Country cooking

When we come to Misty Mountain, we never know what we’ll find. It’s always a rush to get out of the city, and I throw a bunch of stuff in the cooler and hope we won’t be missing something essential. Like, butter. But I hope there will be enough in the frig where the caretakers live, so we can poach a few essentials, in exchange for sharing the yogurt, or the bread, or fruit we brought.

This usually works out in a loaves and fishes sort of way – with a little innovation and an open heart, there is always plenty.

This weekend we cruised in as the caretakers cruised out, so we have the place to ourselves. A little background: this is a dome-shaped home built in the 1970s when all the groovy people came to Misty Mountain to try out homesteading and/or community living. It is set in the southwest part of Virginia near the Blue Ridge Parkway, and now is home to a young family and occasional weekend retreat for Joseph and lucky me.

One of my favorite things to do here is forage around to see what’s growing. It’s Easter weekend, the beginning of spring, and though the daffodils have faded, the azaleas are hanging on. That makes a cheery vase of blooms for the kitchen table.

Even better is when I find something edible. It might be blackberries, which grow along the pond; or grapes growing like weedy vines up a dead cherry tree (see what I did with them here); or three thin spears of asparagus that have survived multiples mowing and years of neglect and still push their little heads out of the earth. Once, I dug up sassafras root to chew.

This time, it was dandelions and violets.

So, lunch today was:
Grilled cheese on garlic-asiago bread we bought at the Roanoke co-op, with cheddar and old camembert we brought from home and accented with arugula from the Takoma Park garden; there was no butter, so I used fatback to grease the pan – that would be fatback from the local Bright’s Farm, where they raise their pigs on pasture.

I ate the sandwich with a salad of spinach from the frig and chopped dandelion greens I gathered in front of the Dome, with a sprinkle of violets.

About those dandelions: among my very favorite flowers when I was small, their bright yellow heads such a cheery summer marker, the leaves are edible (sort of bitter, but in an arugula sort of way, lends a nice bite to a bowl of mixed greens) and full of vitamins A, B complex, C, and D, as well as minerals such as iron, potassium, and zinc. The flower can be made into wine, and the root can be made into a coffee substitute or a tea, which is purported to treat just about every ailment there is – much like the tonics peddled by 19th-century carpet baggers. I learned from Clara, who is digging dandelions on a farm in France,that you can dig up the whole plant, wash it and trim the roots and flowers to make an attractive bunch of greens to sell at the farmer’s market. Much less tedious than snipping individual leaves, as I had done. More proof that we can learn so much from our children.

And violets, did you know you can eat these lovely flowers? They are tiny little purple punctuations spots in the lawn; you’ve probably seen them candied, on top of fancy cakes. I found if I picked them in a miniature bouquet, then cut off the stems all at once, the gathering goes faster. They don’t actually taste like much, but they were lovely in the salad, helping to make a beautiful meal in the country.