Chanterelles

One of the joys of living in the Northwest is that this is mushroom country. The rain and damp that, admittedly, I often curse give us these wondrous delicacies. I have written about chanterelles here before so forgive me if I am repeating myself. There is just something about them that I find irresistible.

On Sunday mornings, as long as the weather is somewhat decent, Randy goes for a bike ride. The fact that he does this is a little hard on me. I am with the boys all week and come the weekend, I am really ready for a break. He works very long days and is not here much during the week, so to be gone an additional half a day is a lot. But I love him and he loves to ride. He is a much nicer husband when he has been on his bike and I also know it makes him very happy. I have reconciled myself to this routine but I do find I need to get out of the house with the boys.

This past summer, I started taking them to the West Seattle Farmer's Market every Sunday morning. There are many markets in Seattle, but this one is my favorite - even though it is not close to my house. It is relatively small, the best farmers are there, it is all food (no crafts), and not too crowded. We go, park the car, get the baby in the stroller, and then stroll through the stalls and make sure my almost 4 year-old gets a taste of everything. This week, they shared a croissant, had some Italian plums, some apple, and various other things that the older one filched out of the bins and I ended up paying for.

I hadn't planned on buying anything specific for the week, but managed to find Asian pears (which I needed for a salad), amazingly gorgeous raddichio and delicata squashes (which I needed for gnocchi later in the week), and these chanterelles. At $9/pound, I just couldn't resist. I spent $7 and got four huge perfect mushrooms and just next to the mushroom guy, I was able to pick up some fresh lemon pepper pasta. Guess what's for dinner tonight?