Life in Cowtown

My grandmother passed away last week, and the entire family has been busy sending her off.  Please, no condolences are needed – she was a very respectable 85, and had cancer which left her very frail and tired at the end.

My grandmother loved entertaining more than anything, and had a full life, with plenty of drinking, eating, singing and friends.  She sang beautifully until about a year ago, and lived independently until the last couple of months. All in all it was a life lived to the full, and up until the last few days she enjoyed a teaspoon of cognac in her tea. Given that she called vodka her elixir of life, this was a concession indeed.

The funeral was very simple  – a private service, and a road trip some three hours away to a small Orthodox Convent where she was buried. The convent is located in the middle of Nowhere, Alberta and was once a place of sanctuary for a scholar turned monk.  Upon his death he turned it over to a convent, as there was a shortage of fellow monks to carry on the tradition. There is a wee church built without nails that still stands on the grounds today. The nuns live simply with the support of the varied parishioners who help them homestead on their free weekends. They also have a small cemetary where those who desire can be laid to rest.

The service was simple and beautiful. There was a soft snowfall and rustling wildlife in a remote chunks of the woods that surround the convent.  I’m not a religous person by nature, but like all people find a lot of comfort in ritual. And even though I never grew up going to church, I find liturgy calming, especially in the chanting manner of the Orthodox Church. Our priest is a very colorful friend of the family and was a great tension breaker on the drives to and fro.  Orthodox priests are allowed to marry, which generally means they don’t molest children, which greatly mitigates the disgust I have for the transgressions of the Catholic priests.

In fact, I think that’s a great contribution of religion, to provide a framework for celebratory and solemn occasions alike.  We are social animals and have developed a number of rituals to mark special occasions in life, from the vision quests of puberty to elaborate wedding ceremonies and funeral rites.  Which is great at connecting a community and providing guidance when dealing with charged emotions. It’s a template for behavior, when you badly need one.  In a multicultural country such as Canada, different cultural groups have less of a sense of community to bind them, so belonging to a religious community provides continuity of culture.  But enough with crazy theories.

After the service we had a colorful wake, joined by family and friends, and toasted her often.  All in all it was a wonderful way to say good-bye. May she rest in peace.

Every fall a number of families gather baskets, totes and knives and take to the woods to take part in a ritual as ancient as our species. It involves the venerable tradition of foraging for food, in this case mushrooms. Gathering mushrooms is a thriving tradition all over Europe and Asia, although little done in North America, with the exception of immigrants and amateur mycologists. When you think about it, it’s a pretty cool tradition – a lovely forest walk, the incomparable fresh air of the woods, and baskets of food that you didn’t have to grow or buy.

Of course the main reason for mushroom hunting is the wild mushroom taste that does not compare with anything else. Unlike cultivated button mushrooms, their wild cousins are much more complex, must be cooked fully, and deliver a taste and texture unlike any other. There are dozens of edible species, some prized world over, like boletus, others a reliable standby that seems to grow when every other type is scarce.

It takes time to learn to spot mushrooms. They like to hide, often in plain sight, and you have to get your ‘mushroom eyes’ on. For a long while I can’t see any, so I have to stand still, turn slowly in a circle and try and spot one. As soon as I do, somehow the eyes and brain adjust to picking out the patterns of the mushrooms and it becomes easier from there on in.

There are a couple of tricks to harvesting mushrooms, first you must cut the stem off at the base with a really sharp knife. A small paring knife works the best. Never rip out the mushroom with the base, as the spores become less likely to regenerate there next year. Secondly, ensure that there is no insect damage. Some species of insect that I don’t know the name of, lay eggs in mushrooms, which become larvae and eat the flesh until they hatch. Sadly larvae is really gross and damages the mushrooms leaving hollow tunnels that eventually collapse and rot the flesh. So – if you tip the sliced mushroom over, and see the tell tale hollow tunnels in the stem or cap – leave it for the larvae to finish off. The mushroom must be completely intact to harvest. This will be the minority of mushrooms that you’ll find, approx. fifty percent of mushrooms will be damaged, so it’s a numbers game to get a full basket.

On this trip there were plenty of wild strawberries, tiny and fragrant to snag too, and some sour relative of the raspberry that I don’t know the name of.

Once you get your haul home, it must be processed immediately. The mushrooms spoil in a matter of hours, so as soon as you get them home they must be washed, gently scrubbed clean and inspected for insect damage, and cooked right away. There are plenty of choices on this front -  they can be fried, made into soup, be marinated, preserved with salt, and if fried, frozen for future uses. All preparations will yield wildly different results, and all are amazing.

All clean

Since we were dealing with a pretty small yield we decided to pan fry all the mushrooms with potatoes – a dish as old as the hills and well known in all Slavic countries.

The dish begins with a huge frying pan, some oil and a chopped onion. All the washed mushrooms are sliced, and begin to gently cook on low-medium heat with the onions.

Like their supermarket cousins they will release a ton of liquid, which will be considerably more viscous than button mushrooms, and will resemble okra, which is okay since the liquid will eventually disappear.

All wild mushrooms must be cooked fully, none are safe to eat raw, because they contain compounds which will upset the stomach and make you violently ill (not poisoned), but still not fun. Full cooking takes a good twenty to thirty minutes, and when done, mushrooms should be firm but not at all crunchy. They don’t need seasoning beyond salt and a bit of garlic, but if you wanted, some thyme would not be amiss. About half way through the mushroom cooking the potatoes are added to simmer in the mushroom liquid.

The whole pan takes on an unappetizing brown color, but the taste, oh the taste. Served with sour cream, chopped dill or a bit of ketchup, in our case, this one pan dish is a veritable reminder of the forest bounty. Sadly, or not, my camera died right about now, or else you’d have a photo of the finished dish, but it’s very unphotogenic so perhaps it’s for the best.

Sunday night Calgary and area got hit with one of our impressive summer storms. The carnage actually began on Saturday, with a death at the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose and a toddler killed by a piece of debris blown off a construction site Calgary downtown. That storm blew in and out in under two hours leaving a devastated family in its wake. Calgary covers such a huge area that parts of it experience weather phenomena differently. It’s very common for each quadrant to have their own weather systems, and one area is likely to be sunny while another one will get monstrous hail and a third only rain. The storm on Saturday blew through south of Calgary with hardly a mark.

Sunday however, was different. It began suddenly, with the wind picking up around 2 am. I know, because I’m a dedicated night owl and was still bright eyed and bushy tailed. The wind picked up steadily until it was blowing nicely at 65 km/h (40mph)  with gusts of 90 km/h (55mph) and it was LOUD. Whipping everything violently in its path it was bending trees sideways and breaking off branches. The skies opened up and a deluge came down. Lightning illuminated everything eerily and thunder crashed overhead like boulders.  It was a rare summer thunderstorm and it was powerful and exhilarating.

The next morning we went for a long drive. Downed tree branches littered the sides of the road. Many trees had limbs sheared off, and many just lost their leaves. Stores lost their awnings and communities their signs.

Notice the broken wood and cracked frame

Awning down

The skies were overcast as far as the eye could see, and the grass glowed with that special emerald green it gets under gray skies after a cleansing rain.

Endless gray skies

Darkening up

It was a gorgeous drive winding through some of our picturesque small towns like Black Diamond and the amazing foothills to the Rockies.

Black Diamond

Main street

Foothills

Shuttered park warden cabin

Rain down the valley

Low heavy clouds

Hidden mountains

Soon however the skies darkened ominously, and the rain poured down again. Hard. Accompanied by even harder hail.  And that’s when we turned around. It was very large hail.

The first raindrops

Outrunning the rain

Hide cows, massive hail coming

Our yard amazingly got away with pretty little damage, all things considering. Some broken flower stems, and some debris in the yard. The northern neighborhoods weren’t as lucky. They got three inches of hail and many instances of downed trees, broken roofs, downed power lines and broken windows to deal with.

Flowers in disarray

And as I sit here typing this, apparently for the next week we gets daytime HIGHS of 14C (57F) if weather network is to be believed. Feel for us.

Update:  To see some photos of the damage head on over to the weather network and scroll to the bottom of the page to see some photos of the damage. Some of the houses look like they were strafed with a sub-machine gun.