Our namesake gets ink

Good coverage for our namesake company:

Coveted morel mushrooms grow only in the wild ... and now they're in season! Lansing State Journal

Note that Earthy supplies "backup" morels to the National Morel Festival in Boyne - to the tune of hundreds of pounds.

Special Dinner

It was a birthday dinner

No photos

Trattoria Stella,

Along with our locals, Guillaume at La Becasse, and Randy at blu, Chef Myles was a 2010 James Beard Award semi-finalist.

Everything on the menu looked so tempting, but we managed to hold back and share a few dishes

Caldi :

Asparagus season just starting, so of course we went for this

It was choice between two preparations:

Cornmeal battered & fried, sweet pea puree, sour crema, lemon zest & juice

or

Char-grilled, poached egg, truffle oil, on toasted sourdough with lemon "zabaglione"

We went for the char-grilled

Freddi :

Burrata Pugliese (Burrata Puglia)- House made. Ricotta wrapped in Mozzarella, served with a generous lump of prosciutto di Parma, red amaranth micro greens, grilled Roma tomatoes, tomato broth, crostini

We ended up taking half of it home

Skipped Insalate & Zuppe and went straight for Pietanze :

Shirley had the Wagyu Short Ribs, slow cooked, mushroom "guarnizione", seared white potatoes, fava beans, sweet peas, pea shoots and braising sauce, while I had the off the menu Wagyu top steak, some crisp porcine strips, broccoli and cheesy risotto.

We took portions of both home

Dinner accompanied by Borgo Scopeto Chianti Classico 2005

A nice find - going on my "pay attention to" list

BigEye Tuna

OK, so I try to eat local, but sometimes we stray

Burritts Fresh Market (no website) for some goodies

Big Eye Tuna

Hot pan, grape-seed oil (again, not local, but we should be able to source in a couple years) sear for about 2min a side

Plate up with steamed spinach, brown rice (not local either - the Uncle Ben's retort is just too easy), with some saute'd 'shrooms and pine-nuts

Looks a bit "done" but here's the "inside story

Served up with Gerard Bertrand Viognier '07

Nice

Morels

That time of year again, some more rain coming today, guess it's time to head to the woods

Setting : a morel hunt after a forest fire “burn” in California

Michael Pollan

Omnivore’s Dilemma / a natural history of four meals

pp389

excerpt :

Along Beaver Creek that afternoon the morels were totally on, as Ben would say; almost everywhere I looked the honeycombed dunce caps appeared, and I filled a bag in less than an hour. My hands by now were black with soot and stunk of smoke, but I could still smell the meaty perfume of the morels, these fleshy buttons of protein popping out of the dead earth, this seemingly spontaneous combustion of food. I was talking to them, cheering on their every appearance, and they we talking to me, or so it seemed. I exulted at their sudden ubiquity, which I took, weirdly, as evidence of some new connection between us. It sounds crazy, but there is something reciprocal about the transaction, the looking and the appearing, as if we each doing our part, throwing a line of affiliation across the gulf of wilderness. I’ve no idea how deep into the woods I’d wandered, but I was more outside than I can remember ever being, and more than a little lost, but not to the morels, who weren’t hiding from me any longer. Maybe I’d gotten good at this, had my eyes on; or maybe it was them, revealing themselves at last because I had found a way out of my world and into theirs.