Sleep in the latest we've slept, save for a quick trip outside to use the natural loo (no septic up here on the mountain). We wake up to Becca dicing garlic and coffee on the hot pad.

After veggie omelette with eggs fresh from the coop and bacon straight from the butcher, we throw together a bean and quinoa meal to dehydrate. (The first of three meals. Recipes below.)

We sit around the cabin for a couple hours nursing mugs with cold coffee doused with fresh goat milk because it's kinda just nice to sit around. The cabin, the house is lived in. There are plastic and cardboard boxes, empty and full and full of more boxes. There's jarred, jammed, dried, and jellied fruit in every nook, shirts hanging neatly from a pipe in the doorway, a dusty fireplace, a hidden upstairs, wood everywhere, seedlings germinating in the next room, a kitchen table that clearly always has too many things on it to really serve its purpose, but it does well enough. After coffee, we drink homemade Hawthorne kambocha, a fizzing, soothing pink.

Forest has some chores to be responsible for and mushrooms to scout, so Becca, Rachel and I head for the hot springs around 2:30. We probably should have left earlier.

We stop at the store for beer for them and Tums for me. My stomach isn't having it today. In retrospect, it was probably the raw milk I drank that morning. Intolerant of lactose, I can only trick my gastrointestinal system so far. So while goat cheese is workable, the milk, maybe not.

A road that will seem much less windy (that is, with many turns) in the evening when I'm not so sick anymore leads us to the Gold Fork hot springs. A yurt stands guard at the entrance afore three pools of water. The top is the hottest, then a shallow center pool, then three cooler pools connected by breaks in the stonework at the bottom. It's Mother's Day so there are lots of children.

Three hours later, soaked in lithium, we head up to the top for a final hot soak. Becca recognizes Adam, a mushroom hunter, who gives us tips on Morrels on the pool steps, gold beer can in his right hand. Look for the knickknicks (sp?), fairly slippers, white firs, and west-facing slopes. He leaves before we're ready. We eat the food we brought: triangle tortilla chips and two bananas, the dry off and drive home.

Recipes:

Mean Beans

25 oz of black beans
2/3 cup water
2 cobs of corns
1 package of black bean seasoning from the Boise Coop
1 chopped onion
2 tbsp chopped ginger
4-5 garlic cloves
1/2 of citrus fruit of choice (we used orange)
Chili/cayenne to taste
1 cup quinoa

Soften the onions in some olive oil. Mix in the seasoning of choice with 2/3 cup of water. Drain the beans and add them to the mix. Or don't add the water and don't drain the beans. Let sit for a bit, maybe 5-10 minutes. Free the kernels from the cob straight into the beans. Let them all get to know each other while you start the quinoa as dictated on package in a separate pot. 10 minutes before the quinoa is ready, add the garlic and ginger. Then when the grains are ready, mix the pots. Dehydrate for 12-20 hours at 125 degrees Farhenhei. I think.

Nuts for Thai peanuts

1/2 or more of a jar of peanut butter (I used skippy cause we got it at a weak market in Payette and hadn't touched it)
1 package of firm tofu
12 oz can of lentils
1/2 a large onion
1/2-1 red pepper
2-4 tbsp of soy sauce (I have no idea actually, I just load it in, mix and taste)
1 tsp or more of cayenne pepper
Juice from some kind of citrus, or in our case, 1/2 chopped mango
2 tbsp of chopped fresh ginger
Salt and pepper to taste

Soften the onions in olive oil and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Add the tofu, undrained. Drain and add the lentils. Add the PB. Let it get a little warm, then mix it all together. Chop and toss in the peppers, cayenne, ginger and mango. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook on low heat for a while, however much time you've got to let the flavor soak in (really I recommend a slow cooker for this but do what ya can do). Once everything is soft, taste it. Taste good? Good. Taste bland like peanuts? Add more soy sauce and a little more ginger/citrus. Dehydrate at 125F for ~15 hours.