The Morel of the Story

Spring is here, and every species in the world is getting down -- birds are noisily advertising for mates, pollen fills the air indicating rampant plant sex right here right now, and I am so not getting any. Morels, that is! Mushrooms!

I have been morel hunting for a few years, and been lucky at it. I had a good teacher who shared a good spot with me, and helped me get my eyes on. Since then I've been able to do well each spring, finding good spots of my own, bringing home dozens of delicious 'shrooms. This year however I've been eagerly awaiting morels...and waiting...and waiting.

All the co-signs of morel time are here, and even starting to be gone. Folklore says to look for morels when oak leaves are the size of squirrels' ears -- that was so three weeks ago, the forest canopy is close to fully leafed out at this point. Jack in the pulpits and mayapples are way up, the garlic mustard is flowering, and still no morels. I have gone out looking nearly every day over the past three weeks (I started early, just in case -- it's been unusually warm this spring) and have found a grand total of six. Which is six more than other friends, looking in the same park, have been able to come up with.

Morels are famously finicky; the felines of the fungus world, they come when they feel like it -- or not. So if the winter has been not too severe, but also not too mild, if precisely the right amount of rain has fallen at the right time, and the temperature is not too hot, but also not too cold, and if you look in the right place at just the right time...you might find some morels. Then again you very well may not: thus the thrill of the morel hunt.

So today I stopped by the public park where more than two weeks ago I found four morels. Historically this has not been an abundant site, but so far it's the only place that I've found any at all this year. After a half hour of looking I found two more(ls). The first four from a couple weeks back I dried, but these two I threw in a bunch of butter with the rest of the lion's mane and eventually a big clump of dandelions. A fantastic late lunch on a busy day.

In the Weeds

Yesterday was the monthly Baltimore Food Makers pot luck, and about thirty of us enjoyed a picnic in the Jerusalem Mill area of Gunpowder Falls State Park. After eating we hiked through the park along the Gunpowder to the Jericho covered bridge and over into neighboring Flying Plow Farm, searching for wild edible plants the whole way.

Some folks from the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group joined us for the day, and MAPS leader/expert wild foods forager Hue started us off with an appetizer of maple seed pods, and also picked up a pokeweed shoot and spring beauty corm for show-and-tell.

I also helped point out common wild edibles as we ranged through the park. My emphasis on these weed walks is on the weeds -- they're basically everywhere, even in the city; nobody cares if you kill the plant when you gather it; and many varieties are so abundant it's fairly easy to gather enough to feed a family and even preserve some for winter. So we started off taking a look at some common varieties -- dock, plantain, chick weed, dandelion, cow cress, day lily -- growing right by the park roadside.

Once we entered the forest, however, the emphasis was more on looking rather than gathering (with the promise of free-for-all foraging once we reached Flying Plow). The harvesting of native plants is prohibited in Maryland state parks, but we got to admire a pantheon of native varieties in situ. A partial list: skunk cabbage, jack-in-the-pulpits, wild ginger, trout lily, spring beauty, toothwort, greenbriar, wood nettle, jewel weed, and wild ginseng. We also found, in distressing abundance, invasive non-native edible species such as Japanese knotweed, lesser celandine and garlic mustard.

One of the highlights of the walk was when Hue spotted a hericium erinaceus -- lion's mane mushroom -- growing on a beech tree.

(Thanks to Aliza Ess for the photo -- the pieces missing from the mushroom are because several samples had already been taken from it!)

It was a large, dense double cluster, and so after Hue gathered as much as he wanted for the gourmet wild foods cooking class he's teaching next week there was plenty left for other group members to take some home. We all stood around together totally geeking out on this fungus, smelling and tasting and utterly delighted.

This was my first lion's mane. Even uncooked it was delicious -- slightly sweet, with a faintly acrid aftertaste. Hue commented that lion's mane is supposed to taste like lobster, and I definitely got that from the dense, rich flesh.

Here is a close-up of a lion's mane, showing the shaggy strands of the mushroom's outer layer that give it its name:

Eventually the group moved on, but even as we toured Tom and Sarah's first year setup at Flying Plow Farm and identified even more edible species (dandelion greens, mint, dead nettles, gill-over-the-ground, sorrel, burdock) my mind was half occupied by thoughts of sautéing my share of lion's mane in lots and lots of spring butter.

A long day of weed walking plus hungry children the moment I got home called for a simple Sunday supper of spaghetti and meatballs (my homemade frozen "DIY convenience food" -- is that an oxymoron?) in heirloom tomato marinara. The guys had no interest in the lion's mane, which was just dandy with me -- more for mama! -- so while the main course cooked I divided the lion's mane in half and melted just enough butter to coat the bottom of a small cast iron skillet. I pulled half of the mushroom into chunks roughly the size of lump backfin crab and slow-sautéed them for a long time. They never browned -- I wasn't trying for sear -- and did not express any liquid; instead, they just seemed to soften and blot up all the butter.

A dash of sea salt was the only other need for these astonishing 'shrooms -- really, you could have told me I was eating lobster chunks and I would have believed you, the taste and texture were so similar. The lion's mane is just really rich, with a slight sweetness that reminds me of really fresh, ocean-y crustacean. I just stood over the frying pan letting each chunk melt on my tongue and savoring...until Jack came in asking for more meatballs, as in the ones I'd cooked for myself.

Inspiration struck: I'd cooked the mushrooms as a side dish, but they'd work well as an impromptu entrée. My house marinara is very simple, all about the brightness of tomato, and it worked really well with the remaining lion's mane when i swirled both into a plate of pasta. I ate a few bites, and then did a light grating of sheep's milk romano over the rest. It was really really good either way, but the cheese provided just a hint of earthy sharpness that made a nice counterpoint.

Brian later emailed me that he'd made faux crab cakes from his portion of lion's mane, a brilliant way to take advantage of the mushroom's unique properties:



He also mentioned, however, that even though the "crab" cakes were fantastic, he realized he couldn't tell them from a regular crab cake and felt almost disappointed. So, he wrote, "I just heavily seasoned both sides of two mushroom pieces with salt and threw those in the oil to brown heavily on both sides. (It was at this point that it occured to me that i should have been using butter). When I bit into the first one of these, I just sat there chewing in pleasure. It was so juicy and so sweet. It was like a cross between the seafood sweetness of a really good scallop and the oceany subtleness of an oyster. I had sprinkled good seasalt on when they came out of the pan, which might have contributed. But really, these two slices were mind blowing. It's amazing how different this is from something like a morel though. A morel is forest and earthiness - this was nothing like that, but in a completely different way."

Brian concluded, "We have got to find more of these." And I concur completely. Power to the weed walk!

Going for the Aspara-Gusto

So all of a sudden it's going Spring gangbusters around here, and in addition to some surging life and professional demands plus putting in my garden I've been busy gathering and cooking many fun edibles. The downside to all this busy-ness is that I haven't had a spare moment to write about the fun edibles part.

This year March 30th goes down as a red letter day in my personal calendar: Feast of the First Asparagus. There's a little farm stand down the road from where I live, and starting in late March I try to drive past at least once a day and see if the homemade "Asparagus" sign is posted out front. Last Wednesday was my lucky day -- the sign was flying, and I screeched into the field next to the little ramshackle compound. It was nearly 1 pm, and typically produce appears in the early morning at this place. When it's gone, it's gone, at least until the next morning, and so I tried not to get my hopes up. But I was so eager to see if there was indeed any asparagus left that I left my van door hanging open and dashed -- literally ran -- into the farm stand.

Ahhhhh...three bunches left standing upright in a couple of inches of water inside a big Country Crock margarine tub. I was shameless and bought all three ($1.50/bunch). It probably says something about my social life that I was ecstatic -- utterly over the moon -- to be holding three bunches of just-picked Baltimore County asparagus.

Drove straight home and as soon as I walked in the door I turned the oven on to 450 degrees F. Lined a baking pan with foil, plopped one bunch of asparagus on it, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkled coarse sea salt and cracked some fresh pepper on it. Into the oven for 15 minutes, and into my mouth as soon as I could pick up the spears from the baking pan without burning my fingertips too badly...

I'll happily eat asparagus every day until Farmer Bills decides to rest his patch -- at least, every day I get there in time to buy. I was too late each day after Wednesday, arriving once the Country Crock bucket was tragically emptied by earlier buyers, but yesterday as I was leaving all forlorn Mr. Bills happened to be walking across the field. I hailed him to say hello and told him my tale of woe (No asparagus! Five days in a row!) and he very kindly went back in the field and picked two more bunches for me. He says it's a little slow right now with the cooler weather, but as soon as it warms up some there should be abundant asparagus for all.

Unless, of course, I get there first.

Feelin' Sassy. Sort of.

Anyone who's hung out with me recently is well aware of my intense interest in homesteading skills. When I was a kid, back in the back-to-the-land days of the 1970s, the Foxfire books were something of a handbook slash bible for the cool skills needed when venturing off the grid and into a wild life.

I recently bought the first two books off Ebay, and was reading Foxfire 2's chapter on spring wild plant foods with great interest. Maryland's first spring forageables are just peeking above the ground, and I'm raring to start collecting -- and eating.

Old-time mountain folk valued sassafras tea as a spring tonic, saying that it thinned a person's blood made sluggish by a long winter spent indoors. I could certainly use a seasonal pick-me-up, and decided to make some sassafras tea while waiting for the dandelion leaves to get just a little bigger before I pick them and sauté them in an obscene amount of butter.

I uprooted a sassafras sapling while setting up my new compost heap, and making tea could not have been easier -- I scrubbed the three-foot long, fragrant taproot clean of mud, cut it into lengths, smashed those with a meat hammer, and boiled them in a big pot of water. The liquid turned a lovely deep red color and gave off a scent reminiscent of both licorice and shoe polish. I strained out the solids, sweetened the tea with honey (gathered from Baltimore county bees kept by a friend's 9 year old son!) and drank several cups. This might have been wishful thinking, but I swear it made me feel a little, well, tingly.

It's truly a delicious drink -- a complex, slightly sharp taste that reminds me of root beer, with a velvety mouth feel. (The mouth feel is very distinct, and I wasn't surprised to read later that sassafras leaves are dried to make filé powder, the Cajun seasoning that lends both flavor and especially thickening properties to gumbo). I poured the rest into bottles, one to give to a friend and brought the other as a beverage contribution for a pot luck following a Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group workshop on emergency preparedness.

That batch of sassafras tea is all drunk up now, and I was basking in a fairly deep sense of coolness about having made it. I mean, talk about your back yard beverage! But then it occurred to me to look up the health benefits of sassafras tea, other than of course the traditional springtime blood thinning thing.

Distressingly, it turns out that sassafras used to be popular as a food additive and flavoring but was banned by the FDA in the 1960s after it turned out that safrole, the essential oil that gives sassafras its distinctive odor and flavor, caused liver cancer in laboratory rats. Grrreeeeaattt...It also turns out that the Cherokee, who used sassafras as a traditional medicine, also stressed that it should never be taken for more than a week at a time, so even back before laboratories and rats it was known that you shouldn't drink a whole lot of this stuff. One side affect of too much sass, too fast: profuse sweating and shakiness.

I feel a little bad that I foisted potentially carcinogenic sassafras tea on my friend Brian -- he's been under the weather for the past couple weeks, a guy in need of a spring tonic if ever I've seen one -- as well as my new MAPS friends, all without doing due diligence on the potential benefits or, ahem, pitfalls of the foraged food.

Further research shows that a few cups of sassafras tea isn't going to hurt anyone -- it's long term, high-dosage use that brings on the liver cancer. (Now, what was it that Euell Gibbons died of? Since in Stalking the Wild Asparagus's sassafras chapter Gibbons mentions his fondness for, and frequent quaffing of, sassafras root tea). So I'll probably limit my own sassafras tea consumption to a single, annual March spring tonic brewing, and certainly alert anyone I might ever offer it to in the future as to its potential lethality.

So I hereby apologize to Brian, and MAPS folks (especially Dan, who seemed to like it the most), and also to my liver. Happy Spring!

Cube-ism

So I waded back into the beef this week. Porterhouse steaks last Friday night -- the butcher cut them a little thin for me, on the skinny side of half an inch, but a quick sear on the grill with a nice sea salt and pepper crust turned out some tender, flavorful meat. Mashed potatoes (potatoes and butter courtesy of the Amish co-op) and a salad (from Gardener's Gourmet woodstove-heated greenhouses in Westminster, by way of the Waverly farmer's market) rounded out a quick and satisfying dinner.

Ever since I crammed, stuffed, and wedged that quarter side of beef into my freezer last month I've been wondering what the hell I'd do with the 20 or so pounds of cube steak that came along with. I wasn't even sure what cube steak *is* -- we never ate it when I was a kid, so it's not part of my retro-foods vernacular.

I did however have vague recollections of a fantastic Dorothy Allison essay I'd read in the NYT Magazine a few years ago. It was more about her scrambling up the economic ladder far enough to afford a duck and a goose for Christmas -- the accompanying recipe is how to roast a duck. The part that stuck in my memory, though, was a passage about pounding oddball cuts of beef with a Coke bottle to tenderize it -- essentially, home-made cube steak. I went looking for it and got to re-read one of the most lyrical passages of food writing I've ever encountered:

"Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and pepper, crispy bits of whatever meat anchored the meal, a couple of cups of water or milk and slow stirring to break up lumps. That’s it. It smells of home, the door locked against the night and a stillness made safe by the sound of a spoon going round in a pan. It is anticipation, the last thing prepared before the meal comes to the table, the bowl in Mama’s hand closing the day out peacefully, no matter what came before."

Having read that -- and also the part about the Coke bottle pounding -- again, how could I not venture in for my own cube steak and gravy experience?

Once the inaugural pack of cube steaks thawed out, I opened the white butcher's paper to discover six heavily dimpled, flattened cutlets. The cuts were in a checkerboard shape -- hence the term "cube" steak. When I'd spoken to the butcher who custom-slaughtered our quarter cow, she'd offered this meat in the form of cutlets or cube steaks, my choice, but heavily recommending the cube steaks. "You'd have to work really hard to get this meat anywhere near tender enough to eat. You'd have to pound it within an inch of your life before you cook it," she advised over the phone. "But we have a machine that pounds the meat and tenderizes it for you."

Hey, I'm in favor of anything involving less work for little ol' me, so cube steak it was. Plus, though I'd envisioned engaging Jack and Cole in a little pre-dinner meat pounding, we utterly lack any of the heavy-lipped old fashioned Coke bottles Dorothy Allison references. So I told the butcher go ahead, pound 'er up.

Cube steak, it turns out, generally comes from parts of the cow that got a lot of exercise -- fairly tough cuts of muscle, like the the top or the round. Once tenderized, however, whether mechanically or via child labor, it's basically poor man's steak, straddling the divide between hamburger and cheap sirloin. Kitchens the world over have a use for cube steak, it seems. Browsing the innerwebs for cooking ideas, I mused over the phenomenon of smothered steak -- an approach ranging from intriguing, as in braising them in stock with caramelized onions, to terrifying preparations involving canned green beans and cream of mushroom soup. Latino kitchens marinate in lime and garlic to make bistec palomilla or adobo seasoning for bistec encebollado; Asian ones don't bother with the macerating, they just cut it matchstick-thin and stir fry. The cube steak concept that most made my mouth water, however, was chicken-fried steak.

I used to spend a fair amount of time in Austin, Texas, and I have fond memories of the chicken-fried steak at Threadgills. They claim theirs is world famous, and maybe even invented there if memory serves, but I just wanted to dine where Janis Joplin used to be the house entertainment. The outstanding chicken-fried steak was a secondary benefit.

Now, Threadgill's does East Texas CFS, which means batter dipped and served with sawmill (white) gravy. I am by birth tragically gravy challenged and so decided to make West Texas-style CFS, where the meat is simply coated in seasoned flour and quickly fried in a hot skillet. I am reasonably able to make a quick pan gravy, essentially a red-eye gravy, but cream gravies in my past have been regrettable.

So I filled a pie plate with flour, sprinkled on some coarse sea salt and lots lots lots of ground pepper. I floured the steaks on both sides and dropped them into a very hot iron skillet which had been liberally lubricated with lard. Once I'd flash-fried up a dinner's worth of cube steaks I then turned the savory, crunchy bits left in the pan into a dark brown gravy by dumping the leftover flour into the skillet to brown, then adding water and a little milk. By this time the smell of frying beef had filled the house, and once the gravy thickened up I called the boys to the table for chicken-fried steak and garlic mashed potatoes, with an ocean of gravy poured over.

I didn't have to call twice.

Loving the Leftovers

Since starting this blog a couple months ago it's become evident to me that we tend to eat the same dinners over and over. In any given week one night will almost definitely feature paht thai, and another is likely to feature spaghetti and meatballs.

(A note about meatballs: although I'm all about eating locally, sustainably and seasonally, there are a few convenience foods I might actually purchase, were they to exist, like frozen, pre-cooked meatballs made from pastured beef. I have never found these anywhere, but it would be great to keep a package on hand for last-minute meals. Instead I make my own meatballs in giant batches, cook and freeze them for quick reheating: DIY convenience food. For just those times when the meatball bag is empty and the guys are too starving to wait for -- and I'm too exhausted to assemble -- scratch-cooked anything, I stash a package of Applegate Farms uncured, grassfed hot dogs in the freezer. Hey, on those nights, it's either that or popcorn for our evening meal; peanut butter sandwiches would be a fantastic dinner alternative, except on those nights we are also invariably fresh out of bread).

Anyway, the guys often request skeddi (as Coley calls it) and meatballs. I usually cook an entire pound of pasta, even though we eat maybe a third of it for dinner, because what I really look forward to is the next day: Skeddi Pie. Or, as my Neapolitan landlady used to call it, torta di pasta.

I've never actually seen a recipe for this, though I'm sure you can find anything on the ol' innerwebs. It's one of those something-from-nothing dishes that Italian cooks seem to emerge from the womb already proficient in throwing together. It's brilliant with any kind of left-over pasta, from short or tube pastas to long strands, even if the pasta is already dressed in tomato, cream or any other sauce. This recipe can also make use of many other odds and ends you might have lingering in the fridge. It's fast, simple, and inexpensive, and best of all really really delicious. Also highly portable -- it's one of my favorite picnic foods.

Basically, once the pasta is tossed with the eggs and Parmesan, you can toss in whatever you've got loitering around: leftover roasted vegetables. Artichoke hearts. Sun-dried tomatoes, or chopped fresh ones. Anchovies or sardines. Olives, capers, marinated mushrooms. Pennies. (Just seeing if you were paying attention).

Torta di Pasta

4 cups cooked/cooled pasta (approx 1/2 lb, a little more or a little less is fine)
3 eggs, beaten,
1 cup grated Parmesan or Reggiano cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated pepper

Add-ins: at least throw a handful of sliced scallions in there, or some olives, but really anything goes -- as little or as much as you like.

Oven to 375.

In large bowl, combine pasta with all ingredients (except add-ins). Using your hands for best results, and also because it's fun, mix gently but thoroughly. Fold in scallions, olives, etc.

In a large (9 or 10 inch) ovenproof skillet (cast iron is brilliant for this), heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil. When pan is very hot, pack pasta mixture into the pan as evenly as you can. Cook over medium-high for about 3 minutes, until starting to brown on bottom. Run a spatula around sides and underneath to loosen torta and prevent sticking. Slide into oven for 15-20 minutes, until middle is firm to touch in center.

I usually serve this straight from the pan, but you can run a spatula under and around the cake to loosen it and then invert onto a platter.

Crunchy On The Inside

Recently I've been trying to take more of a problem-solving approach to life here on the cul-de-sac. Case in point: we seem to always run late for school in the mornings, and it's a major stressor for everyone -- me carping at the boys to get dressed, find their backpacks, finish their breakfasts, no really I mean it put clothes on right NOW. I swear the average school morning shaves an entire week off my lifespan, and the boys don't enjoy it either.

One thing that slows us down, I know, is that my insistence on a solid, nutritious breakfast, and preferably a hot one. Pancakes are relatively quick, and so is oatmeal when I remember to soak the danged oats the night before, but when you're working on getting everyone fed, dressed and out the door in less than 30 minutes, scratch-cooked breakfasts are just going to make us late for school. Again.

So I've been playing around with the idea of breakfast bars -- whole grains, fruit and protein in portable form. Add a travel cup of milk and you've got a car seat-friendly first meal of the day. I certainly didn't invent the idea -- the supermarket is rife with kiddie go-foods, from cereal bars coated with a white substance meant to suggest milk to slurpable tubes of technicolor yogurt containing more sugar per serving than a Coke.

Since I've long been concerned with organic and whole foods, I've also often been mocked for being a hippie: "You're SO crunchy," someone once told me. I don't wear Birkenstocks or tie-dyed anything, and never really counterculture identified (though I must confess to attending a few Grateful Dead shows) so I'm not sure why how I eat makes me a hippie when I seem to lack most of the other flower child cultural markers. Whatever, man.

Thus I think it's funny that I've only been making my own granola for a couple of years, and this is my first shot at granola bars -- granola being the standard culinary petard used to hoist hippies, I guess. Maybe I've been crunchy on the inside all along.

No matter my demographic, I would benefit as much as the guys from a healthy portable breakfast, if this morning's regrettable trip to Safeway is any indication. Today I had time for coffee but nothing more on a morning totally thrown off by the Daylight Savings time change, which sprang forward hard on my ass. After dropping the guys at school -- on time, though just barely -- I swung by the grocery store and was blindsided by English muffin lust. Safeway's got a buy-one, get one free sale on Thomas' products this week and, upon entering this particular store, shoppers are greeted by an enormous English muffin display.

I've worshiped at the Church of Michael Pollan for nearly four years now, and we eat as traditionally and seasonally as we possibly can. However, English muffins happen to be one of the industrial foods I've missed most -- for many years I breakfasted daily and happily on a toasted English muffin, slathered with butter and marmalade -- and this morning, confronted in my hunger-weakened state by the muffin mountain, I threw two boxes of whole wheat muffins into the cart. It wasn't til I got home that it dawned on me to check the ingredients list, which was appallingly long: thirty-eight separate ingredients (counting "mono- and di-glycerides" as two). Holy multisyllabic industrial food additives, Batman! I still toasted one up and ate it slathered with butter, but the joy was gone. English muffins are so over for me now.

Fortunately I have evolved a really, really good breakfast bar recipe. I played around with all sorts of approaches, including blending in tofu for extra protein and moisture, but ended up with a more or less classic granola bar. It's dense and chewy, not too sweet, and as chock-full of fruit and fiber as you want to make it -- you can add up to three cups of dried fruit, nuts, seeds, whatever you got, or none at all (though IMHO you're crazy if you don't, those tasty little treat nuggest are the best part!), it's all good. My favorite combination so far is 2/3 cup each dried fruit-juice-sweetened cranberries, walnuts and large-shred (flaked) organic coconut. (Anybody knows a reliable place to find flaked coconut minus propylene glycol and sulfites, please to let me know).

Cul-de-Sac Breakfast Bars

1 cup quick rolled oats (not instant)
2/3 cup old fashioned oats
1/3 cup whole wheat or unbleached flour
1/4 cup hippie sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
up to 3 cups coarsely chopped dried fruit, nuts and/or seeds*

6 tablespoons melted butter (can substitute some or all of this with coconut oil)
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
2 tablespoons golden syrup** or molasses
1 tablespoon water

Oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8x8 pan.

Mix together all the dry ingredients plus any additions you're adding. In a separate bowl whisk together butter, syrups and water. Toss wet with dry until evenly moistened. Firmly press the mixture into the prepared pan, packing it down and distributing it evenly.

Bake 40-45 minutes, until the edges are brown. The center will seem underbaked, but will firm up as it cools. Cool completely in pan on a cooling rack before slicing. To store -- not that these will hang around long -- wrap squares individually or keep in airtight container.

* Suggestions: any kind of nuts, of course, and chopped dried fruit like apricots or prunes. Also sunflower seeds, pepitas, sesame seeds, wheat germ, flax meal, even chocolate chips (cherries, walnuts and dark chocolate chunks are a pretty amazing combination if you're loose on your definition of acceptable breakfast foods).

**Lyle's Golden Syrup is my new favorite obscure ingredient! It's a British baking item that is a useful substitute for corn syrup. Genuine golden syrup like Lyle's is made from cane sugar, and has a marvelous caramel flavor that really comes out in these granola bars. (There are knockoff brands that mix corn syrup with molasses; technically this is treacle, not golden syrup, so be sure to read the label). For a darker, richer flavor you can of course use molasses. You could also substitute King syrup, or of course just use corn syrup. Golden syrup is sold at many grocery stores.