Food, Glorious Food

My sister tells me there's a group of people called "Foodies." They like to watch cooking shows, buy the latest kitchen stuff, whip up meals, etc. Food is their hobby.

I am not one of them. My main enjoyment of food is in the eating of it, and the energy I derive from it. And by that I mean the nutrition the food provides, and the energy one enjoys when dining with others. Assuming they're not assholes.

There's a lot of mention of food in this blog, though, and partly it's because I see differences in the Austrian approach to food, and the Oklahoma approach to it, i.e., a difference of night and day.

Lately, also, I've become a bit more conscious of how food arrives on the table and mostly I don't like what I see. It's a direct consequence of 1) having a lot more mouths to feed nowadays, and 2) profit motive, but I'm really not liking how animals are treated on factory farms, and I'm really not liking genetically modified crops. I can't stop those processes on the larger scale. But to the extent possible, I can kind of control what I shove into my mouth, which I'm trying to do. For instance, I want to turn my entire back yard into a fruit and veggie and herb garden. I'm starting small but each year it will expand.

Also, I only want to eat free-range meat...from animals who haven't been artificially fattened up, or dosed on hormones, or filled to the brim with antibiotics. That will cost more, but maybe not. Maybe the price of organic meat will force me to eat less of the stuff, which is ultimately healthier in the long run.

This stuff takes time and won't happen overnight. My friend Debbie went vegetarian recently and seems to be doing fine with it. I gave it a tentative start before leaving for Vienna, but quickly fell off the wagon. The good news is, until I wean myself (if I ever do) it's fairly easy to get organic meat in Austria if you read the labels.

Last night B. made us an organic dinner:

Organic potatoes, homemade plum chutney (plums from the neighbor's garden), North Atlantic halibut.

And today, a kind of an overcast, gray day, we drove about an hour south of Vienna with B's dad to hunt mushrooms. Success!

We hunted mushrooms in these woods.

These tiny colorful mushrooms are edible, but too small to be worth the trouble.

Closeup of tiny mushrooms with fingertip for comparison.

A few of the mushrooms we found.

Finished with the hunt, we stopped to gather wildflowers in this meadow.
B stepped in cow shit and stunk up the car. Nice flowers, though.

These are two parasol mushrooms after cleaning but before cooking.
Note hand for comparison. You know what they say: big hands, big mushrooms.

Parasols after cooking. They were lightly breaded and then pan sautéed.
Also: veggies from the garden (center) and homemade plum chutney.

Chanterelles before cooking.

Chanterelles after cooking. With parsley garnish.

Steinpilz (also called boletus) after cooking.

So: a three-course mushroom dinner. It was delicious. Freshness counts, so go for it when you can.

It's an interesting and fun thing to eat food that came right out of nature, more or less the same food as someone might have enjoyed hundreds of years ago.

Thanks to B who cleaned and cooked all the mushrooms. I drank wine during this process, and did the dishes afterwards.