Desperately Seeking Salem

In a sun-swathed park on the south side of Salem,  78 people gathered to celebrate a tiny man’s first birthday. When the right moment arrived, when all of the kimchi was eaten and all that was left of the Korean barbecue was a few smears of red in a dish, Billy’s  family and friends gathered around his highchair.

His mother and grandmother had laid out a few things on his tray: a book, some pens, some money, a spool of thread, some food, all signifying Billy’s possible future.

What would he choose? What would this little one-year-old boy become?

He surveyed the spread.

He looked to his mother for advice and help. And he reached for the sticky rice and bean pods closest to him.

The crowd roared and Billy pulled his hand back. His mother, thinking perhaps that the food was placed too close to Billy’s right hand, removed the plate.

He reached for the future.

And he chose the pen — signifying that he might become a scholar. A child after my own heart — perhaps a food writer?

Oh, how easier my life would have been if I had simply been given a chance to reach for the pen in a ceremony at my first birthday.

Here is the future scholar with his grandma, who made much of the food at the celebration. Happy Birthday!

When I tell people that I moved to Oregon in part for the almost year-round mushroom season, their eyes generally glaze over.

But get a load of this, you crazy supermarket shoppers — a couple of pounds of spring white truffles unearthed from a private forest in the heart of the Willamette Valley wine country.

The whites don’t smell as earthy and pungent right out of the ground as the blacks, but should ripen for a few weeks until they have a slightly garlicly, herbal smell to them.

I only kept half a dozen of the ones I found — including a raquetball-sized monster I dug up almost immediately — because if you read about my last truffle adventure, you know that I almost truffled myself out by taking on the challenge of cooking with them every night.

But if you’re eating at the Joel Palmer House some time in the next few weeks, chances are good that you’re downing a truffle I’ve touched.

I don’t think I’m an expert at the truffle hunt. But I do feel like I’m developing a sixth sense for where they might be located in the forest. I found my humungo truffle by following my instinct, raking around  in a 10-ft. square spot because I know there just had to be something there.

Truffles are totally magic.

Something strange happens when you start cooking with really expensive ingredients that you haven’t paid for. Every meal seems a little more special, a little more hard-won (hey, I spent six hours digging this truffle out of the ground!).

In the case of truffles, every meal seems a little more divine, but also a little more hedonistic. The mind is challenged to artistry. The jeans are challenged to accommodate your zest for life.

And as the week stretches on, and the truffles begin to ripen, as they begin to give off their intoxicating sent and you are forced to play a waiting game to catch them at their perfect state, you start to get a little stressed out. You start to wonder if you aren’t living to eat the truffle, but living to use the truffle to the best of its abilities.

The truffle takes over your life (especially if you call it truffle week and decide to blog about it…)

It is as if you are afraid that you might waste the truffle, that you’ve somehow let that truffle down. Your greatest fear becomes nothing from the world outside — news of torture and war and suffering and poverty. The greatest worry of all is that this truffle will go bad and you will have stolen a treasure and let it molder away right under your nose.

I started this little truffle experiment as a way to interpret an Oregon ingredient in my own household — a kind of meet-and-great of Oregon’s best kitchens with my own. I think I accomplished that.

But in the end, I am happiest about the truffles that I gave away. So, lesson learned: next time, I’ll set more of them free.

So to sum up, here’s what happened to my truffles:

4 gifts to friends and neighbors

1 truffle butter

1 sprinkled on pizza (uninspiring, did not even warrant a blog post)

1 mixed into a vinaigrette

.5 very big truffle sprinkled on mushroom sauce for pasta

.5 very big truffle used for truffle ice cream

1 sprinkled on asparagus

1 mixed into mushroom risotto

1 truffle lost to decay

1 sad, remaining truffle. What to do?