Blanching fiddleheads, getting them ready to freeze.

May 22, 2013 – Wednesday

46 degrees/cloudy/calm

Pentoga Road

Tuesday was a lackadaisical day on Pentoga Road. It was fairly cool with sporadic rain showers. Sargie was home and kept busy doing laundry and other household chores. Later in the afternoon, she finished painting in the upstairs bathroom. It’s now ready for me to hang the towel racks, a mirror, and whatever else calls the walls home, and put it back together.

I felt sorry for her. No rain had fallen and though the skies were cloudy and overcast, it appeared as though we might not get any. Sargie had just washed a large load and decided to take a chance and hang them out on the line. I don’t think the last clothes pin was fastened before the skies opened and the rain poured. Oh well, when they finally dry, we’ll have the softest, best smelling, colored clothes in Iron County.

I graded papers yesterday and contented myself to piddling around the house. Later, in the afternoon, I put ten very stuffed quart freezer bags of fiddleheads in the freezer. Washing them was a tedious chore. I ended up taking it all outside, dumping them on an old bread rack that I’ve had since my early Maine days, and spraying all with the hose. It worked fairly well, kept the mess outside, and was faster than standing at the sink washing each individually.

My Alaska crab pot was used to blanch them in two huge batches. At one point, I about broke my neck when I turned around and tripped over Brutus. As I’ve mentioned before, he’s seldom more than ten feet from my side. If I could just get him to do a few more chores rather than sit and watch my every move, everything would go so much faster.

We decided to have fried fish, sweet potato fries, and fiddleheads for supper. I put on my raincoat, hopped on the four-wheeler, and headed into the woods. I really only meant to pick a few handfuls of undeveloped ferns for supper. An hour later, I was back in the house with another huge bag stuffed full, probably enough to fill ten more quart bags. Oh well, we’ll eat plenty of greens next winter.

New Years Day was celebrated a bit late as the fish we ate were caught last January 1^st. We enjoyed eating the filets just as much as I enjoyed catching them through the ice. Deep fried bluegill and crappie filets are difficult to beat.

I was looking in the freezer last night. We truly live in a land of wild culinary opportunity and for that, we’re grateful. The freezer is filled with venison, fish, and fiddleheads… all food taken from the land, gifts from God. Later this summer, wild red raspberries will be added. We supplement it all with goodies from the grocery store, but I stood there thinking how really fortunate we are to be able to take advantage of nature’s generosity. This Pentoga Road is a wonderful, rich, and very generous, place.

I was up around 4:30 this morning attempting to put on my trousers in the dark and although I could hear Brutus snoring, I couldn’t find him. Generally, he sleeps on the floor on Sargie’s side of the bed, preferring to be as close to her as he can get without climbing between the sheets. He wasn’t there this morning. I looked under the desk, then under the bed. No pup anywhere… yet, I could hear him snoring… somewhere.

I finally told Sargie to close her eyes, I was turning on the light.

Following my ears, I tracked Brutus to the floor of Sargie’s closet. Happy among her shoes and other closet floor treasures, the pooch was sound asleep.

I’m still trying to figure out if our bulldog is the smartest canine I’ve ever owned or possibly, the dumbest. But then, I wonder if he ponders the same; if I’m the smartest human he’s ever owned of the dumbest. Stay tuned.

Time to make a fresh pot of coffee and get this day started. A man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…