{in the test kitchen} poppy strudel

This is what I'm working on today in the test kitchen. It's kind of top secret, but I know one Hungarian boy who is going to love me extra when he comes home.


P.S. are poppy seeds hard to find in your neighborhood?

An Epic Watermelon Day

Remember watermelon seed spitting contests? I know, it's hard to. Because if you're part of my generation, watermelons have been seedless for nearly half our lives.

But I do have dozens of memories of sitting hip to hip with my grubby-kneed sibs on the edge of the back deck hunched over slices of melon so big our faces were lost in them. I remember coming up for air and spitting seeds as the juices dripped down our wrists toward our elbows. I especially remember watching my dad stand over the sink and skillfully flick away the black seeds into the sink as he turned the melon flesh in his hands, yielding precious, giant chunks of seedless flesh for his lush saturday fruit salads. But these seem like almost ancient memories.

I can hardly think of a food I love more than watermelon, and to this day I could easily eat half a watermelon myself  (mostly because without the seeds, there is nothing to slow me down). Which is why, when I got a load of the whole watermelon sitting on a stool in the back pantry at Andras parents house yesterday, I nearly clapped with glee. It wasn't just the sheer size of it – easily 17 inches long, surely more than 8 kilos –it was its shape, fat and grooved, deep, dark green like a watermelon I remember from childhood.

"Now that is a watermelon!" I almost shouted, and ran to get my camera.

Andras nor his parents couldn't understand why I would want a photo of a watermelon sitting on a dingy stool. By now they are used to  me taking photos of well, almost everthing we eat, but a watermelon?

"A watermelon like this is nearly extinct in America," I said, with no facts to back up my hypothesis. 

"Really?" Andras questioned the source of my statement, but I had only this: I couldn't count the number of watermelon we'd eaten together in the last 4 years on 10 hands. Not one of them was anything but pale green and smooth, with one-dimensional rinds. Not one had a single seed, not even those wussy white ones that used to be there when seedless watermelon were new on the scene.

Sure enough, when we split this one open, it was brilliant pink, dotted with a maze of shiny black seeds, the kind that made the heart so precious, and the firm, seedless pale pink portion nearer the rind like the tender claw meat of the lobster, worth the work. 

"Where did you get this?" I asked. I was imagining a magical field somewhere, gilded in golden light, with enormous watermelon resting on the soil amongst endless chubby vines.

It turned out this watermelon came from the watermelon truck.

I'd heard about this watermelon truck once while eating melon with Andras back home. It was the Mr. Softee truck of his childhood summers, a regular neighborhood fixture on hot summer afternoons. There were no details attached to his stories, only that this truck piled to the heavens with dinnye (watermelon) would circle the neighborhood bringing the very best melons to your front door. Ah, the romance of a childhood in Europe.

The next morning, just before leaving for a long drive to Romania, Papa came running in the house to get me in a flurry of words.


Gyere. He said. Come. The Dinnye truck had arrived. I came running with cameras. 

I don’t know what I had pictured (a wooden gypsy cart pulled by a team of horses, perhaps?), but it wasn’t a 1988 Citreon hatchback with a loud speaker on the top.  But once I saw these seasoned watermelon traders in action, my disappointment dissipated. I watched from the sidelines, noting every detail. The way he picked the watermelon, held its weight, checked for the pale creamy spot on its underbelly. Then, like at a fine Pince (Vineyard), the merchant inserted a sharp, rounded knife and extracted a perfect cylander of plump pink melon, seeds, rind and all, for a taste. He held the knife out directly toward me. 

"Madame," he said. 

My teeth cut through the crisp, dripping flesh. Perfect. 

I can think of no finer culinary companion for an 8-hour family road trip than a Hungarian watermelon. We loaded it in the car, and hit the road east toward Romania, likely the very direction from which the watermelon came...

Back home, there's no dinnye truck on which to rely on for access to fine, fat watermelon. So in the sticky heat of the coming August days, take faith in your own watermelon-picking expertise.

~

How to Pick a Watermelon

1.     Look for a firm, symmetrical watermelon without cuts, bruises or dents.

2.     Look for a watermelon that is heavy for its size, full of delicious juices.

3.     Look for a creamy, pale yellow spot on one side that indicates the melon ripened in a field in the sun.

Hungarian as Apple Pie

We arrived in Hungary just in time for lunch, as we always do, and were met with the same meal that I’ve come to count on as the taste of Hungary.  Everything was just as I remembered it except now I am Anya (mommy) and Anya is Nagymamma or Mamma (grandma). This time the table was set with a tiny spoon for Greta, and before we eat, she is showered with the hugs and kisses of her Mamma and Papa (Grandma and Grandpa), aunts and an uncle who had waited 8 1/2 long months to meet her. 

The rest of our first day here was as it always is. Only, after lunch I took my nap side by side with Greta instead of András. And when we awake, groggy and hungry yet again, there, of course, is Nagymamma’s almás pite. Apple pie. The perfect soothing anecdote for seven sleepless hours on a plane.

My guess is there’s as many ways to make an apple pie in Hungary as there are in the U.S. But there’s only one way I like it back home—all butter crust, big chunks of tart apples coated in cinnamon, and topped with a thick slab of sharp cheddar— and only one way I like it here in Hungary. That is Nagymamma’s way.

Her apple pie is a different thing all together from any pie I’ve ever known. It is thick layers of tangy, tart apples cooked musty sweet like apple butter between two thin layers of soft whole wheat dough, with the characteristic graham flavor I’ve come to equate with the taste of András' home. Like most sweets in this household it feels wholesome, almost healthy, fruit picked from backyard trees enrobed in a graham crust. It’s the kind of thing you might enjoy with cheese (say Trappista, from the Trappist monks of Hungary’s hills) as a light dinner (since the large meal here is consumed at noon), or with coffee and milk for reggeli (breakfast) the next day.

Luckily, Nagymamma has the foresight to make a batch big enough for both.

Early on our second day, we run out of what at first seemed an endless plate of almás pite. And we are restless. It’s cold here, for the family, a respite from the 104 degrees of mid-July; For us, a surprise. We’ve packed for high heat, and our gauzy summer dresses are off-limits in the house of a grandmother who is always after us to bundle up, wear slippers on the bare floor, cover our necks lest we get the hiccups. There’s not the right light for making pictures of all the fruit trees brimming with each imaginable variety of stone fruit. Even laundry is on hold, since my mother-in-law, like most Hungarians, still relies on the sun as her dryer. So, there’s nothing to do but bundle Greta in the wool pants and cap her Nagymamma knit for her, and bake.

I hint that I’d like to learn to make Mamma’s almás pite. Out comes her book of hand-written recipes. I examine it, trying to imagine how decagrams translates to something usable in my kitchen vocabulary.

Around me, people pass Greta from lap to lap.  Old friends and cousins come and go, talking in what seems (in my limited Mgyar vocabulary) to be great length about the simplest topics, each family member weighing in with words that seem too long to mean what they do.

When the conversation looses me, Greta and I steel away to the garden and make ourselves at home in the blackberry bramble, 5-years thick. The berries are merlot black, jammy. And if perfectly ripe, they ooze a juice that gives us away when we return, my fingers stained from picking and a little inky ring around Greta’s tiny mouth, still in a pucker of pleasure.

It is there that I get the idea that we should add blackberries to the almás pite, to make it seasonal. Apples are, afterall, a fall fruit. I tell this to András. He translates.

Papa shakes his head. Apples are in season here. András tells me, translating his parents rebuttal.  Only a few blackberries are ready, he says (though Greta and I have just eaten them). Most of them need a few days.

But okay, Nagymamma agrees. We will add szeder. Blackberry.

While András goes for a long run with his oldest friends, Greta and I go to the garden with Nagymamma to pick fruit. First, she collects the apples that have fallen to the ground. Nothing is wasted here. Then another kilo that come easily from the tree. 

Then blackberries, I remind her.

Igen. Szeder. Yes. Blackberries. 

Inside, I set up the computer to Google translator, put Greta in a pouch on my back and line up my recipe booklet side by side with Nagymamma’s to start recording.

40 decagram flour

2 kilos of alma. Apples.

I taste them. They are sweet, just subtly tart, and they remind me of jonagolds.

What type of alma? I ask, in a blend of Mgyar-English. 

I type the word variety into the translator and she examines the result. Fajta. 

 Nyári Piros. Mamma answers.

She writes the words in my notebook.

I repeat the words with her. Nyári Piros.

Then I type it into the computer to translate. 

Summer Red.

A summer apple. Indeed.

How strange they must think my ideas, my insistence that we add a handful or two of szeder to the perfected almás pite. How ridiculous to think my ideas about seasonlity aren't shared here, here in a culture where almost every family outside of large cities still, in large part, lives off their land. Here, in a home where almost everything I've ever eaten is grown by their hands. I try to apologize.

Bocsánat. Sorry. Most értem. Now I understand.

Nagymamma smiles her constant, unjudging smile.

We finish making the pita, Mamma, Greta and I. We rub the butter into the graham flour to coat it like an American apple pie dough. We add sour cream, egg yolk. We roll it thin, coat it in the warm apple butter stained pink from szeder. We cover the filling with another layer of dough, prick it with a fork and set it to bake.

Fifty mintues later then the pie comes from the oven. We cut it into squares, dust it in powdered sugar. Family members emerge from every corner of the house and the pile on the plate disappears. Five minutes later, András sister and sister-in-law, Dalma and Szophie come back to the kitchen praising me, my silly idea redeemed.

Szeder Almas Pita. Szeretem. I love it.

Jó. Nagyon, nagyon jó. All agree. Good. Very, very good. 

~

Hungarian Blackberry Apple Pie

filling

2 kilos / 4 1/4 pounds tart-sweet apples, such as Jonagold

1 handful ripe blackberries

250 grams / 1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 lemon

crust

400 grams / 2 2/3 cups graham or whole wheat flour

100 grams / 1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

pinch sea salt

250 grams / 9 ounces / 2 1/4  sticks butter, in pieces

1 cup sour cream

2 egg yolks

serves: a crowd (about 25 bars)

1. Peel, core and slice the apples. Add them to a pot with blackberries, sugar, cinnamon and the zest of 1 lemon. Squeeze the juices of half the lemon over the top, straining the seeds as you go. Cook on low heat until the apples break down.
2. Preheat the Oven to 175 c/ 250 F. Meanwhile, whisk together graham flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Work the butter into the flour with your hands (or pulse together in a food processor) until the butter coats the dry mixture and resembles a coarse meal. Stir together sour cream and egg yolks and blend into the dough with a fork until it just comes together.
3. Use your hands to gather the dough and knead it slightly in the bowl. Divide the dough into two portions, one slightly larger than the other.
4. Roll out the first portion of dough on a lightly floured surface to create a rectangle just large enough to cover the bottom and up the sides of a 12 X 17 X 1 inch / 32 X 44 X 2.5 cm jelly roll pan or your closest size similar pan (a 1-inch sided baking sheet works well). Spread the filling over the dough. Roll the remaining dough until large enough to cover the top. Don’t worry if some pieces of fruit are left uncovered or the dough cracks in places.
5. Prick the dough all over with a fork and bake until cooked through, about 50 minutes. Cool 30 minutes. Cut into bars; dust with powdered sugar and serve warm or at room temperature. 

{icebox}

porva, hungary

So about those csirke….

After our lagzi, when we had hand-washed all of the dishes, eaten the last of the goulash, simmered the remaining sour cherries and said our goodbyes, we prepared to close up the house for the summer. Just before we left, I went to pull the plug on the refrigerator, but realized there was still some fagyi {ice cream} left in the freezer.

“We should empty this, save energy while we’re gone,” I said.

But András, knowing his parents would be coming and going as guardians of the house while we were away, convinced me to leave it running.

A few months later, I headed back to Hungary to begin working on my citizenship, and check in on the house. After a day’s work in the yard, planting cherry trees and trimming the windows in paint, I headed into the kitchen for a snack. I opened the freezer door, hoping to find some leftover fagyi, but found instead a dozen little frozen, pale pink packets in a shape I couldn’t quite make out. I reached in, and my hand made a quick recognition of a little backbone. Mon Dieu, the csirke! I shut the freezer, swallowed hard and forced a smiled at András mother who was looking on; then returned to the yard where the csirke once roamed to find pulyka {turkey} prancing in their place.

Such is farm life.

Country Chicks, City Chick

porva, hungary

Csirke, which means chicken, was the very first word I learned in Hungarian. I'm not sure how or why, since between András and I, we eat chicken rarely to never, but by the time I made my first trip to Hungary with him, this word was planted firmly in my vocabulary.

On that first trip, we visited András’ nagymama {grandmother}, or Mamma, on her farm in Porva, next door to the tiny house that would become ours. I fell in love with her, her strudel, her land which she farmed by hand in the late afternoons, and the csirke that ran around her backyard showing off their clean coats like pompous city pups. Their presence gave this land that to me seemed to me more fairy tale than working farm an unmistakable authenticity.

Since that first trip, I always visit the hens, happy as larks laying their eggs for our table, and whisper them thanks. We owe much to them.

Nine months after our wedding in Virginia, András, his parents and I hosted a Lakodalom {wedding party} or Lagzi in our backyard in Porva just yards from the little chapel where we laid Mamma to rest earlier that week. At dinner, her csirke ran around clucking beneath our wedding table of kolbász and parikas, Tokaji and goulash ladled from the family bogrács that bubbled over a live fire. Just before dessert, I picked up one of her csirke and tucked it into the silk of my dress, now well worn from two of the happiest days of my life. András' father snapped this photo, which turned out to be one of my favorites of the day, which nods at the dichotomy between the city and country life we both adore, and our shared love for those who cultivate life on the land, including Mamma, whom we dearly miss.

Some of our other favorite photos from this day are featured today on The Brides Guide, the Martha Stewart Wedding blog, and we're deeply honored. And I’m sure from time to time, you’ll hear more about that day here too.

As for the csirke, stay tuned.

A Touch of Paint

{Handmade Christmas, part iv}

If those cookies are too plain for you, how about a little paint job?

I once painted these cookies, and dozens of others, but I can't take credit for the sweet little hobbit houses and snails above. They were a gift from a friend who also hand-paints china for Herend, the lauded hand-crafted porcelin of Hungary that was once so precious it couldn't leave the country's borders. These two stunning pieces sit in the Herend museum, about 20 minutes from our home in Porva, and command a price on par with some paintings at the MoMA, but take a little royal icing to some homemade gingerbread and I promise you'll get your painting fix for a while.

Start with a snappy, well-baked gingerbread, and you'll only need a touch of paint to make them pretty. One of the best darn gingerbread cookie recipes I've ever baked comes from Gourmet, {here} which bakes up flat and even every time. Next, whip up a batch of royal icing and drop in some natural food colorings {here}, which aren't as potent as others but potentially far friendlier. Now comes the fun part, mixing your primary colors to get a pretty palet. How about a color chart to help you get started?

P.S. If you plan to stack or wrap your cookies before you give, let painted cookies dry unwrapped overnight {out of the family pet's reach}, or until dry to the touch.

The Odyssey {and a Jar of Jam}

veszprem, hungary

I arrived Saturday in Hungary on a 48-hour solo mission to collect my residency papers, a process András and I started on our last visit back in July. It was my first trip to my husband’s homeland alone, two and a half days poised purely for a 1 hour Monday  meeting on which my future citizenship resides.

My trip began at András’ parents house, where I am greeted by his mother's traditional welcome meal, and a backyard brimming with the fruits that were only promises back in July—füge {fig}, alma {apple}, dios {walnuts}, birsalma {quince}. My head spins with possibility. There are purple grapes to turn into pies,  figs to jam, quince to preserve and elderberries to make into deep, black syrups.

But that’s not why I’m here. So, I rest and let Anya, his mother, spoil me in the love language we both speak— thick kokoa {cocoa} and fresh kenyer {bread} and warm palicinta {crepes} smothered a summer’s work of preserved apricot and plums. Anya’s jam, or lekvar, tastes more like fresh fruit than anything we get back home, the luscious whole pieces of fruit just sweet enough to melt on the tongue and remind me why András can make a whole meal of nothing else.

In two short days, we plant cherry trees and visit my favorite winery in Csopask and eat ice cream on Lake Balaton. And every few hours we return to the kitchen where I dip back into her jars, spooning decadent portions of preserves over her homemade bread and the kefir she has curing on top of the fridge. With each bite I regret first that András is not here with me, and second, that I can’t eat enough for us both. I regret most that I can’t possibly bring back enough flavors from home to take the place of actually being here. But I can try. I clasp my hands in front of me and say his name, a gesture Anya rewards with two giant jars of jam, wrapped tightly in paper for travel home.

Monday arrives too quickly, and Anya wakes me at 6 AM for reggeli {breakfast}, a cup full of her kefir with apricot lekvar and a bowl of peeled kurta {pears} from Porva. I pack, tucking my treasured lekvar into my little bag, and head to the office of immigration with Apa, András dad. I’m greeted by a friend of András who works there; she triple warns me what to and what not to say. If I am asked why I didn’t come sooner, I am not to say it’s because I live in America. I am to say I was on holiday. I’m not so say why András wasn’t there with me. I am to say he's off playing sport on the other side of the country. I’m not to say I’m leaving on a plane bound for New York within the day. I am to say the address of our little house in Porva, which I know, but practice saying in Hungarian over and over again in my head as the gravitas of my accuracy sinks in.

At the desk, alone, I’m greeted by curt words I don’t understand. “Angol?” I ask. Another agent steps in, half smiles and offers me broken English and a thick file with documents all baring my name or András’; banking slips, our marriage license, proof of property ownership. I recognize all of these from our first meeting here. She asks me to write and sign several declarations, and then, after much breath holding, she produces a passport-sized document with the Hungarian emblem and a photo of me in coiled buns taken back in June, looking decidedly Hungarian. She presses it into in the back of my passport and marks it with a final authoritative stamp, granting me resident status until 2014.

I beam. “Szep,” I say. Beautiful. She smiles. 


I meet Apa in the waiting room and convince him to help me celebrate with a quick trip through the piac {market} to get my last fill of local favorites. I fill up on barack {Peaches}, muskotaj {muscadet} grapes and rétes {strudel}. We polish them off during the two-hour journey to the Budapest airport where he drops me with a hug and a smile that matches the one that will greet me on the other side. I promise to give András their hugs, and feed him well.

Inside, I proudly display my resident’s sticker to the passport control, who flips past to the front page where a blonde and blue-eyed American girl smiles back at him. I ignore his disinterest in my pending countrymanship. I’m buoyant, thinking only of returning home to share my good news with András. I slide my bag through the security belt and glide through the metal detector.

“Open your bag, please,” an examiner asks. He hands me my bag.

I confess immediately. “I have lekvar.” 

“Do you know the rules about liquids?” he asks. “No liquids.”

“Yes, I know the rules. Lekvar is fruit and sugar, it’s not liquid.”

“No liquids.”

I proceed to explain that this is the only bit of home I can bring back to my husband, that it’s harmless, that it’s impossible for me to hurt anyone on the airplane with lekvar. Bombs have never been created from lekvar. He is unmoved. I begin to doubt the authenticity of his Hungarian accent. Certainly a Hungarian would know that I could not, would not, throw one’s mother’s jam away. I consider asking him to see his residency card, but instead I ask to see his supervisor. I tell my story again. I cannot throw it away. I will not throw it away. And besides, it’s not liquid, it’s lekvar.

“No liquids, no lotions, no lekvar.”

“Show me where it says no lekvar!” I demand. I recognize the desperation in my voice, and the fact that I’m treading on thin ground with a man who could make sure neither my lekvar nor me return to New York, but I’m unable to stop myself. He pulls the sign, points to lotion.

“But this is jam. It’s fruit and sugar. Fruit and sugar.” I repeat. My voice cracks.

“I’m sorry.”

Tears flood from my eyes as I lay the two jars of jam on the top of the pile of discarded water bottles and lotions, and pass out of security toward the gates.

On the other side, I stop, dropping my bags with my resolve, and cry. When I wipe my eyes, I see my gate directly in front of me with a flashing sign “oversold,” and in my hand a boarding pass that reads seat 35 E, the last row of the plane. It was more than I could bear.

I found a pair of soft eyes at the gate, and my tears come again. I’m not feeling well, I explain, asking to be moved up to bulkhead.

“Are you well enough to fly?” He asks.

“Yes. It’s just, I’m upset. They gave me a hard time at security.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. What did they do?”

“They took my grandmother’s jam.” I said, embellishing the facts beyond my control. “It was just lekvar, just fruit and sugar. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone. ”

“No. No, of course not. That’s terrible,” said the man with the soft eyes. Finally, a real Hungarian, I thought. “How about we put you in first class, seat 6A.”

“Yes, that would be fine.” I say.

On the plane, I recline my seat (before take off), snuggle into my duvet and fall into a deep sleep on my feather pillow. I wake up to wine in a real glass, filet mignon and a cheese plate, which I pick at before reaching for the cheese and piros paprika {red pepper} sandwich on fresh bread Anya packed me. I admit, I enjoy the endless stream of movies and service, the infinite legroom and 9 hours in a fully reclined position. I admit this is the better way to travel. But I’m still not convinced that all the free mimosas in the world can make up for being robbed of a whole month of Anya’s jam. Luckily, Mr. tough guy missed a jar.

The Hunt

bakony forest, hungary

I’m prone to romantic notions, and since so far they haven’t gotten me in too much trouble, I haven’t been inspired to change. Mushroom foraging as a hobby is one of my long-held romantic notions that started back when I first read Thomas Keller and Michael Rhulman’s account of the mushroom hunter in the French Laundry Cookbook 10 years ago.

My friend Robyn at King Arthur Baking Center in Norwich, Vermont, where I sometimes teach, is a mushroom forager and promises to teach me what she knows, but so far most of my visits there have been under piles of snow. The closest I’ve ever come to mushroom foraging is a wild goose chase around Italy in pursuit of truffles after a lead from a stranger, in Italian, led me to three tiny towns before I found myself staring at a shelf lined with preserved truffle products. Clearly my conversational Italian could use some work, but that’s another story.

I first got the idea for mushroom hunting in Hungary from a pack of wild boars. On our first trip to Hungary together, András and I were hiking in the Bakony forest where he spent his boyhood summers, when we discovered oak trees whose roots had been ravaged by wild boars. What little I did know about mushrooms told me one thing—this was a truffle hunt. Since we don’t have a trained pig, nor a trainable dog {yet another story}, I decided I would settle for less exotic mushrooms, any mushrooms; preferably not poisonous, and hopefully tasty.

On my second trip to Hungary, last May, I began each day with a request for him to take me on a mushroom hunt, something his mother claims he loved to do with his Aunt Klari as a child. Each day when we’d ask Klari, she would stroke my cheek with the back of her hand, and tell us, in Hungarian, to wait until it rained. That was a dry year.

This year it rained each and every day of our trip except for Saturday, the day of our wedding. So today, when the sky finally did clear, I saw families walking towards the fields, forest and hills swinging their baskets, in search of loot. Sure that all the rain had bestowed good fortune for my hunt, I ran to get Klari, who I found gathering peas with Anya in the field behind the house. András and Apa were busy building a frame for our old farm sink. If I wanted fresh peas for dinner that night, and a working sink, I would have to go alone.

I knew the danger involved. Mushrooms can be poisonous, or worse, deadly. When foraging, nothing beats a local expert, but in a pinch, a handy mushroom guide with full color photos warning me what to and what not to pick would do. Instead, I got two rules from Apa, who had also grown up foraging mushroom in these same woods.

1. Don’t pick anything with a red or brown skirt on the stem
2. Wear gloves

They pointed toward the far fields that bordered a creek leading to the woods. Start with field mushrooms, he instructed, and look near the piles of manure. Set out into the field hot sun, feeling smart in my little fedora confident that my large empty basket would be at least half full by the time I came home.

Before long, I had company. Two dragonflies buzzed incessantly around my head, following me no matter how far or fast I walked. And the field was producing nothing, so I detoured toward the creek where I found an opening through stinging nettles that sloped down straight into the center of the clear, shallow creek. They’ll never find me down here, I thought. I walked the creek, ducking below the low hanging branches feeling a bit like Indiana Jones.

Within minutes in the creek found a dozen small white mushrooms with gently sloping caps at the root of a tree, perfectly white, no skirt. I put on my gloves and picked them. Beginners luck, I thought! I was sure there would be many more to come. I walked on. The water quickly got deeper and murkier, and soon I was up to my knees. As I lost sight of my legs below me, I wondered what kind of killer snakes might live in these waters. And then, the dragonflies found me again.

Never once during my mushroom hunt did I worry about dying from touching or eating a potentially deadly fungi, but the list of other ways I could go suddenly consumed me. Killer Hungarian Dragon Flies, Stinging Nettle Overdose….quick sand.

My feet sunk into deep wet sand and I was stuck.

In seconds my mind went to the dark places, wondering how long it would take them to find me beneath the canopy of trees. Would they wait until dark? Find me two days later, dehydrated with cracked lips and flies swarming around my eyes? Or would they find my basket floating along in the water with a tiny handful of mushrooms like Moses on the Nile?

Stay calm, I thought. Wet sand sucked at my sneakers but I resisted its pull, securing my loot on a high branch before pulling myself out. The taste of surviving such peril left me hungry for more, so I pressed on. I found a tree with hundreds of mushrooms too young to pick. I marked the location in my mind and moved on. But the deeper I pressed on, the more hopeless my case became. My feet were muddy to my calves, I was beginning to get hot and hungry, and the only sign of edibles I’d seen in the last 100 km was snails, hundreds and hundreds of snails. If there were glory in snail hunting, I’d surely be legendary.

I have years to learn this land, I told myself, and returned home, swinging my basket to find András, Anya and Apa picnicking under a plum tree on fresh, tomatoes and raw onions from the garden.

I flashed my basket in front of Apa.

“Jo,” He said. Good. He popped one in his mouth and smiled.

I waited a few minutes, checked his pulse, and followed. They were beautiful, but tasteless. I took them inside and weighed them. After our tasting, they yielded just .08 ounces—hardly enough for a meal, but just enough to leave me hungry for more.