Morel Gathering

Memorial day weekend I traveled over the Cascade mountains to the Yakima Valley, to a secret location and gathered up these morel mushrooms.

How totally cool it was ... hunting down these babies.
A six and a three year old were along for the forage and thrilled to spot the hard to find mushrooms, tucked under fallen trees, poking up through branches of green needles.

Listen I found one, look here's one and another one wow there's a bunch over here...

Back to the house we drove happy looking forward to cooking up our risotto of spring aspargus, morels and peas. The zest of lemon added a perennial spring pop. This dish was a ragu of veggies served on top of a traditional risotto of onions, white wine, rice, stock, cheese, salt and pepper.

Paris is so crazy beautiful. I watched the Frugal Traveler this morning on the New York Times homepage, watched Matt bop around Paris for a week. The short video ends with a trip to the market and a party at his 350 euro a week apartment.
Wednesday morning is Mark Bittman's video and he cooks up something good, almost always something good.

Stopped off at The Tasting Room - Wines of Washington on our way back to Seattle. From local mushrooms to local wine Cascadia sure is super fine.
Visiting wineries and tasting wine is not for everyone but if you do enjoy it I recommend a trip up the hill to this gorgeous cooperative tasting room overlooking the Yakima Valley. If I go again I'll order food and wine, sit in the sun and soak up the fertile grounds.

I picked up the 2008 Washington Wine Commission's catalog and am blown away by all the people making wine up and down the I-5 corridor, the Puget Sound west of the Cascades. Carumba....how did I get here...a need to move on from the Missoula Valley, where people are now making wine and selling wine !! There's a winery in Seeley Lake ! And one in Hamilton Montana and like three in Missoula.

I also picked up the Washington Health Foundation's pamphlet on why wine is good for us. The list of health benefits just keeps getting longer, benefits from the moderate drinking of wine. How to define this ????

Here is a tip from Paul Beveridge, Wilridge Winery, Seattle. Paul says, "One of the things I like about wine is that is tells you when you have had too much." (I love the voice of a good wine) "Wine, as preserved fruit, is good for you in moderation but like so many things, is toxic if you have too much. Getting tipsy is one of your body's ways of telling you it's time to stop."

So friends, Cheers to mushrooms and wine.

Blogging on a cool Seattle evening with moderate red wine.