Day 17: Escargot_ing going gone

Weight: 194.4

Today I got to reap the rewards of my ten day tending of garden snails. They are, to remind you, the striped kind, probably descended from snail brought over by Spanish missionaries, not the brown kind found in Southern California.

I had more than two dozen. I soaked them for a few hours in salt water, with vinegar, to de-slime. Then I rinsed, deshelled them (which took far too long) and fried them up. There was quite a bit of meat. I had very little today (assorted tree fruit) because I was so looking forward to this protein boost.

They were pretty darn good, because of the various seasonings I used. I ate quite a bit tonight. Perhaps it would have been good to eat fewer snails with some pad thai or something, but it was pretty good overall. The snails were weaker in flavor than oysters, so the strange musky flavor that I didn't expect would probably have been less weird had I grown up with this flavor. Moreover, the escargot I've had in the past was probably farm raised and thus a bit blander. In other words, I was expecting less gaminess, but in perspective, snails are easier on the palate for the less adventurous than some traditional species of shellfish.

So I feel well fed but not as impressed as I expected by the meat. I didn't follow the perfect recipe by simmering them for several hours in white wine, but they worked pretty well for this experiment. In any case, a great nutritional boost.

Day 16: Really? Monday?

Weight: 195

My friend from Whidbey came by the house so we broke into the apple brew. It tasted like apple cider to me, but when the boys took one taste, they confirmed that the fermentation had happened. They said I "ruined it". I disagree. The pressing from the other day resulted in the equivalent of five wine bottles. Indeed, we used a few with fresh corks from the home brew store. No preservatives; so short shelf life but fresh taste.

Day 15: Back on the Wagon

Weight 195

Breakfast: a disklike wafer and a sip of red sacramental wine. A handful of plums that were hiding behind leaves.

Lunch: an overdose of veggies prepared to my liking, with lots of flavor, including hot peppers. I pulled another carrot to soon but checked and found I could eat the green part too. See the before and after shot of everything I grabbed in the upper left. Not sure if the apple fit the rest but I took everything I could get. I added lots of garden green beans for weight. Dessert was wild strawberries.

Dinner: went on a big hike for mushrooms, but found nothing trustworthy despite the many specimens that sprung up since a recent rain. We did find a ton of red clover, some soap berries, tried just for fun, and some alder pine cones that tasted better now that they weren't so new. Got a couple pounds of sweet blackberries. Not too much interesting but got some exercise.

I got a book from a colleague called Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet by Smith and Mackinnon. It has a few interesting ideas I'll use. If I've at all piqued your interest in this project, they have something a bit more sane.

Days 13-14: Fiesta and Failure

Weight: 195.7

Since our Whidbey Island friends got sick and couldn't join us as planned this evening, I didn't feel right drinking the hard cider we made from last week. So, I had a few beers, including one at a great little Seattle spot next to the Moore Theater called Nitelite. PBR for two bucks couldn't be beat. Sorry for the cheat, but there was an important occasion: the music of Calexico. Pictured is my dear wife waiting in downstairs in the Moore Theater for the superb music of a band we've been following for a decade. The first time I saw them, tickets were eight bucks and beer was four. On Friday night the beer was two bucks and the show was 20.

Twenty plus an obscene online charge of $9 plus a 2 dollar "venue surcharge." What the heck? So I couldn't bring myself to pay for these tickets, even though they are our favorite act that still regularly performs (followed closely by Wovenhand and Slim Cessna's Auto Club). In any case, at the last minute, we found a mutual gift giving situation unfold. A craigslister offered the tickets "free-ish" and said they would leave four tickets in the mailbox and then whoever picked them up could put in any money they wished. Since we can't sell our house in Colorado in this market, this was a great turn of fortune. So, we picked up the tickets, paid face value for the pair, and tried to "evangelize" some friends into Calexico fandom by giving them the other two. I think they had a good time and experienced a great show.

The next day, I went in to a work meeting from 9 to five. During that time I became famished and worried that I was getting too weak. So, at lunch, I fell off the wagon and had lunch. It was a very healthy veggie wrap--so the primary change in diet was the carbs in the wrap itself. After falling, I figured I might as well take advantage of my failure, so I had another wrap. They were pretty small and lacked much protein, but they restored my energy somewhat.

So perhaps you will forgive me. But you will likely not forgive the sins that followed. One pint of Guinness with colleagues (note that I think stouts got their start by monks who used the thick beers as a bread substitute while "fasting") and then the left over fish and chips from my kids who were taking advantage of a 70th anniversary deal from Ivars, a superb local eatery. Anyway, it wasn't anywhere near what I would have consumed under normal circumstances. Indeed, I would have probably found the meal deal they got unfulfilling a month ago. But now, I feel guilty for gobbling up their scraps. They would have gone into the trash, and I am not in this for some silly rule but for self discovery. Here is what I discovered: it is well nigh impossible to stay strong without serious carbs and protein. The fruits and greens I've been eating are, allegedly, able to give some of this, but the immediate limitations of this diet are now apparent. Perhaps it is a matter of the will but I, with all the lush vegetation around me, find this diet terribly inadequate. The fish I eat on occasion is good, but I need their flesh more regularly than I expected. Had I some potatoes, I think I could get by without any fish, but as it is, I find myself fixated on the idea of my next loaf of bread. Meanwhile, despite my hunger, I've not lost much weight. Perhaps it is because of the high sugar content of the fruit. Who knows? When my family came home from the store today they found me in the back yard, picking the wild strawberries festooning the untamed parts of the yard. I probably looked little different in terms of weight or energy, but inside I was thinking how I couldn't last long, even with today's cheats and with a handful of fruit that I neither planted nor tended. I learned today another lesson brought home by a conversation with my brother: you can be a hunter and gatherer, or a guy who works at some institution, but it is pretty hard to do both. I am pretty sure that, at least during this time of year, I could spend my days finding food. But I can't do that AND strategize, research, prepare, and spend time with the sons. Hm.

So daily existence has become more acutely valuable to me, knowing the value and the work involved in each morsel of food. And so has music, I could almost see the music from Friday night as waves of light. My psychology colleague tells me this isn't entirely unique. It wasn't hallucination, but this sense of "seeing" the music was a kind of ethereal food. I will not forget this weekend's music, and the song "Guero Canelo" is still resonating through my bones.

Day 12: I Miss My Shawnee Friend

Weight: 196.6

Dr. Ron was a friend of mine who died in 2005 after serving as a colleague at another college in the field of anthropology. He often invited my family to stay at his 60 acres. There, he reburied Native American remains disturbed by construction, grew tobacco, and lots of food, taught students about the edible and medicinal plants in the region, and had a lot of fun hosting pow wows at his big lodge. I've thought of him many times over the last few years because he was kind to my family and taught my sons a lot about traditional agriculture and taught his students a lot about anthropology. The thing I regret is that I never paid enough attention to his lessons. I do recall some things about growing and drying tobacco, the value to his friends of sage, and a lot about breeding hot peppers. But I never learned the most important identification lessons. And now I'm thinking I need to find someone with his knowledge and somehow bribe them to tell me what he was trying to tell me all along--the species of plant all around me that I could be enjoying.

Seven years ago, at this time of year, my family and he dug up a couple wheel barrows full of sweet potatoes. We ate so much that I don't think I've had them since then. We put butter and brown sugar on them, we turned them into sweet potato fries, we turned them into pies. And eventually, I just overloaded. And now ... what I wouldn't give for one sweet potato. The solid carbs would be real nice right now. But I neither remember how to cultivate them, nor thought to plant them.

And this causes me to recall something I was researching when I worked with Ron: the Huguenots who settled in Florida, and almost starved in the 16th century. Florida! How can anyone starve in Florida? They have the sea, a good climate for finding and cultivating things, lots of land game at the time--a virtual Eden. And they couldn't hack it. My disdain for them at the time is now coming back as shame upon my head. You see, they had neighbors, the Timucuans, who had the answers to their agricultural and foraging problems. Yet these French folk were all too urbanized to have a clue what they were doing. They may have known how to grow things in their home towns, but they didn't understand the soil, nor know the plants of the region. A few ended up going to live with the Timucuan people, but others used their modern technology to build a makeshift boat back to Europe. Along the way they had to resort to cannibalism, and arrived looking like skeletons off the coast of England.

But I am even more ill equipped than they were. And here is my point: it's not that I just don't have any sweet potatoes. I don't have any potatoes. And if you look in my back yard, you can see that the side of the plumb tree that is on my side of the fence is nearly bare of fruit, but my neighbor's is full. I've eaten all the green beans given me by my colleague, I've eaten all the hot peppers in my garden. I'm eating the carrots before they are big enough to be of the most nutritional value, and I am in the awkward position of complaining that all the dandelions and most of the amaranth (both pesky but nutritious weeds) are gone. I am not even at the half way point and I feel like the unwise French settlers who couldn't hack it it lush Florida. No new plants were discovered today, but no new fruit is replacing what just one man has eaten.

I'm worried that my project will fail now that autumn is upon me. I'll have to rely more on mushrooms, but I've not found many of late and I don't have much time to hike around without having the strength that comes from food. I may have to just start eating spoonfuls of blackberry jam. (BTW: I ate the rest of my rye bread, the stuff I made a couple days ago. At least I savored every morsel). Our butter is gone. I'm looking at my dear wife and I'm thinking she would make a great Italian sausage (kidding).

Day 11: Boring Post

Weight: 197.8

Food for the day: a bite of my rye bread in the morning, with jam, a few small perch and more green beans.

How can one make hunger pangs during the day interesting? They were pangy.

So, to make up for my inability to compose an interesting post, I'll just upload a picture of my hippy parents during their Colorado days, I think the year before I was born.

Day 10: Ten pounds

Weight: 199

Today is boring to report but a milestone I suppose.

Did your folks ever stretch orange juice with water? Why not take the same principle and "stretch" a stir fry with back yard greens?

The fish was good but now I'm back to the yard. Today I just wanted flavor. Protein was irrelevant. Fortunately, I had the good sense to cultivate more peppers than sustaining foods. So, I diced up a wonderful Anaheim pepper, which wasn't looking so good but, amazingly, it grew to an edible size in the PNW. None of my bell peppers are doing a thing, unfortunately. In any case, I put together a full-scale taste bud assault from the yard, to keep my mind from the fact that all I had was blackberries throughout the day. So here was the fabulous stir-fry: Amaranth buds (much better in a stir fry than raw), nasturtium buds (the best part) along with their flowers and a couple handfuls of their giant leaves, carrots (I pulled them when they were smaller than they could have been but I couldn't wait), some remaining cucumber, lots of big intimidating dandelion leaves, three yellow dandelion flowers, a handful of mint (which is much different and very helpful in a stir fry) some lettuce (which didn't deserve to be there in wilted pan fried form but a bulk additive), garlic (planted thanks to a visit from my father), two green mini-pine-cones from an alder (which I ended up spitting out despite their reported protein content), rose petals, the last green onion, some more Chanterelle slices, and a big hand full of garden green beans (previously blanched). To this I added spices: sage, turmeric, sea salt (I should make my own next time), ground black pepper, mustard powder, and for fun I shook in some poppy seeds that my sister collected in a bowl before she left her visit in August.

I swear it tasted better than any stir fry I've ever made in terms of flavor. When this experiment is over, I might do the exact same thing, with a few sane alterations, some diced chicken (I almost got my friend to pick up some free chickens this weekend, but it turns out you can have three hens in Seattle but not Mukilteo), and some rice noodles.

I went foraging during my lunch hour on a hiking trail and found some mushrooms I couldn't identify (seen above left), in addition to non edible varieties I've already identified. So, good exercise, but no luck in terms of forage food. Indeed, there weren't even any berries on this hike left. I am worried I took too many Oregon grapes.

The good news is that our jug of apple cider is now bubbling through it's water valve. That means the yeast are doing their thing. Thank you little guys.

When sitting out in my backyard, peaking at the sliver of view that opens to the Puget Sound, I saw my clearest view of the Olympic Peninsula mountains, and a wonderful red sky sunset. Sailor's delight! Jesus and Ahab agree on this. I also realized that my resident frog was croaking right beneath the steps below me. There, for reasons I cannot fathom, I promised mentally not to harm the beast. I was full, and there may be a chance that whatever he is, he is an endangered species, and I bet he is a friend that will help eat insects that threaten my garden. Plus, I didn't expect a frog in my yard at all so I want at least this guy, crying out for love, to have his chance. How can I eat one so dedicated to the proposition that all frogs are created to seek procreation. I wish you all the best in your quest to pass on your lineage, little green amphibian. I'll spare you and eat more amaranth instead this month, just promise me that you don't squander your love on a mean spirited female frog. But don't worry, if the frog gets big enough to feed me for a day my ethics may be out the window. I once had three bullfrogs at a Chinese restaurant in Soho, London. They were hard to eat because of their skeletal structure but scrumptious. They don't taste like chicken, as some will tell you, they taste like heaven but look like hell. That's my kind of food.

Addendum: My snail farm looks good and I guess it will be day 17 when I get to cook them up. That will be a day of victory and feasting indeed. Service berries just wait to be consumed for breakfast but after that, I'm not sure what my plan will be. No better way to weed than to eat every weed in your suburban yard. But for me, this means there is not much left to consume in the 1/4 acre around where I sit right now.