And if I knew for sure this was edible, I'd totally eat it (but I don't, so I won't!)
Showing posts with label mushrooms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mushrooms. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2014
Saturday, December 17, 2011
What we are eating: December, 2011
There is so much going on in the garden right now, and we are starting to harvest some long-maturing crops planted earlier in the year as well as eating early summer veggies. It's all a bit fabulous!
The garlic I planted way, way, way back in April finally flopped over and the leaves dried out, so out of the ground it came. It was such a good crop to grow, set and forget! Needed nothing more than the occasional weed and it did it's thing (albeit very slowly, not a good one for the impatient).
The 'Early White' softneck garlic bulbs were quite small but came out of the ground largely intact and were easy to clean up.
The 'Early Purple' garlic is a hardneck variety. The bulbs are much larger, around supermarket size, but the skins tended to split or be absent from at least half of the cloves I pulled out and were a bit of a bugger to clean all the dirt out of. The skins were also very fragile and a number of bulbs were easily damaged by pulling and cleaning. As that's not good for storing the garlic, I crushed all the damaged bulbs and mixed them with oil and have frozen the mash to use as we go along (the oil makes it easy to just scoop out teaspoons of frozen garlic).
Now these, these are completely fabulous and I can't seem to stop raving about them. They are the first of the potatoes I planted in August. The potatoes themselves arrived in the post in June - you might remember I didn't know exactly what they were! - and I think they're fulfilling all the promise of that mysterious brown paper bag. Now, these particular potatoes I grew in green plastic potato bags and they suffered a Lack of Water while we were away and the tops died off in these particular bags so I unearthed the lot. There are still half a dozen plants growing well in the ground, and a few more still in potato bags for later in the season. So far we've had about 2kg of the beauties! Many of them were a lovely size which fit in the palm of my hand.
And an awful lot of them were the size of peas. After a thorough scrubbing, we boiled them up, then cooked them briefly in a pan with loads of home-grown garlic and parsley, salt, pepper and an unhealthy amount of butter. Despite their small size, they were delicious (of course!)
At my best guess these potatoes include Bananas, Cranberry Reds, Sapphires, and Pink Eyes (or are they Pink Edwards?)
We're also still eating mushrooms out of September's mushroom kit. You might wonder how we kept it going while we were away for a month? Well, I handed it to my mum who got about two mushrooms out of it, and then she went away for a while so she lent it to her mum who got a few more, and then it went back to my mum where it did nearly nothing, and then it came back to us and it's had it's first genuinely decent crop - 200g - of mushrooms, enough for one pot of mushroom sauce!
Added to that mushroom sauce was a glorious FAT Red Legs spring onion. I much prefer spring onions over normal onions. They are easy to grow (but much slower than I realised they would be) and they don't hurt your eyes when you cut them.
And for dessert? Muffins made with the first of the rhubarb.
And finally, though not for eating - unless they have seeds and then our future-chickens will get them - are my sunflowers. The yellow variety is beginning to open:
And the reds are open all the way and are much lovelier and more varied in their colour than I imagined they would be, shot through with russets, golds, oranges, and stems of deep purple.
The garlic I planted way, way, way back in April finally flopped over and the leaves dried out, so out of the ground it came. It was such a good crop to grow, set and forget! Needed nothing more than the occasional weed and it did it's thing (albeit very slowly, not a good one for the impatient).
The 'Early White' softneck garlic bulbs were quite small but came out of the ground largely intact and were easy to clean up.
The 'Early Purple' garlic is a hardneck variety. The bulbs are much larger, around supermarket size, but the skins tended to split or be absent from at least half of the cloves I pulled out and were a bit of a bugger to clean all the dirt out of. The skins were also very fragile and a number of bulbs were easily damaged by pulling and cleaning. As that's not good for storing the garlic, I crushed all the damaged bulbs and mixed them with oil and have frozen the mash to use as we go along (the oil makes it easy to just scoop out teaspoons of frozen garlic).
Now these, these are completely fabulous and I can't seem to stop raving about them. They are the first of the potatoes I planted in August. The potatoes themselves arrived in the post in June - you might remember I didn't know exactly what they were! - and I think they're fulfilling all the promise of that mysterious brown paper bag. Now, these particular potatoes I grew in green plastic potato bags and they suffered a Lack of Water while we were away and the tops died off in these particular bags so I unearthed the lot. There are still half a dozen plants growing well in the ground, and a few more still in potato bags for later in the season. So far we've had about 2kg of the beauties! Many of them were a lovely size which fit in the palm of my hand.
And an awful lot of them were the size of peas. After a thorough scrubbing, we boiled them up, then cooked them briefly in a pan with loads of home-grown garlic and parsley, salt, pepper and an unhealthy amount of butter. Despite their small size, they were delicious (of course!)
At my best guess these potatoes include Bananas, Cranberry Reds, Sapphires, and Pink Eyes (or are they Pink Edwards?)
We're also still eating mushrooms out of September's mushroom kit. You might wonder how we kept it going while we were away for a month? Well, I handed it to my mum who got about two mushrooms out of it, and then she went away for a while so she lent it to her mum who got a few more, and then it went back to my mum where it did nearly nothing, and then it came back to us and it's had it's first genuinely decent crop - 200g - of mushrooms, enough for one pot of mushroom sauce!
Added to that mushroom sauce was a glorious FAT Red Legs spring onion. I much prefer spring onions over normal onions. They are easy to grow (but much slower than I realised they would be) and they don't hurt your eyes when you cut them.
And for dessert? Muffins made with the first of the rhubarb.
And finally, though not for eating - unless they have seeds and then our future-chickens will get them - are my sunflowers. The yellow variety is beginning to open:
And the reds are open all the way and are much lovelier and more varied in their colour than I imagined they would be, shot through with russets, golds, oranges, and stems of deep purple.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Easy peasy mushie pizza
After a long and busy day at work, what better for dinner than pizza? That would be pizza with home-grown mushrooms!
Aren't they lovely underneath?
And, because I am a nerd, I weighed them because I'd like to know if we get any real 'value for money' from this mushroom kit (the kit was $18).
I made a super easy yogurt pizza dough after reading about it on Fat Mum Slim's blog (one cup of self-raising flour and one cup of Greek yogurt, that is absolutely it!) and chef D put the rest of the pizza together out of random ingredients found in the fridge and pantry... bacon, two types of cheese, tinned tomatoes, baby spinach. He cooked down the mushrooms and spinach a little first.
Popped it into the oven - 200 degrees Celsius (390 Fahrenheit) on fan forced - for about 15 minutes until it was golden about the edges
Yum!
We ate the lot. No leftovers for lunch tomorrow, oops!
Aren't they lovely underneath?
And, because I am a nerd, I weighed them because I'd like to know if we get any real 'value for money' from this mushroom kit (the kit was $18).
I made a super easy yogurt pizza dough after reading about it on Fat Mum Slim's blog (one cup of self-raising flour and one cup of Greek yogurt, that is absolutely it!) and chef D put the rest of the pizza together out of random ingredients found in the fridge and pantry... bacon, two types of cheese, tinned tomatoes, baby spinach. He cooked down the mushrooms and spinach a little first.
Popped it into the oven - 200 degrees Celsius (390 Fahrenheit) on fan forced - for about 15 minutes until it was golden about the edges
Yum!
We ate the lot. No leftovers for lunch tomorrow, oops!
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Two parter
Tonight's post has two halves which have absolutely nothing to do with each other :)
First up? I have become a bit obsessed with these:
Oh yes. Teepees! Specifically, cute little fabric indoor teepees for kids. I am on a mission to make one for SP. I bought four 1.8m wooden dowels the other day, and today I had a whole entire afternoon to myself to go shopping in the city and I got some fabric to make the outside of the teepee with. I've decided on a bit of a retro, green theme.
I apologise for the crappy photos, this seems to be becoming a recurring Saturday night theme (uploading bad photos, that is). So tonight I have put my dowels together in a teepee shape and measured the triangles and have drawn up a wee diagram. I'd love to get cutting and sewing tonight too, except my sewing machine is all packed away and it's 11:48pm and I'm off to a friend's wedding tomorrow, so I think just this once I shall have to be sensible and put the scissors and thread away for now. I am looking forward to working on my project during the week, though, I haven't really done anything creative in aaaages.
And now, for part two, and what else would I talk about on a Saturday night other than...wait for it... mushrooms! How cool is this?!
Tonight!
First up? I have become a bit obsessed with these:
Oh yes. Teepees! Specifically, cute little fabric indoor teepees for kids. I am on a mission to make one for SP. I bought four 1.8m wooden dowels the other day, and today I had a whole entire afternoon to myself to go shopping in the city and I got some fabric to make the outside of the teepee with. I've decided on a bit of a retro, green theme.
I apologise for the crappy photos, this seems to be becoming a recurring Saturday night theme (uploading bad photos, that is). So tonight I have put my dowels together in a teepee shape and measured the triangles and have drawn up a wee diagram. I'd love to get cutting and sewing tonight too, except my sewing machine is all packed away and it's 11:48pm and I'm off to a friend's wedding tomorrow, so I think just this once I shall have to be sensible and put the scissors and thread away for now. I am looking forward to working on my project during the week, though, I haven't really done anything creative in aaaages.
And now, for part two, and what else would I talk about on a Saturday night other than...wait for it... mushrooms! How cool is this?!
One week ago:
Two days ago:
Tonight!
Looks like it's the Portabello half which started before the white half. Chef D will be pretty happy about that; it's the brown Portabellos which he prefers. I think we might be picking the first of our mushroom in just a couple more days.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
'Shrooms on Saturday night
Oh, oh, oh! Possibly the most boring photo I have ever posted on my little blog, but those little white balls may very well be my first mushrooms from my mushie kit! Easily mistaken for specks of styrofoam, these appeared as tiny specks yesterday and the largest is about 2mm across today. They are all squished up in the back left corner of the box.
In other good mushroom-kit news, the right hand side of the box finally looked 'frosted' about three days ago and I have covered it over with the remaining bedding mix and it all looks nice and homogeneous now.
So, kit was first set up (well, half of it!) on September the 13th.
First potential mushrooms spotted on Sept the 22nd.
First mushrooms harvested on...?
I'll keep you posted :)
In other good mushroom-kit news, the right hand side of the box finally looked 'frosted' about three days ago and I have covered it over with the remaining bedding mix and it all looks nice and homogeneous now.
So, kit was first set up (well, half of it!) on September the 13th.
First potential mushrooms spotted on Sept the 22nd.
First mushrooms harvested on...?
I'll keep you posted :)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Experimenting with 'shrooms
When SP and I went to the Royal Show the other day, I couldn't resist buying myself a mushroom kit. To be honest, I don't even like eating mushrooms very much, but I've wanted to try growing them for ages and the temptation was too big to resist (I did, however, manage to resist buying any show bags full of chocolate or sweets, go me!) I went for a combo kit: half white mushrooms and half Portabello Swiss brown mushrooms. I got it home, eagerly unwrapped it and found... this:
Now, the instructions say that you are to keep the mix covered until it goes white and 'frosty' and then, after that, you open it up, spread the bedding material over the top, and then spray it with a water mister judiciously. It's pretty clear, even in my dodgy photo, that one type of mushroom has taken off whilst the other is lagging behind. What to do, what to do?
I decided to put the bedding mix over the white side and fold the plastic and box leaf over the side that was still brown to see if it will catch up. Such a glam photo too, with the B-grade camera (my good camera is out of action, poo) and the recycling in the laundry in the background... So here goes nothing, or here goes $18 worth of mushroom kit anyway, grow, mushies, grow! Hopefully soon I'll know if the brown side is brown mushrooms, and if the white side is white mushrooms, or if the brown side is white mushrooms and then the white side is brown mushrooms. Or something like that.
Never mind.
Appropriate now to share my most favourite poem of all time?
Now, the instructions say that you are to keep the mix covered until it goes white and 'frosty' and then, after that, you open it up, spread the bedding material over the top, and then spray it with a water mister judiciously. It's pretty clear, even in my dodgy photo, that one type of mushroom has taken off whilst the other is lagging behind. What to do, what to do?
I decided to put the bedding mix over the white side and fold the plastic and box leaf over the side that was still brown to see if it will catch up. Such a glam photo too, with the B-grade camera (my good camera is out of action, poo) and the recycling in the laundry in the background... So here goes nothing, or here goes $18 worth of mushroom kit anyway, grow, mushies, grow! Hopefully soon I'll know if the brown side is brown mushrooms, and if the white side is white mushrooms, or if the brown side is white mushrooms and then the white side is brown mushrooms. Or something like that.
Never mind.
Appropriate now to share my most favourite poem of all time?
Mushrooms
Sylvia Plath, 1959."Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door."
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