Welcome to Fare Exchange. The first question for this morning came from my neighborhood, and hopefully someone in your neighborhood has the answers. The questioner wrote, “A knowledgeable tree expert came to our property this week, picked up something from the woods and took a satisfied bite. ‘These are chanterelle mushrooms,’ he instructed, ‘and they are fabulous.’ So we are wondering, how does one spot a chanterelle, the wavy orange mushrooms we saw? Are they always safe to eat, and how do you prepare them?”
There was this coincidence. The day after this request arrived we were ordering from Bread & Butter on Dayton Boulevard, delighted that one can pick up heirloom tomatoes, focaccia, quiches and fine cheeses from them – and, sure enough, foraged chanterelles.
June Krantz’s request is just the kind of quest you readers love. “The 1988-90 paper had a recipe for fresh peach pie using puréed peaches, Eagle Brand milk, Cool Whip, peach Jell-O and something else. It probably would have been a Sunday issue. We lived in Hixson at the time. When we moved to Aiken, South Carolina; Carlsbad, New Mexico; Brookfield, Colorado; and back to Loudon, Tennessee, I had it with me making pies. My son who just got out of the Army at Fort Campbell asked for one of those pies, and I have lost the recipe.”
Among the senders of last week’s Bavarian Cheese Pie were Bonnie Rogers and Gladys Edwards. Ms. Rogers received Helen Exum’s cookbook from a family member. For Ms. Edwards, the mere mention of the pie, which she has never made, filled her with her own family memories. “My mother would pre-order this pie from the Read House, and after picking up my sister and me from school, she would drive us there so Sandra and I could go in and capture the prize of this most delicious pie, which barely lasted two days at our house. This pie’s goodness is a heavenly memory of happy times together gathered round the dinner table with my precious parents and siblings.”
She made a point: The fondest memories are made when gathered round the table.