Soaking Mushrooms

Cement Garden Mushrooms

I made a cement mushroom for my garden.

It was easy and fun!

First, I found a nice big bowl, sprayed it with Pam and then covered the bowl with plastic wrap.

Then I mixed up some cement and poured a little into the bottom of the bowl.

I put a few pieces of wire mesh (window screen) in the cement for added strength.

Then I topped up the bowl with cement and then added a bottle to each bowl.

The one on the right turned out to be too small (it looked silly), so I poured cement into a bigger bowl and added the too small mushroom.

I let the cement sit for about 10 minutes, until it was firm, then I popped the mushrooms out.

I put the mushrooms in a plastic bag with some water to cure.

Finally, I painted it with outdoor paint and gave it several layers of varnish.

Frozen Puffballs

I made this Mushroom stroganoff again using mushrooms I foraged last summer and then froze.

Click here to read about the Mushroom foraging adventure.

So the experiment is complete - freezing mushrooms works!

The puffballs were delicious in the stroganoff.

Next summer......watch out mushrooms!

Mushroom Stroganoff

This is a nice quick winter dinner.

It's warm, creamy and mushroom meaty.

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3 Tbs butter

1 med onion - chopped

3 cup sliced mushrooms (I used a mix of fresh and canned)

1 1/2 cups vegetable broth

1 1/2 cups sour cream (you can use less if you want to)

3 Tbs. flour

cooked egg noodles

salt/pepper

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Saute onion in butter until onion is transparent. Add mushrooms, sprinkle with salt. Cook mushrooms until all liquid is reduced. Mix in flour. Add vegetable broth and sour cream. Mix in cooked egg noodles. Flavor with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Ricotta Souffle Strata

Last month Marx Foods sent me a box of fun stuff.

Mushrooms, chiles, vanilla sugar and smoked salt.

Mmmm, yummy!

Look at it all! Amazing!

I took Lobster and Black Trumpet mushrooms, added some Japones chiles and a little smoked salt. Then with a little help from the girls....

I took 11 eggs.

Yeah, eleven.

6 I used in the strata and 5 I used in the ricotta souffle top.

I layered left over challah bread with artichoke, crab, diced red pepper, the mushrooms, chiles and a little black pepper/salt.

Then I mixed 6 eggs with a cup of whole milk and poured that over the top of the strata.

Then I mixed the remaining 5 eggs with 1 cup of ricotta cheese.

Spread that over the top of the strata and baked it at 325 degrees for 40 mins.

I just wanted to show you how shiny the top was.
It was the tastiest old bread I've ever had.

Foraging Mushrooms

I went with my mom today to hunt for mushrooms.

It was fun!

I love a treasure hunt.

This is the first one we found.

We took one and left a baby one.

I plan on checking back tomorrow and harvesting the baby.

P.S. I spotted this one first.

My mom with the first puffball mushroom.

It's big!

Some more mushrooms.
We are waiting to test these,
if/when we find our mushroom field guide.

Jack-in-the-pulpit

This puffball my mom spotted.

I walked right by it!

Underside of the puffball.

Neat, huh?

Natural arch.

Anyone know what these are?

We didn't pick them.

Tiny!

Fairy stump.

Cooking the puffballs in butter.

Yummy!