It's an early spring here in the Midwest. We are all led outside into the bright sunshine....and I linger by my favorite swimming beach...pushing ahead the date of my first swim because it is already so warm.
I take a short walk by the lake. There by the side of the path are young nettles. I gingerly gather a bunch and bring them home in a plastic bag. On my next walk I gather more and finally I set out one evening last week before the sun set to gather a whole bag.
That bag waited in the refrigerator for two days. I googled "nettle soup" on the Internet and ended up on a Romanian blog. Just to think that my ancestors in far off Romania probably gathered nettles to eat in the spring gives me some kind of comfort.But the labyrinth of the Internet is somehow funny to me. Just google a word, and click a link and who knows where you will end up.
I recalled the recipes I had seen and chopped the onions, the garlic and potatoes. All this went into an old dutch oven that sat on top of the stove..Soon I added in the green nettles to simmer a while...and so they did...memory simmered too..and soon I was recalling my life on the island as a forager of seaweed, limpids and blackberries. Whatever the season brought I gathered. The old islanders told me the good times, the good tides and so off I went with my bag, my dog to the back of the island. There I waded into the low tide to gather carrageen, to gather kranach. Seaweed writhing in the low tides. My dog sniffing around. And once in a while my gaze drifting to the far off shore that I knew was out there. America. Somewhere far away...
Bright sunlight, low tide, me clad in my simple clothes picking the seaweed. Musing now on that moment I feel a sense of wonder at the simplicity of it all. Little did I know the mermaid of musing and recollection drifted nearby...that the particular moment I waded into would be retrieved decades later on a laptop only to be posted to a blog on the Internet. Innocence was mine.
Walking back I carried my heavy wet sack of seaweed back to the old cottage. If I met anyone they would smile and sure didn't I know then that the whole island would soon know where I had been and how much I gathered. My life as a forager.
Back at the cottage I either spread the carrageen out on the wall to dry and bleach to a white brittleness or I spread out the purplish kranach to dry. I would boil up the carrageen with milk and strain out the sand to make a crude pudding. The kranach would either be boiled up into a bright green mass that I ate hungrily with my potatoes or I would munch on the dried strands. Protein and calcium and salt.
An anguished foraging took place when I gathered limpids. Down by the sea's edge I pried the shells off the rocks and threw them into a bucket. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Back home I poured boiling water over the little creatures and then boiled up the lot of them in my iron dutch oven over the fire. Not unlike the one I made my nettle soup in. One batch of limpid soup turned out delicious, the other one like rubber bands. Such is the unfortunate life of a forager.
Now I forage for more memories of my island life and I recall my dear friend Noni.
She was the wise spinster sister of my landlord who knew every bit of news on the island. She was my friend. I recall going out to pick periwinkles with her at the western side of the island. With a wry smile she told me how the old people used to gather them for food. So here I was, a 23 year old foraging with her at the sea's edge for a meal. We gathered up the precious spiraled shells. Back in her old thatched cottage we poured boiling water over them. She showed me how to carefully remove the sliver of scale from the edge with a needle and then pull out the membrane. Not as tough as limpids, more delicate and somehow kind of good with butter over them. She told me more tales of island life as we ate the periwinkels.
Now she is long gone and I sit here remembering. Knowing that as I forage among my memories, there is a lot more to say....
The nettles cooked up great. I pureed the whole batch again and again, ending up with a thick green soup that was actually very delicious with some salt and pepper and tamari. Full of green vitamins, I felt revtalized eating it!!! Nourished by my foraging at the side of the road....and now nourished by my foraging among memories from long ago.
