Just a few weeks ago it seemed like the farmers markets would never open, and now here we are already two weekends into the season at the Midtown Farmers Market. And what a season we are having! May farmers market shopping in Minnesota in any normal year is an affair for the die-hards, an exercise in hopefulness and bitter disappointment as dreams of tables over-laden with bright green spring produce are dashed against the reality that stuff really doesn’t get growing in Minnesota till later in the summer. But this is no normal year! After a mild winter and weather since March that could only be described as ‘decent’, our Minnesota and Wisconsin farmers have gotten things rolling a little earlier than usual. In three years of shopping at Midtown, my opening day hauls have been the following:

• 2009: a small chicken, prepared tomatillo salsa, frozen mutton
• 2010: foraged ramps, a pint of strawberries, frozen mutton and spicy almonds
• 2011: 2 large bunches of spinach

Opening weekend was last week, and I got a pint of strawberries, three pounds of asparagus, and a pound of rhubarb. This week was even better: rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus, arugula, spinach, basil, oregano and radishes.

It’s not usual that you can make a full meal out of market shopping in early May, but I’m already practically able to make a full week of meals with what I can get at the market. A pessimist by nature, I’ve got a nagging feeling the other shoe’s about to drop on this easy winter/beautiful spring/plentiful produce situation, but that’s just all the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts.

I give great credit to Midtown’s excellent manager, Amy Behrens, for putting together a great mix of vendors this year, both seasoned regulars and some new faces. Martha and I enjoyed chatting with newcomers Blackbrook Farm, who grow a variety of vegetables near Amery, WI.

They’re dropping in at Midtown a few times in May before moving on a more permanent basis to the controversial Linden Hills Farmers Market, which will be open Sunday mornings. I was immediately drawn to Blackbrook by their attractive signage and very unexpected produce: radishes, spinach, greens, arugula, asparagus and rhubarb. Some of this early produce is made possible by a greenhouse, which will be providing Blackbrook CSA subscribers with cherry tomatoes as early as June.

If you were thinking about sitting out farmers markets this May on the basis of past disappointments, think again: things are different this year.

It may be only April, but it’s already time to pull on your mushroom hunting fashion boots. You’ll fend off ticks and look good while slinking through the woods.

Tom found this pair of morels nestled in the grass. Excited at an early find, he didn’t even wait for me to take their picture before plucking them from the ground. They were a little dry, but let’s not get picky here.

Most of of the mushrooms we found are probably inedible or at least not choice, but they weren’t all boring LBMs. I am curious if these might have been Velvet Foots (wild Enoki). Pending confirmation, I have decided to call the above fungus a Hamburger Bun Mushroom.

There were, of course, plenty of Little Brown Mushrooms. Here they are gathered together in a tiny mushroom village.

This is the sort of mushroom under which a fairy might enjoy a tiki drink.

Morel #3. They don’t call her the Minnesota State Mushroom for nothing.

A Mushroom Choir.

A woody-looking fungal friend.

Furry shelf mushrooms from below, showing off their hedgehog-like undersides.

Furry shelfies from above. Now you see their furriness, yes?

All in all, we had a good walk in the woods. Now that we know for sure that the season is on (and early), we hope to get back at it next weekend with our out-of-town guests and 4 pairs of eyes to comb the woods.

Hoping to catch the earliest of the season’s morels, Tom and I headed south last weekend in search of the Minnesota State Mushroom. As with any mushroom trip, the central goal — the one that we try to convince ourselves of over and over, as we continue to tote an empty basket — was to have a great walk in the woods. As you can see from these images, we didn’t find any morels. But we had our eyes open for whatever the forest had to share and enjoyed being outside in Minnesota spring, such as it is.

In the first picture below, you’ll see how I originally found one mushroom (uncovered, at right) completely buried in autumn leaves. This was the last fungus we spotted and the most morel-like. Comparing pictures is never a recommended way to identify a mushroom — especially if you plan to eat it — but this one looks a lot like Gyromitra fastigiata or Gyromitra brunnea. While we couldn’t be certain about much of what we saw, Tom was able to identify a few of our finds using our new copy of Mushrooms Demystified, which we brought along but left in the car due to its heft.

After 2+ hours of walking, Tom and I shared a picnic and considered whether to continue looking or head home. We decided on the latter but couldn’t shake the suspicion that actual morels were actively popping up along all those unexplored trails. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to head out again this weekend after stopping by Opening Day at Midtown Farmers Market. You can be sure we’ll keep you posted if we find anything of note or at the very least, something of visual interest on the forest floor.

It’s almost election day, a time for Americans to exercise the most basic mechanism of self-government by choosing our rulers. Nobody can have failed to notice that the stakes are high this year. Issues that once elicited some kind of consensus have become the source of bitter disagreements.

As a food blogger, I have a civic responsibility to ask tough questions about our candidates: what will our gubernatorial hopefuls do to ensure equitable access to healthy food in Minnesota’s public and non-public schools? What policies will they adopt to promote safe, sustainable agricultural practices that provide food for all Minnesotans? And, most importantly, if our candidates for governor could be any kind of breakfast food, what kind of breakfast food would they be?

Tom Emmer: Emmer Pancakes

The answer for Republican Tom Emmer is easy enough, since he happens to share his name with a variety of wheat, namely emmer. Emmer, if you are not familiar, is an ancient strain of wheat — one of the first ever cultivated. It was the wheat the Egyptians used for bread and beer and was the basis for the campaigning Roman soldier’s porridge. Although emmer (Triticum dicoccum) has been largely supplanted by more common bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) in the modern era, it is still grown throughout the world. Bluebird Grain Farms in Washington makes an excellent emmer pancake mix: just add milk, buttermilk, an egg and butter. The cakes cook up very hearty and rustic.

I suppose the following objection could be raised to emmer: emmer is a dinosaur, a relic of the past. Emmer was literally around during the Stone Age; what possible relevance could emmer have for modern-day Minnesotans?

Mark Dayton: Date Scones

Mark Dayton — or is that Date-un? — is helming the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party effort for governor, and if you couldn’t tell from the horrible pun a few words back I am relating him to dates, the fruit of the date palm. Since breakfast was the agreed upon theme, I made date scones:

• 10 oz white flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 4 tsp butter, diced
• 1 cup dried dates, pitted and roughly chopped
• ¾ cup cream
• 1 egg

Preheat oven to 425ºF. In a food processor, pulse flour, baking powder, sugar and salt to combine. Add butter and dates and pulse until evenly distributed. Meanwhile, beat together cream and egg. Pour flour mixture into a medium bowl and fold in wet ingredients until just combined. Transfer to a floured board; form dough into rough square and cut into quarters. Cut each quarter in half to form triangles. Transfer dough to sheet pan and bake 15–20 minutes, until just browned.

If you’ve never had a date they are large, oblong and raisin-like in their dried form, which is what is commonly available. Some will complain that they are just way too rich for the average Minnesotan.

Tom Horner: Plum Cake

Independence Party candidate Tom Horner proved a bit of a spoiler since his name is not shared with a food-stuff nor does it lend itself to an easy pun. But Horner does bring to mind a familiar nursery rhyme:

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner
Eating his Christmas pie,
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum
And said “What a good boy am I!”

It turns out this association may be quite apt: this website claims that the true Jack Horner was a steward named Thomas Horner whose “plum” was one of the deeds to twelve plum manor houses that he was supposed to deliver to King Henry VIII at the request of the Abbott of Glastonbury. Horner’s descendants deny the story.

Mysteries about who exactly “Horner” is notwithstanding, the real question is “what the hell is Christmas pie?” Approximately 45 seconds of Internet search revealed that Christmas pie is a lot of different things, though most generally a pie served around Christmastime. With Christmas still months away, making Christmas pie would clearly be impossible. Instead I settled something with plums in it, specifically the Rustic Plum Cake published in the July 2007 Cook’s Illustrated.

I won’t say which of these breakfasts I preferred — that choice is up to voters — but I hope you appreciate my contribution to the heightening of the political discourse. Don’t forget to vote Tuesday!