Last Wednesday night I hustled from a meeting near the Mississippi to Cooks of Crocus Hill in Edina before their 9 o’clock closure, refusing the freeway. Our tropical jewel fruit share had arrived. I had called the shop earlier to find out exactly how long I had to drop in and pick up the fruit and after explaining their lack of refrigeration, etc. etc. it became apparent I really ought to come that night, so I made it work. From the original agreement from Cooks:

Nature can be fickle. We have tried to be as precise as possible when listing delivery dates of our crop shares to you [ours was advertised as mid-January, so these will definitely wobble a bit]. We will be notifying you as soon as possible regarding your pick up date and time. Please make arrangements to stop by for your share no later than 24 hours after the confirmed delivery time.

This all seemed like a bit of a pain until I arrived at Cooks to find my glorious, giant box of fruit. All is forgiven. “This is all for us?!” I blathered. I smiled! I was the only one picking up at the Edina location, so yes, it was all ours. This was no small box—it’s a good thing I had found a nearby parking spot.

I arrived at home still grinning from ear to ear with our little bounty from the non-frozen world. Thus began the bigger question: what are we going to do with all of these lemons and limes? So far they’ve brought a great deal of inspiration and cheer to this Minnesota-kitchen-in-February. Naturally, our plans around them are fueled by a lurking anxiety that we’ll fail to use our new citrus friends until they’re past their prime.

Lemon curd, tacos with lime, lime sorbet, lemon vinaigrettes, lemon chicken, limeade, pies, cakes, lemon-in-your-tea (or water!). It’s all on the table. The best part? You’re all invited over for cocktails.

Cooks of Crocus Hill offers crop shares (some of which are fruit shares) throughout the year. Unlike a traditional risk-oriented CSA, they promise refunds on deposits in the event that shares aren’t delivered. Find out what’s available now: http://www.cooksofcrocushill.com/cropshare/shares

For our fruit share, Cooks worked with the always certified organic FruitShare. We’re thinking of ordering directly from fruitshare in the future. Here’s what’s in season at the moment: http://www.fruitshare.com/Featured-Product

I wish I could tell you that what follows is my grandmother’s world-famous recipe for beef tongue, a treasured family secret passed down through the generations. It is not. While I expect my grandma has a beef tongue recipe — she grew up on a farm, after all — that recipe would never have made it past my dad, who would often tell us horror stories of being forced to eat tongue when he was growing up. Needless to say, tongue did not make an appearance on my childhood table.

For whatever reason, though — the trendiness of tongue tacos, foodie cred, etc. — I recently felt a strong compulsion to cook a tongue. With no recipe from either of my real grandmothers, I turned to my surrogate grandmother: the Internet. A quick survey of the top four or five search results for “Tacos de Lengua” revealed consensus on the cooking method: place the tongue in a pot with aromatics and water to cover, bring to a boil and then simmer a few hours. When the tongue exhibits some signs of tenderness, allow it to cool in the braising liquid, then remove it from the pot, peel off the white skin with a sharp knife and slice. Fun and delicious!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: before doing any of that I needed a tongue. As of this spring there has been a new meat vendor at the Midtown Farmers Market — Hilltop Pastures Family Farm — who among many other delicious offerings listed tongue for sale. I was offered a large tongue or a small tongue and opted for small. A minute later on the counter before me was a 1.58# beef tongue, frozen and plastic-wrapped, for $1.54. That’s right — I paid 99¢ per pound. Damn those chi-chi farmers market prices! (Incidentally: this Saturday — October 30 — is the last Midtown Farmers Market of the year.) I’d advise you to get these great deals while you can before beef tongue is the new flank steak, selling for $12.99/lb.

Having been denied (or spared) tongue as a child, I didn’t know what to expect as I let the meat thaw in the refrigerator over the next few days. Well, what I should have expected was a giant cow tongue, because that’s what I got. This was not meat sliced up and plastic wrapped on a neat foam tray from the grocery store! My tongue came complete with the rough skin familiar from a cat’s tongue and a black spot at the base that was just enough to remind me of a cute little black and white spotted cow in the field. I could almost hear it mooing at me.

As perhaps you can tell, I was slightly grossed-out at this point. But hey, I eat animals, and animals have tongues, so I pressed on, placing the tongue in a pot with cilantro, half an onion, a few cloves of garlic, some peppercorns, dried oregano and a couple of dried chiles then filled it with water to cover. After bringing it to a boil I left the tongue to simmer for three hours, adding water as necessary to keep the tongue submerged.

The raw tongue put me a little ill-at-ease; that in no way prepared me for what the tongue would be like when it emerged from the pot. Cooking had contracted the muscle, so when it was removed the tongue was arched in perfect tongue-like position: it was not hard to imagine this thing sitting in the mouth of a happy heifer. As if this weren’t disturbing enough, I was now expected to peel the skin off with a sharp knife. But again, the cow had been killed, and what could be more respectful to the animal at this point than making best use of all of its parts? So I donned my best Hannibal Lecter face, selected a sharp paring knife, and began peeling off that rough skin in large pieces. Too bad fava beans are out of season.

Although I wouldn’t describe peeling skin off of a cooked tongue as one of the most pleasant experiences in my life, the reward when the job is done is that the tongue begins to look like any other piece of cooked beef. Slicing it makes the meat even less tongue-like. Since I was preparing the tongue the night before, I stored the slices in the refrigerator and cleaned up the rest of the evidence.

Before putting the container away for the night, I did sneak a taste of the tongue. Hopeful though I was that this 99¢/lb meat would be delicious enough to eat on a weekly basis, I didn’t love the flavor. Although there was some beefiness there was also a strong mineral taste — the kind you sometimes get from organ meats. I am willing to admit this is probably due to the way I cooked it — is anything at its best boiled for three hours? If I make tongue in the future, I will try braising it for longer in a more flavorful, thicker sauce.

To finish the tacos the next day, I cut the slices of tongue into a medium dice — a step Martha appreciated for its further obfuscation of the origins of the meat — and fried the dice in a little oil to produce some flavorful browning. Before serving the tacos, I mixed the meat in the pan with a little salsa verde (recipe follows), which I also served on the side. With sour cream, cilantro, fresh radish slices and warm corn tortillas, I think even my dad would try one.

Salsa Verde

• 1.5# tomatillos, husked
• 1 medium red onion, peeled and cut into quarters
• 1 poblano chile, halved and seeded
• Several bunches cilantro
• 3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
• Salt
• Fresh citrus juice (lime is ideal but I used the juice of 1 lemon because I had it on hand)

Heat the broiler. Place tomatillos, onion and chile on a sheet pan and broil until brown spots start to appear, about 5 minutes in my broiler. Place onions, chiles, garlic and cilantro in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to chop roughly. Add tomatillos and process until consistency is as desired. Transfer mixture to a bowl and adjust seasoning with citrus and salt.

Last week was the first time I’ve ever noticed fresh ginger at the farmers market, and, indeed the first I’d ever seen ginger so fresh as to still have stalks attached — who knew ginger had stalks? The scent of this ultra-fresh ginger is a joy to take in — grassier and spicier than the slightly desiccated supermarket variety. The delicate pink color at the transition from root (or rather, rhizome) to stem is striking.

This will likely make its way into some Korean food this week (to serve with homemade kim-chi that should be ready tomorrow) but I am also looking forward to simpler preparations: ginger tea (my favorite infusion) and perhaps even ginger ale, if I can find a vessel that can handle the pressure of fermentation.

Maybe it’s because of the name — chanterelle — that I always assumed these wild mushrooms were exclusively a California thing. Surely such a frou frou term couldn’t describe anything growing in the meat-and-potatoes midwest, where you might more expect something hardier, say a beefsteak (which, incidentally, doesn’t seem to grow in the Midwest. But I digress). My brother Mike, who lives in California, basically assumed the same, until a week ago when, while wandering the family land in northern lower Michigan, he happened upon a handful of the unmistakable orange fungi. As soon as Martha and I got wind of his discovery, the three of us headed back out into the woods and the hunt was on.

While not a party to the fungiphobia that so infects most of our country (and about half of my family), my wild mushroom gathering experience is limited to the mighty morel, a mushroom which — even when plentiful — does a good job of disguising itself on the forest floor. I am convinced that it is in fact invisible to the direct line of sight, appearing only in one’s peripheral vision. What a relief to hunt the chanterelle, then, which is not nearly so cagey; its bright orange yellow stands in strong contrast to the forest around it. Provided there actually are chanterelles where one is looking, there’s little risk of not seeing them.

And chanterelles there were. We must have hit their seasonal peak (our mushroom guide unhelpfully identified the season for chanterelles as “summer and fall”) because it seemed like every 15 feet or so we would walk on the hill crest, someone would spot a new group of the golden mushrooms poking through the ferns and grass. Mike — the experienced mycologist in the group — soon developed a theory that the chanterelles were somehow connected to maple trees. I remained a little dubious, largely due to my inability to consistently identify said trees (yes, I have trouble identifying maple trees).

Whether or not we cracked the code of chanterelle growth, we sure found a bunch of them. There was no scale available, but the bag I was carrying felt like it contained two, maybe even three, pounds of mushrooms.

Dumping that bag on to the kitchen table, the most impressive thing beyond the sheer quantity of fungus was the aroma: it was as if someone had cut open an apricot right under our noses. Mike said this aroma is not as strong in the California chanterelles he has found; this being my first chanterelle experience, I couldn’t make comparisons, but I did find the aroma striking for its pleasantness — none of the mustiness I usually associate with wild mushrooms.

Given my inexperience, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with our chanterelle bonanza in the kitchen. We decided on two approaches: the larger chanterelles would be sliced and grilled, while the smaller ones would be quartered or kept whole and sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and chicken broth to make a kind of mushroom sauce/side dish.

But before any of that could be attempted, the chanterelles would need to be cleaned. The fluted gills running up the sides of these mushrooms are adept at catching dirt, and the bases of their stems won’t ever shed it no matter how much you wash. Mike showed us a technique for getting the bases of the stems clean, using a paring knife to shave off the layers of dirt.

The chanterelles were fun to cook with; their meaty, solid stems were firm under my knife, not delicate in the way of hollow-stemmed morels (note: if your morel doesn’t have a hollow stem, you might just have a verpa. Don’t eat it.) In spite of  the vast quantities of liquid the mushrooms gave up as they cooked — liquid which frustrated my plans to brown the mushrooms and deglaze with chicken broth — they remained substantial in the finished dishes, only a little diminished in size. Their flavor was like their smell, hinting of apricots but with a unique woodland taste. Both the grilled and sauteed chanterelles made perfect accompaniments for venison harvested from the same land by my other brother, Kevin.

I’m sure the presence of wild chanterelles in the forests of the upper midwest is old news to the seasoned foragers out there, but for a greenhorn like myself the discovery was pretty exciting: a new bounty to harvest from the woods! Now I just need to find some good mushrooming land in Minnesota.

“OH MY GOD, A MOREL!” I cried, after having given up the search and nearly abandoning the woods. Tom, a more seasoned mushroomer, hissed for me to, ”Keep it down.” While it’s likely obvious, I have only been out looking for mushrooms, or mushrooming, once before (twice if you count our hike in Muir Woods outside San Francisco), and I’m not yet very well versed in the caginess of mushroom hunters. I will, however, not mention exactly where we went yesterday or reveal where our tip came from—even foragers-in-training have to protect the secrets of the woods.

After seeing morels for sale at the Midtown Farmers Market ($10/basket) and the Wedge Coop ($40/pound), I got an itch to go hunting for our own. It’s not that I didn’t want to spend the money: morels are expensive, but so is gas and fruitless hours spent wandering the woods. Yesterday’s adventure added up to two hours of driving time (there and back) and an additional two or more hours to find two ounces of mushrooms, which could have been had for a mere $5.

But all experiences should not be reduced to such crude economic calculations. An afternoon started with a good lunch of rye Real Bread, a package of Gardens of Eagan strawberries, hummus, and cheese followed by a ramble through the astonishingly green Minnesota woodlands cannot be so easily valued. For the most part we stuck to trails. Only two of our morels were found off the trail, while we spotted five (yes, that’s a total of seven) without leaving the trail at all.

All of our finds occurred after we’d completely given up (which we did four times) and insisted that the season was over, it was hopeless, and we might as well quit looking. Mushrooming is sort of like trying to remember something and focusing too hard, causing all memory to be blocked and much suffering from “It’s on the tip of my tongue” until several hours later, when you’ve completely forgotten about remembering and everyone else has gone home and the very thing comes to mind with ease.

Satisfied with our seven mushrooms in tow, and feeling a bit tired after a couple of hours staring intently to the left and right, we climbed into the car to head back to Minneapolis. Just as Tom, who offered to drive home, was pulling out of the parking area, a man walked by with what I insist was a football-sized morel in the crook of his arm. “OH MY GOD,” I yelled, out my open window. Tom, now thoroughly embarrassed, hushed me once more saying, “You can’t just yell ‘OH MY GOD’ at someone out the window!” and continued driving out of the lot. And so I have no picture, but perhaps that is best. We wouldn’t want to reveal too much.