David Smith 10/25/13 David Smith 10/25/13

Honey mushrooms

Last weekend I wrote about a recent mushroom hunting trek, where we were successful in finding at least three varieties of edible mushrooms in good quantities. We went out again the following day and harvested even more (shown below). One of the varieties we harvested was the honey mushroom, so let's talk a bit about those right now.

I think it's a good idea to know or have at hand the scientific, Latin names of mushrooms you may wish to consume, especially if there is any possibility of confusing them with any other mushroom. Knowing a species' taxonomic name will enable you to do a precise search for information on the mushroom, which in turn will allow you to go through the very specific identifying markers for that species. Plus, it's just pretty neat to be able to use a little Latin whenever you get an opportunity. Honey mushrooms are classified as Armillariella mellea (or perhaps better said, armillariella mellea is commonly known as the honey mushroom).

Where I live people also call honey mushrooms "buttons", potentially confusing the identification of the mushroom even further for anyone not a native to the area, as button mushrooms are the more widely accepted name Ofagaricus bisporus, the common white mushroom we find in grocery store produce sections. With apologies to my fellow local mushroom hunters I'll use the more widely accepted name, honey mushroom, rather than buttons, for Armillariella mellea.

My first encounter with honey mushrooms was in high school when my friend Tom, who I spoke of in last week's post, showed them to me in the woods his family owned behind their home. Back then I hunted squirrel, deer and the occasional ruffed grouse in their woods, and one day Tom introduced me to honey mushrooms (he called them buttons) and Entoloma abortivum, which he called pig snoots (we'll talk pig snoots in a separate blogpost). Tom learned how to identify and collect these mushrooms from his father, who also referred to them by the colloquial names Tom used. We collected a pail full of both kinds and sauteed them in butter. That particular afternoon trek, and its delicious harvest, was another one of those revelatory moments that foragers like me point to in our history of pivotal foodie experiences.

Up until then I had known about and purposely hunted for only two wild mushrooms: morels and giant puffballs. Mushrooms other than those two easily identifiable species had seemed a little daunting, so I pretty much just stuck to the two I knew I could not confuse with anything else. But suddenly, with Tom's tutelage on "buttons" and "pig snoots", my knowledge base, as well as my wild mushroom menu, instantly doubled. Once I saw how relatively simple it was to visually confirm the identities of a couple of mushrooms I had not known until then, I became enthusiastic at the prospect of increasing my personal edible mushroom catalog even further. The ensuing years saw me add more wild mushrooms to my list, including maitaki, sulphur shelf, dryad's saddle, shaggy mane, chanterelle, black trumpet, and more. But there are many more mushrooms that I am still not knowledgeable or confident about, that I could easily confuse with toxic look-similars. No doubt one's fungi education could continue for a lifetime.

Back to honeys...

Of the edible fungi that I am confident about correctly identifying, honey mushrooms are the ones that require the most attention to detail, because they can vary slightly in appearance, although there are some markers that are pretty constant to help enable confident identification. Let's go through them.

1) Location. Most commonly associated with hardwoods (oaks have been our favorite partner tree), especially around old stumps and rotting timber. If found on open ground there's a good chance that the soil is hiding the rotting remains of a tree or fallen limbs. It's been rare that we've found isolated honey mushrooms; usually they are found in clusters where they are either tightly grouped and overlapping or within no more that a couple of feet from one another. Autumn is the time we hunt for honeys, although I understand that in some regions they may appear year-round.

Mature honey mushrooms covering an old stump.

Mature honey mushrooms in a loose grouping near a rotting stump. Likely rotting wood in the soil below.

2) Cap. The caps of young honey mushrooms are noticeably different from those of older mushrooms. Immature honey caps are bulbous and domed, but they spread out and become planar, depressed or occasionally umbonate as they continue to grow. The young honeys more aptly conform to the description of "buttons" than do their mature versions. Cap color varies from yellowy-tan to reddish-brown or cinnamon, with the ones we usually find of the rusty red-brown variation. It's worth noting that the name of the honey mushroom refers to its coloring, not its flavor, and, as we know, honey also varies in hue from light blonde to reddish to darker browns, depending on the primary flowers used by the bees. Cap color is not always a sure-fire key with some mushrooms. Colors vary by degree and may also be dependant upon things like location (terroir), prolonged weather or climate conditions, age of mushroom and other variables. Color is an important key identifier, but it should be taken into consideration with all of the other identification keys.

A more vital key to honey mushroom cap identification, especially on the younger, more desirable mushrooms, is the presence of tiny, scaly "hairs", that look not unlike a man's 5-o'clock shadow or like teeny-tiny feathers (see image below). As the mushrooms age and the caps widen and become more planar these tiny scales or hairs kind of flatten out and the cap surface may become smoother and somewhat mottled or speckled in appearance.

3) Gills. The gills of honey mushrooms are most often decurrent, which means that they attach to and run down the stem for some short distance. The underside of younger honeys, where the gills are located, also displays a cottony or spider-webby veil that is attached from the stalk to the rim of the cap, and which covers the gills. The veil is mostly gone or broken by the time the mushroom matures and the cap flattens out. See the image above for a good example of the veil on the upturned mushrooms.

4) Stalk. The stalk is fibrous and pithy, with a white interior and a whitish to brown, mottled exterior. In mature mushrooms it appears relatively straight and symmetrical, although in young mushrooms it may also appear a bit bulbous at the bottom. Some stalks will show a ring where the veil was attached and some will not, so there's not a hard and fast rule concerning the presence of a ring.

5) Spore print. Spore prints are an important key identifier, and should be taken as part of identifying any mushroom you are not already completely familiar with. Sometimes a spore print can be the confirming key in identifying a mushroom, and sometimes it can be the one key that firmly declares that the mushroom you think is a honey mushroom is actually not, and that is indeed a very good thing to know. The spore print of honey mushrooms is white. To take a spore print you simply lay a cap, gills side down and with stem removed, on two pieces of paper, one dark and one white, and allow it to sit undisturbed for a few hours. Remove the cap and check the color of the spores that were deposited.

Below is a print I unintentionally made on our stove top, which has a mottled black surface. You can see the white pattern or print left by the spores. Also, sometimes when you find honey mushrooms tightly clustered and overlapping, mushrooms that lie partially covered by ones above will show white spore deposits on their caps from the mushrooms above.

There is a toxic mushroom that looks similar in some respects to mature honey mushrooms, the Deadly Galerina (Galerina autumnnalis). The spore print of the galerina is brown or rusty brown.

Take another look at the image in the middle of this post of the "Small, immature honey mushrooms" and note the following keys again:

The fuzzy or "whiskery" surface of the tops of the caps shown.

The cottony veil on the larger upturned mushroom - the veil is attached to the stem and outer rim of the cap, and still covers some of the gills.
How the gills attach and briefly continue down the stem.
The appearance and coloration of the stem, both outer surface and interior.

Honey mushrooms are a wide ranging popular edible (popular around here anyway; I've heard that in some places they are not highly desirable). They are richly flavored and lend themselves well to drying as a means of preserving them (although they can toughen and be a bit chewy when dried). I like them sauteed in butter and olive oil, added to egg and risotto dishes, game dishes such as squirrel, venison or grouse, or as toppings for hamburgers, steak or meatloaf.

As with any new mushroom, be absolutely sure of its identity, refer to several sources and at least one knowledgeable mushroomer to confirm your assessment, and try only a small amount at your first eating. That's good advice for any food, as people have all sorts of reactions to all sorts of foods, both domestic and wild. When learning about a new mushroom or wild edible it's smart to have several texts at hand. Fortunately, there are good ones out there and the catalog of books on mushroom identification seems to be growing each year. Here are just three that I have stacked on my desk at this very moment:

Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora; Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America by David Fischer and Alan Bessette; North American Mushrooms; A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi by Orson Miller Jr and Hope Miller.

David Smith 10/13/13 David Smith 10/13/13

Mushroom hunting

I love early autumn. Being in the woods anytime of year is fantastic, but autumn always seems a little bit extra special, Maybe it's the easy though abrupt way we slide into it from summer. It's such a comfortable transition, from cargo shorts and tee shirts to denim jacket and bluejeans. I can still enjoy my morning coffee on the porch without the extra layers that winter demands.

Certainly the smell of the autumn woods plays a part, with its heady perfume of earth and decaying leaf matter. No denying memory and personal history either. Fall was when, as a little kid, I looked forward to squirrel hunting with my Dad, as well as the peacefulness of bowhunting by myself when I got older.

It's the time of year when things are easier to spot, as thick green underbrush and canopy give way to a sparser landscape of browns and grays. It's also the season when new aisles open up in Mother Nature's grocery store, with nuts, fruits, berries and, maybe my favorite, autumn mushrooms. Puffballs, honey mushrooms, shaggy mane, buttons, pig snoots, maitaki, chicken mushrooms and more. Mushrooms are the ultimate treasure hunt edible.

This weekend I found myself alone in the house as wife and kids were off doing their own things. The urge to get into the woods is always stronger when I've got "me time" like that, so I headed just outside of town to my friend Tom's place in the country. Tom's been a friend for many years, since our junior high school days on the wrestling team. He's a rural fella who can build anything and do it with a good measure of artistic flair. He built his own house, using a lot of reclaimed and repurposed materials, on the edge of a sweet little woods that has been in his family for quite a while. It's a wood that has always been good for edibles of both the plant and animal kind, and in fall I especially enjoy its reliability for squirrel and mushrooms.

The peak above Tom's garage, in the home he built.

So, yesterday I drove out on a morning with a sky that promised rain at some point. Nobody was home when I arrived so I left a note in the door and began walking the forest with eyes to the ground. A few times along the way I would stop and just breathe in the rich aroma of damp forest earth, rotting tree stumps, pine needles and still falling oak leaves. I got excited when I found 4 or 5 very small Aborted entoloma, what Tom calls pig snoots, at the base of a small tree (Pig snoots is the more colorful local name for the mushroom that I first heard from Tom when he showed me this mushroom many years ago.)

Aborted Entoloma or Pig Snoot — Aborted Entoloma or *Pig Snoot*

I also found an impressive layer of viable acorns on a trail beneath one tall oak. Even though mushrooms were my intended target the ease with which I could harvest the nuts was enough to convince me to change my focus for a little while. Most of them had begun to sprout but the tiny curling tendrils that poked through the shells would not adversely affect the quality of the nutmeats inside. I cracked a couple open with my teeth, chewed the cream-colored meat, and found them to be solid and not overly bitter. I took 20 minutes and gathered about a half-gallon worth. I'll share the processing routine for acorns in another post soon.

Not far from the acorn spot I came upon a small area with a few rotting stumps, around which were dozens of honey mushrooms (what folks around here also call buttons ). Most of them were in advanced stages of development, with wide, flattened caps, but there were a number of smaller young mushrooms mixed in as well. I picked a few handfuls of all sizes.

Continuing my directionless meandering I stumbled upon a really exciting sight: Three giant puffball mushrooms, just a few feet from one another, each about the size of a small volleyball. I also spotted a couple of smaller puffballs several yards away. I left the small ones but picked the three large ones and tried to gently lay them in my bag so as not to crush the pig snoots and honey mushrooms already in there. Only two would fit in the bag so I carried the third and made my way back to the house to see if Tom had arrived home yet.

Two of the three big puffballs. The makings of some good eating.

He and his wife Barb had returned, and Tom and I decided to go back into the woods where he promised to show me a spot that had always produced a good amount of pig snoots/aborted entoloma. Sure enough, as soon as we got there we began finding the odd-shaped, white mushrooms poking through the leaf litter. We picked two or three dozen before moving on to the spot where I had found the honey mushrooms, where Tom confirmed their identity and we picked a dozen or so more. It's always a good idea to have another experienced mushroomer confirm what you've got, and as Tom is the one who first introduced me to honey mushrooms (buttons) I felt good about his expert confirmation. The sky that had been threatening a couple hours earlier finally opened the gates and we got absolutely deluged. I was rain-soaked down to my underwear, so we called it a day, and a pretty successful day at that..

Breakfast: egg fold-over with forest mushrooms in bacon fat with chard, garlic, leek and parmesan cheese.

When I got home I cleaned everything and began cracking acorns. This morning I fried a handful of mushrooms with eggs and began drying several more in the oven for storing long-term. I'm planning to head back out after the Packer game today, to help Tom cut some firewood and to hunt for more mushrooms. I'll also make a post in the next few days on identifying and processing these particular varieties of mushroom. Right now, it's almost kick-off and the Packers need my attention. Go Pack!

David Smith 9/23/13 David Smith 9/23/13

Sometimes hazelnuts are more than hazelnuts

It's been a couple years since I harvested any hazelnuts. Last year at this time I was working a lot of hours in a commercial kitchen and didn't get out into the countryside near as much as I prefer, so my foraging time was a shadow of what it had been both prior to and following that job. This year has been a struggle at times, without the steady paycheck, but peace of mind and fullness of spirit means a helluva lot more than a paycheck with stress and negativity attached to it. And up to now I've been able to find a way to keep us in tucker and keep the lights on. Darn few complaints.

Finding just a few dozen hazelnuts today reminded me that it's been two years since I last harvested any, that last year was a "lost year" in some respects, and that I need to make an effort to keep certain things - like foraging for hazelnuts or fishing for bluegills with my daughters or shooting my bow - alive and active even while doing the things that are necessary but perhaps more soul dampening.

Funny how looking down at a handful of nuts can light up the synapses that way.

Today my friend and fellow culinary adventurer Christine and I took a drive over to Brillion, to the homestead of the brother of a friend (thanks Glenn!) wherein lay fruit trees bearing more goodies than they can use right now. That's also one of the cool things about having friends who know I'm a forager and cook, I periodically get generous offers and opportunities like this one to glean or harvest fruits and veg. Christine and I made good use of our time by harvesting three or four varieties of apples, pears, some plums, a pail full of fuzzy quince, and a couple pints of blackberries and elderberries.

We then drove over to a small county park in the southern part of the county, where Christine was excited to pick a bucket full of wild grapes and we spied the aforementioned hazelnuts (I also found a nice nannyberry tree, though most of the nannyberries were well past their prime). The hazelnuts excited me the most, because, as I said above, for some reason - maybe simply because I haven't had any in my hands for a while, and I do love them so - they reinforced to me why this path we're on is important.

There is something so fundamentally satisfying and spirit enhancing in harvesting something that is both nourishing and delicious, and aesthetically interesting, from the branch of a tree. That holds true for everything I use to feed my family, be it a nut from a tree, a root from the earth, an egg from the duck coop, a trout from a river, a grouse or deer from the woods. All of these things are beautiful and pleasing to look at, and they speak to the artist in me. All of these things connect me to the daydreams and life stories I envisioned in my youth. All of these things provide creative sustenance for the body, mind and spirit.

It's about more than food, but it's also entirely about food. It can be as deep or as simple as you want to make it, and simple or deep are each pretty darn interesting. We buy less from the grocer but we surely eat better than we ever have. Our food is more enjoyable, more worthy of conversation, more central to our daily life. I think that is how it should be. I'm happy that a handful of wild hazelnuts can compel me to think about bigger things. I'm happy too that I can just crack them open and simply enjoy their deliciousness for a few minutes.

David Smith 9/22/13 David Smith 9/22/13

Crushing grapes

It's fruit season! So many of the various domestic and wild fruits are ripening and ready for harvest. It's also time to pull my old car-jack apple press from the mothballs and get it set up for another season of making cider and apple wine. Next week we'll be building and filming a bicycle-powered apple crusher to keep at Josh's house in Green Bay.

Yesterday was a cold and drizzly day, so I spent a good portion of it processing some of the fruit we've harvested up to now. I decided to manually crush some of the grapes we've amassed, for no other reason than because I wanted to get my hands right into the mix and play. Result: 5 gallons of wild grape juice fermenting and sore hands.

David Smith 9/20/13 David Smith 9/20/13

Filming Creative Sustenance & 2 days of foraging

Thursday afternoon we filmed what I think will be a great segment of Creative Sustenance. We've got a lot of film in the can from this summer already, and a lot of editing work to do. Essentially, we've taken more time to film than we have to edit what we've filmed.

Yesterday (Thursday) we shot in woods where we harvested wild grapes and hickory nuts. It was a fun, and somewhat tiring shoot, as we made a good hike to a couple of really beautiful locations. Insect activity was in full force in the prairie location and I think we got some fantastic shots of the life that was teeming there.

The woods we were in has become one of my favorite foraging locations. It's a veritable grocery store of wild edibles. In addition to the hickory nuts and wild grapes that we harvested we also found apples, highbush cranberries, mushrooms and more. I'm hoping to begin the editing process in earnest so that we can get some of these videos out to you soon.

Today I spent several hours foraging with my friend Christine Mittnacht. We had some pretty impressive success, filling several pails and totes with multiple varieties of apples and pears. Christine is a culinary school graduate, as well as owner along with her husband Brian of Taproot Farm & Kitchen in the countryside south of Manitowoc. You'll be learning more about her and Taproot in the weeks to come as we plan to film some butchery, farm and cooking segments with her.

But for right now, I've got some more apples, pears, grapes and hickory nuts to clean and process.

David Smith 9/14/13 David Smith 9/14/13

Plums

Last week a friend who has some plum and apple trees called and asked if we would want to harvest what we could from them, as the trees were producing more than they could use. Of course we said yes! So we drove out with baskets and bags and spent two beautiful Wisconsin mornings in the countryside picking juicy yellow plums and tart organic apples.

One of two laundry baskets full of plums.

I don't know the variety of the smallish apples but I'm planning to go back for more, as they will make some delicious cider and apple wine. We processed the plums by rinsing them well and removing the stones, which was a lengthy, sticky, gooey and enjoyable task. The effort resulted in two 5-gallon pails full of plum pulp and 9 jelly jars of gently sweet plum jelly that I made last night. The plum mash in the pails are in the first stage of fermentation on their way to becoming what will hopefully be some fantastic plum wine and plum brandy or eau de vie.

David Smith 9/13/13 David Smith 9/13/13

Wild Grapes

Quick post showing some wild grapes (aka riverbank grapes or frost grapes) we harvested yesterday. We'll be posting more in the next week or so on the grape harvest and wine & jelly making sessions that result.

Approximately 14 gallons worth of wild grapes

David Smith 9/7/13 David Smith 9/7/13

Tomato Paste

The fantastic harvest of tomatoes we're getting this year has me finding more ways to use and preserve them. Yesterday I made tomato paste, which is one of those pantry items that has so many uses in the kitchen. It's a very simple though somewhat time consuming process, but it doesn't require your complete attention throughout, as the stove does most of the work for you. Making your own tomato paste also lets you customize it to your own liking. This recipe makes a paste that is thick and rich, with a lovely smoky quality.

Ingredients:

tomatoes, 5 to 7 pounds
olive oil, about ½ cup
sea or kosher salt
garlic, 3 or 4 cloves
onion, ½ of a medium sized
pimenton (hot smoked paprika), 2 tsp
thyme, 6 or 7 sprigs, just the leaves
cracked black pepper, 1 tsp

1) Seed and rough chop the tomatoes. I save all of the seeds and jelly juice, add a little salt and pepper and drink it as a breakfast tomato juice.

2) Add the olive oil to a deep pot and heat at medium high. Add the seeded tomatoes and a bit of salt, stir to mix and thoroughly coat the tomatoes. Let it cook until the tomatoes soften into mush, stirring every so often. Then turn the heat down to simmer and let the mixture reduce dramatically, until it is thick and perhaps 1/5 of its original volume. Give it a stir fairly often to keep the bottom from burning and sticking. This will take a few hours.

3) Mince and press the garlic cloves into a paste. Dice the ½ onion super-fine - you could use a food processor if you have a small one. I just diced mine repeatedly until I practically had an onion paste. Finely dice the thyme leaves until you get something that's almost a powder. Add the garlic, onion and thyme to the tomato puree. Add the pimenton, black pepper, and salt if you think it needs more. Mix well.

4) There will be tomato skins in the puree. You could have removed those in the usual way earlier in the process (briefly scalding the tomatoes, ice bath and peeling prior to cooking) but I hate to waste anything that has flavor, so I pureed everything in a food processor.

5) Spread the tomato mixture onto a baking sheet and spread it around. Place into a 300° oven for around an hour or so. Give the paste a good stirring with a rubber spatula. Place it back in until enough liquid evaporates so that it's think and brick red in color, maybe a ½-hour more, depending on how much you reduced it while on the stove-top.

Let it cool and jar it up. It should last in your fridge for quite a while, at least a month, unless you use it all before then, which will probably be the case because this stuff is just so good. Use the tomato paste as a pizza sauce, bruschetta topping, sandwich spread (we made chicken sandwiches with it), add to soups, mix with a bit of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic for a fantastic dressing, add to your homemade barbecue sauce, spread it on an omelet in the morning, You could even use it as a homemade ice cream flavoring (don't knock it til you try it!). This paste is sweet, salty and smoky, and it smells as good as it tastes. After making it we ran a few errands and upon walking into the house we exclaimed, "Mmmm, this place smells like pizza joint!"

David Smith 9/6/13 David Smith 9/6/13

Nocino update

Today I took the second step in making nocino, the walnut flavored liqueur I started over a month ago. The original July 23 blogpost is here. Today I filtered the walnuts and lemon peel from the alcohol, made the spiced simple syrup, and added it to the tea-stained alcohol. I'll let it sit for at least another 40 or more days before sampling.

Nocino, step II, strained, spiced simple syrup added.

David Smith 9/5/13 David Smith 9/5/13

The death of a duck

This morning when I went out to feed and release the ducks from the coop I found that our brown hen had died overnight. I pretty much expected to find her as such. She'd been declining steadily over the past couple weeks, until yesterday when she could not muster the energy to even waddle away from me when I reached down to pick her up. She felt fragile, weighing, it seemed, half as much as she did just two or three weeks earlier.

The girls had named her Chloe, but I mostly just referred to her and the others according to their coloring. The black duck, the brown duck, the male or drake. Chloe was the brown duck. I tried to find the reason for her illness online, but none of them really nailed all of her symptoms. Until one person in a poultry chat forum mentioned that ducks can suffer from depression and even die from it. So I looked that up as well, and while there wasn't a whole lot of information on duck depression what I did find made sense, especially considering the sequence of events that initiated and lead to her decline.

Chloe, the brown duck on the right. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

She had always been something of a third wheel in the trio of ducks we had, obsequious in her manner to the drake and the black female. When the black hen became broody and spent more than a month glued to her clutch of eggs, the brown hen suddenly had full and unhindered access to the drake, and the two of them made an inseparable pair, although, truth be told, the drake seemed to simply accept her constant presence rather than embrace it. She followed him everywhere, often chattering behind him with that constant head and neck bobbing motion that ducks often use when communicating whatever it is they're communicating.

A good egg layer...the one on the left, that is.

The black hen hatched three ducklings at the end of her brood period. We kept and raised them separately from the adult ducks while the broody black hen continued to sit on another clutch of eggs for another month. When we finally released the three ducklings, now much larger and able to fend for themselves, into the run with the adults, the dynamic between all of the ducks changed instantly and dramatically.

The drake immediately became aggressive and somewhat obsessed with the new kids on the block, so much so that we had to separate him for fear that he'd harm them. We kept him in the coop while the rest were outside, and vice versa. We noticed that when he became aggressive to the ducklings Chloe would mimic his aggressiveness toward them as well. When he was in the coop Chloe would lay outside the coop near him while the ducklings and the black hen, who had nicely rebonded with her three offspring, tooled happily around the yard, picking at bugs and leaves or just sleeping contentedly in a small group.

Clearly the brown duck, Chloe, was not happy with the new situation. The drake was not interested in her at all, the black hen and the ducklings had their own little family group, and during the times when the whole flock was together she seemed even more ignored by everyone. So, I really think she became depressed. She ate less, was less chatty, and seemed to sulk, inasmuch as a duck can be said to sulk. She became weaker and weaker, would lie down off to the side of the others and finally would not even come out from the coop when the rest were released into the yard. I'm convinced she expired from depression, which makes sense to me as ducks are a very social animal. Never get only a single duck, they say; it's cruel.

So, after I found her this morning I dug a grave next to a lilac tree in the yard, tucked her bill under her wing and laid her into the hole. Animals dying is of course a part of the experience of having animals. I'm no stranger to dead animals, be they farm animals or animals I harvest from the wild. Sometimes they die quietly (like a duck expiring alone overnight), sometimes violently (ducklings get torn apart by raccoons and chickens get mass murdered by weasels all the time). It's not anything to get real worked up over. You just accept it and do your best to prevent it where and when you can. Mostly you just try to give the animals in your charge a good life, and a good death when that time comes too. What always bothers me most is if there's any suffering attached to the death. The brown duck was suffering at the end, and that bothered me, particularly as I didn't know what to do about it. Hopefully I'm smarter about it now. But she did have a very good life up until then, and I'm content about that.