Red Cracked Bolete

Months ago, Jamey became interested in collecting wild mushrooms. This is due at least in part to his love of eating mushrooms.

As a Botany major, I took it as a point of personal pride to figure out how we could do this safely.

After some research I decided on a book. Then, when I went to Powell's to get it, I found a Powell's Staff recommendation to be even better than the one I had found online.

It's called Mushrooming Without Fear, and so far has proven effective, as we have tasted 2 mushrooms we never had tasted before, and we haven't become sick on either occasion!

We've had the book since early September, but early attempts to locate mushrooms in the wild failed.

Our first success was a week or two after our first attempt, when Arthur spotted some puffball mushrooms in the lawn at Lewisville Park. We didn't eat those, but followed the advice of the book to harvest once without eating, just to gain practice at identification.

Then a week ago we found some large puffballs in our own lawn. We sampled those after frying them in butter. It was thumbs up all the way around. (Note, we're not counting Heidi when it comes to discussions of mushroom consumption.)

One of the more sweeping restrictions advised in our guidebook is the avoidance of all mushrooms with gills. This turns out to be a majority of mushrooms.

Defying the odds, yesterday I spotted a cluster of meaty looking 'shrooms and sure enough, they had pores, not gills. Out came the book. After carefully reading the identification cues, we determined that these were Red Cracked Bolete.

Due to the very distinctive features of this mushroom: blue bruising on the bright yellow pores, red tint showing when the cap is damaged, etc..., we felt confident in moving forward with the taste-test.

Jamey gobbled the first batch, again, with vigorous approval. The next morning, Arthur tried some in his omelet and found them satisfying.

So, we have learned something new. Added to our culinary repertoire and had fun in the process.

More Homemade Loaves

I'm still infatuated with the look of these no-knead loaves.

First Heat of the Year

The temperature dropped to 67 degrees this morning, so I started a fire. Yes, we are wimps.

Garlic Planting Time

This is your friendly reminder that Garlic-planting season is upon us.

So wrap that garlic garland around your neck, and after you've staked all the vampires, plant the cloves. By July you'll be feasting on fresh homegrown hardnecks.

I say hardnecks, because after my batch this past summer I've decided that the Italian Red hardneck garlic has a far superior aroma and flavor than the soft-neck garlic I normally find at the supermarket.

Happy gardening!

Swoosh!

Summer was camped out over the land.

At night, when he was resting, Winter

crept in, furtively, retreating when his rival woke.

Finally, Summer had enough of his toes

being frostbitten in his sleep

Yesterday he stood up in a huff,

Put on his great dusty coat

and swooshed out of town.

Today the wind still swirls

while Winter, grinning, peers over the mountain.

September Music Review

Ingrid Michaelson

Forgive me if I'm behind the times on this one. Since I don't get broadcast television I didn't know until today that Ingrid Michaelson's music has been on Grey's Anatomy for two years. I also didn't know that she was a MySpace sensation that self-produced her way onto #2 on the pop charts with her debut album Boys and Girls. Nor did I realize that her new album Everybody was number one on iTunes as recently as this August. I found her because a coworker suggested Vienna Teng (also very good) and emusic suggested Michaelson as being similar to Teng.

What I have known from the moment I heard her music is that her music is extremely accessible. Just as Peter O'Toole opines about the desert in Lawrence of Arabia, I believe the beauty of Michaelson's music is that "It's clean."

She has a knack for presenting sentimental lyrics in a way that doesn't leave an overly sweet aftertaste. On the song Giving Up she doesn't reveal why she's giving up until the final line, which adds considerably to the impact of the lyrics.

She has had some widely played songs, such as The Way I Am and Be OK. The latter appeared in the recent Anna Faris movie House Bunny.

However, as is often the case, there are plenty of gems that are a little less catchy and a lot more interesting than the hits, such as Giving Up, Corner of Your Heart, Far Away, Die Alone and others.

Potential defects:

• Some of these songs might "get stuck in your head"
• Some songs my be too slow and sentimental or repetitive.
• Her staying power is still a question. I've only been listening to her for a few weeks.

Here are some video links for you to sample the music:

Die Alone

Maybe

Corner of Your Heart

Extra-special Bonus!

Some great tracks from other artists I've recently come to know and like:

Vienna Teng

Sia

Peter Bjorn & John

Etta James

Rainy Saturday

Heidi said:

"Everything I wanted to do I can't do, so now I can do stuff."

"What?"

"That makes perfect sense."

Dinner With Julia

OK, Julia wasn't there, unless you count "in spirit".

Heidi and Jill picked out four recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and we prepared them last night.

The simplest dish was essentially a cake of sliced potatoes boiled in clarified butter. I probably don't have to explain how deliciously smooth and rich these were.

We also had a lovely chicken in creamy port and mushroom sauce. This one involved drizzling the chicken with brandy and igniting it, before drenching the whole thing in the very rich sauce.

A delicious Swiss chard dish in creamy sauce and a zucchini dish where the zucchini halves are stuffed with a creamy, cheesy, breadcrumb and shallot paste.

In honor of the occasion, Heidi's brother David prepared French 75 cocktails which involve lemon juice and champagne amongst other ingredients which I'm not aware. It was very bright and a fitting accompaniment to the smooth, warm flavors in the main dishes.

Gourmet Bread

This picture shows a cross-section of the loaf of no-knead bread I made yesterday under the tutelage of Dwayne Kryger.
Dwayne demonstrated a pull-and-fold technique that increases the elasticity of the dough as a way to trap the bubbles more effectively. It really worked. Whereas my first couple batches began by popping holes in their top, this batch never let the gases escape without handling.

My oven runs hot, so I burned a portion of the crust. Nonetheless, the bread was very respectable even though from beginning to end the process took less than 12 hours.

Today I'm working on a version with 1/3rd whole wheat flour. I'm going to let it rise overnight for the utmost in bubble size and flavor.

Even Better Than The Ramen Girl

Julie and Julia - a fantastic movie about Julia Child and her enduring legacy. If you are at all a foodie, you must see this movie.

On to other things that are even better than The Ramen Girl:

New York Times No-Knead Bread - Crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle. Cheap as flour, tasty as a $4.50 loaf.

Bagpipes at a funeral, eat less sugar, singing with your family, reading your niece's a bedtime story, bringing zucchini bread when you visit, sleeping on a firm bed.

The Ramen Girl

I'm a big fan of great food and Japanese culture, so it's probably no surprise that I liked The Ramen Girl. Think Like Water for Chocolate meets The Karate Kid.

I chose to watch the movie mostly because the cover features Brittany Murphy in a kimono. I'm thinking, this movie has promise!

What made a believer out of me was the excellent character-acting and the really decent screenplay.

When Murpy's character Abby's boyfriend leaves her, she is miserable and wanders into the local ramen shop to find it's propietors generous and kind, though the chef is almost always gruff. He is also a master ramen chef, and his broth stirs something in Abby.

Ultimately Abby and her ramen-chef sensei, odd partners, turn out to be just the ingredient the other needs to create a more satisfying, flavorful life for themselves.

This movie is a bit thin in places, but overall it is well played and heartwarming.

Amadou et Mariam

If you had to pick the best musician out of a crowd of musicians you've never heard before and you happened to notice only one of them was a blind guitar-player, what would you do?

And what if that the blind guitar player happened to be a West African with a blind chanteuse for a wife and bandmate?

Before I get to far in this, and the reader starts to think I buy into nothing but stereotypes, let me say this was essentially the situation a few weeks ago while I was browsing emusic.com.

I had a few downloads to use up and I wandered over to a list of African guitar legends. Having heard of none of them previously, I was left to read these books by their respective covers. Each was generally interesting, but when I found the blind husband and wife team, my instincts took over; this music I must hear.

Now, if I had made this choice and my stereotype-based choice had proven wrong, you wouldn't be reading this blog because I wouldn't have written this blog.

As it turns out though, Amadou et Mariam have been a particular pleasure for me to listen to as of late, which is why I'm bothering telling you so, if I may steal the line from Dr. Seuss.

They aren't bombastic, or in-your-face with their skill-level. Rather, their style is understatement. They tend to have a gentle, typically African sounding rhythm section. The guitar is used rather sparingly but is of good quality. The guitar doesn't become the obvious focal point of the music, which is the great evil that good guitarists often partake in. Instead, many parts combine to create a satisfying whole: brass, drums, vocals, strings interwoven well, with some particularly attractive and brief solos for the brass and strings.

I also like the fact that the lyrics are in French which always sounds nice and allows me to focus on the music and the mood that's created by it.

This is my musical recommendation for the month.

You can listen to perhaps the best track on their Greatest Hits album in the following embedded YouTube video

Magenta Potatoes

Boy were we sold a bill of goods.

Heidi picked up these seed potatoes labeled "Red" and put them in the ground in all good faith earlier in the spring.

Now that it's summer and the potatoes are ready to harvest*, we pull them from the ground and lo and behold, they aren't red, but magenta!

Despite the unabashed false-advertising of the seed-potato seller, being hungry for breakfast, we decided to see if the flavor and texture of the potatoes would be at all decent.

We found the potatoes also completely different from those of our recent memory; rather than thick-skinned, dry, bland and starchy, these were thin-skinned, moist, sweet and silky. Preposterous!

These were potatoes not in need of sticks of butter to make them delicious. I had thoughts of adding these to my butter to improve the butter's flavor.

Having recovered from the shock to our systems these unexpected events caused, and having nothing else at hand for breakfast, we promptly devoured the lot with garlic and thyme, a la Alice Waters.

* In all seriousness, why did it take 35 years for me to learn that potatoes can be harvested before fall?! This stuff should be taught in gradeschool! Use flashcards if necessary, but teach the children for heaven's sake!

Pictures From The Trip

Outside the Denver Art Museum (DAM), construction was underway. They screened off the scaffolding with deluxe art-screens. Since the images were not printed on opaque fabric, the construction site was partially visible. This one was humorously appropriate.

Annika

Mikaela