Tis The Season

Chill the champagne, get out the good dishes, and
sharpen your cooking knives. Earthy Delights' annual
Wild Harvest has started, and we're now shipping some
delectably fine quality wild ramps to customers all over
the country. This weekend we'll be luxuriating in the
unique, piquant flavor of wild ramps by using them in a
recipe for braised lamb shanks. If it were just a bit
later in the season we'd serve these shanks with a morel
mushroom risotto - but since the morels haven't shown
themselves yet, we'll settle for clamshell mushrooms.
The ramps will add an interesting "edge" to the meat,
and to the juices that settle at the bottom of the
cooking pot.

It's that exciting time of year when we're poised on the
edge of spring. In another week or so we'll begin to
detect the fragrance of hyacinths when we step outdoors,
and the daffodils are already about to snap out of their
buds and do what they do best. Perched on our cliff
overlooking Lake Michigan, these daffodils grow by the
thousands, crowding each other for their bit of space in
the brilliant sunshine, still cool from the tundra air
that sifts down from the north country. Kathryn and her
truckload of dogs will be arriving soon from their
wintering-over spot in Palm Springs; and this year she's
bringing our friend Diana with her to spend the summer.
Diana, a maestro on the grill, also specializes in
creating the most delicious possible ravioli - they're
very large, and filled with morel mushrooms sautéed in
butter and garlic with just a touch of sherry. She
serves these ravioli with warm crusty bread, tossed
greens, and grilled salmon. In the Cottage Kitchen, it's
always easy to tell when Kathryn and Diana are preparing
dinner, as the phone is ringing off the hook with
hopeful people dropping hints for dinner invitations.

In our part of the state, which is as far west as you
can get in the eastern time zone, we're blessed with a
plethora of very fine quality restaurants that use the
freshest possible ingredients to prepare their dishes.
These restaurants vary from the homespun Glenn
Restaurant, where you can get excellent Midwestern fare
at very reasonable prices (superb meatloaf!), to the
elegant and sophisticated Copper Grille in Douglas. Not
only is the "Copper" (as it's come to be known) the "in"
spot to circulate for drinks and conversation in this
part of the state - it's also a restaurant that's worked
hard to deserve an excellent reputation for gourmet
quality dining in a high-end, haute cuisine atmosphere.
For this reason we'll be featuring the Copper Grille on
our website later this month - complete with some superb
recipes utilizing Earthy's Wild Harvest ingredients.
You'll find their recipe for Alaskan salmon with morel
mushroom ragout on our website (www.Earthy.com) in about
two weeks, or you can visit them at their website at
www.CopperGrilleRestaurant.com. If you have any
questions, call them at 269-857-7100 and ask for Donna
Morgan or Fredjon Denny. You'll find them even more
gracious than the rolling coastal countryside where
they're located.

Spring entertainment begins this weekend with wild ramps
from Earthy Delights. It will continue nearly every
weekend until the first frost, usually sometime in
October. Whenever possible we'll use fresh produce and
local ingredients. We'll purchase our fruit from an
orchard we know about where they don't ship anything
out. Instead, they wait until their peaches and apples
and apricots are ripe on the tree, and they sell in
limited quantities to people who know the difference.

If you're interested in some basic information on
fiddlehead ferns, morel mushrooms, and wild ramps,
please visit our website (www.earthy.com) for the "Wild
Harvest 101." This website column will include
descriptions of and information on purchasing, storing,
and preparing wild ramps, morel mushrooms, and
fiddlehead ferns.