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I love nettle season.

Took my good friend Rachael out to Discovery park for her first nettle harvesting experience eveh. Discovery’s excellent nettling. You barely even have to get out of the car-the abundant masses of stingy green-bronze nettlesome goodness are everywhere! Yum.

She got the hang of scissoring off the tips pretty quickly, with a minimum of stinging(I did warn you, did I not?). A fabulous excursion, all around. We clipped our bags full rapidly, tossed ‘em in the car and then hiked down to my favorite beach to clamber about on the wonderful driftwood snags and fill each other in on our various and sundry current doings. Even the weather gods favoured us with lovely warm sunshine until a few choice drops warned us to scramble back through the driftwood and briar maze as the beach was disappearing with the rising tide. The rain sweetly waited ’til we arrived at Fisherman’s terminal, then when we were safely inside perusing smoked trout, scallops and oysters, the downpour began in earnest, dumping buckets like it was determined to flood all the fish back into the sea!

Then, inevitably, the gourmet she devil tempted me back to her place with her delectable food porn. She smoked, sauteed and creped us up magnificent marvels of culinary delight(smoked chicken and mushroom crepes topped with truffle sauce and nettles a la Rachael) while her bf Travis delighted mine ears with a heavenly selection of music from his excellent, vast collection of cds as we daintily(well, as dainty as you can get with a food so made for greedy slurpage) sucked down the fresh oyster appetizer.

I shouldn’t even mention dessert(no fair to get y’all drooling uncontrollably for naught), but I can’t help it. Guinness brownies! Yeah, I couldn’t believe my ears either, but you read me right. Guinness.

Nothing like what you might think though. Not with Rachael’s exquisite epicurean artistry at work. These were wonders of dark chocolatey goodness, tipped with an ever-so-slight pinch of sea salt(though I wasn’t quite sure if this was for the perfection of the dish, or just to mess with the non-salt lickin’ tastes of her Travis), standing tip toe(the brownies, not Travis) in a creamy peanutty sauce, accompanied by succulent banana slices-fried to crunchy gooey sweet lusciousness.. Aaaaah. Mmmmmm…

Such scrumptious, artistic perfection.

I asked her what she’s planning on doing with the rest of her nettles and she says, all nonchalant-like: ‘oh, maybe ravioli.’ Woooooot! Nettle Ravioli!? Yum. Double yum.

I’m waiting, Rach.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 4:14 am and is filed under foooood, friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.