseasonably hot spring which was not suitable conditions for a fruitful morel harvest. In central Illinois I found flushes of blown out and rotting morels in mid-May. There was almost nothing to speak of growing here in Saugatuck, Michigan. I would find sporadic and isolated oyster mushrooms through June as well as a few non-edible, but ethnobiologically significant species such as reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) and Amanita muscaria. Last summer, being on the cool and damp side, yielded an earlier season for chicken-of-the-woods and large flushes of oysters. This summer has been hot and of recent, quite damp. So finally, early last week, the woods blossomed in a brilliant display of fungal fecundity.

I have been mushrooming for only about two years. My good friend and fellow cook, Mikey Henderberg has been at it for awhile and my inner nerdy science kid was definitely intrigued by the far out curiosity of the specimens he’d haul in from the woods. It wasn’t until I tasted my first batch of deeply savory and earthy sautéed hen of the woods mushrooms that it actually occurred to me that I could go out and find my own free gourmet shrooms. Its really the perfect hobby for me, a crossroads of my interests in culinary exotica, poking around the woods, and my aforementioned fascination with biological taxonomy. I am incredibly fortunate to spend my summers in Western Michigan on 120 acres of pristine virgin mixed forests and sand dunes. Collecting wild mushrooms is unfortunately illegal in Cook County and surrounding counties, so I’d be out of luck if I didn’t migrate north in the summertime.

As for this year’s mid-summer cast of characters: its always the chicken of the woods, aka sulfur shelf (Lactiporus sulphureus) that first piques our interest in scouring the woods for other things. In general, we play it fairly safe when gathering mushrooms for culinary purposes, avoiding cap and stem mushrooms with gills, which comprise the majority of mushroom species including most of the seriously poisonous ones. We stick primarily to polypore funguses, which release their spores from pores rather than gills. Many of these mushrooms grow in easy-to-identify shelf- like clusters on dead or dying wood. “Chicken” is the perfect beginner’s edible mushroom forage as it is dead easy to identify with its neon yellow and orange coloration and otherworldly polyp- like appearance. They grow on dead hard wood, typically already felled trees. They can be common on cut logs or stumps and can be found in suburban lawns and even in city parks. This mushroom has an intense, umami rich flavor but a texture that is rather dry, especially as it matures. Young specimens are knobby and yellow, the orange color develops as they age. These young tender mushrooms are most desirable for eating. In older specimens you can trim away the more tender outer growth and save the woody interior for stock. Like most wild mushrooms, I like to prepare them simply by sautéeing them in butter with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper, eaten on toast. The dry flesh of the chicken mushroom benefits from a splash of cream, wine, or liquor in the pan. We also throw them in soup stocks or thinly sliced in miso soup. Vegan friends of mine love a chicken-of-the-woods noodle soup. We have had pretty good luck this season so far.with this mushroom. Another co-worker, Erin, who knows the greater area around here and its woods quite well hauled in a bounty of probably about ten pounds of tender young growth earlier in the week.

Boletes are cap and stem mushrooms that release their spores from sponge-like pores from the underside of their caps. There are very few, if any, reported findings of poisonous boletes in the Eastern states, which makes them a safe bet for foraging to eat. It is a diverse and expansive family of mushrooms, the most famous of which is the king bolete, also known as the porcini or cep, one of the most esteemed and expensive culinary mushrooms. I have found only one king bolete so far in my foraging career up in Northern Wisconsin. But this year around here a wide variety of boletes have been popping up and I’ve been collecting them and cooking them up. I have found numerous chestnut boletes (Gyroporus castaneus) which have a buff colored cap that flips from convex to concave as it ages. I’ve found that boletes are quite delicate mushrooms that are also enjoyed by the many critters of the woods. So, while I’ve found them in ubiquitous numbers, many times they are nibbled upon or past their edibility prime. These chestnut boletes, in particular, take on a bitter, medicinal taste in older, drier, and concave specimens. The very young little guys have deep flavor that goes a long way, I have prepared them mixed with more mild species. I also have found red capped boletes (Boletus rubellus), which have a pronounced color as to their namesake. The undercap has an olive green to yellow color that bruises blue with even a faint touch. They are quite psychedelic looking after having been handled and sliced up. These mushrooms are quite delicious with a sweet flavor that yields a minerally aftertaste. Again, I saute these and eat them simply. When trying new mushrooms, I skip butter and use a more neutral light olive oil. Once I become more acquainted with their flavors I may eat them with a fried egg, in an omelet, or tossed with pasta. I tend to pair wild mushrooms with mild ingredients to let their flavors shine. Stronger mushrooms can stand up to the tang of  finely grated hard cheeses. A few days ago I made an astonishing discovery deep in the woods of a freakish new-to-me specie of bolete, the old man of the woods (Strobilomyces floccopus). These guys stand on tall stems and have a very dark, shaggy, almost primordial look to them. I recognized them from my field guide immediately and knew that they were edible. Like other boletes, they cook up somewhat on the wet side. Their grey flesh bruises almost black and when sliced up and cooked they take on an inky appearance. Their flavor is actually of the more subtle in my adventures cooking various new boletes. 

As much as I love cooking and eating mushrooms, the thrill is in the discovery- finding diversely eccentric fungal fruits which may provide a rarified eating experience back in the kitchen. Its looking like a great season already, Mikey just pulled in basketful of fresh oysters. As the season matures, I will report my findings. I anxiously await seafoody lion’s mane mushrooms and my favorite of all, deeply savory and wonderfully textured hen-of-the-woods mushrooms.

Eric May is a Chicago-based artist and the head chef of Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist’s Residency in Saugatuck, Michigan. He directs a nonprofit gallery in Chicago’s Noble Square neighborhood called Roots & Culture. www.ericchristophmay.com

There’s little more sensuous than summer stone fruits. Take the cherry, dripping with ruby juices – how many double entendres can you think of of using that small pitted orb? The peach is a brash redhead with its luxurious fuzz; the nectarine, only a slightly tamer and more refined cousin. We mustn’t forget the plum, a little tart with brightly covered vestements.

But what about the apricot, the blushing maiden of summer? We’ve never quite developed the same level of desire for it. Perhaps, it’s our lack of knowlege about of the little fruit – many years it barely appears at the market, hiding behind more showy relations. Others, it does but proves to be a terrible disappointment, fibrous and flavorless. What a delight then it is to have a year like this. Easily freed from its stone, this year’s apricot is the color of a Caribbean sunset melting into a red brick building. The flesh is firm, yet tender, perfect for preserving.

The apricot may make only one more appearance at our markets and therefore my suggestion is to run, not walk, to yours to find even a small box. Once you do, run, not walk, back home to capture its maidenhood in your canning jars.