It is panning out to be such a good mushroom year, that we are faced with the good problem of having more chanterelles than we know what to do with. We are eating them in everything possible, making large batches of things to freeze, like Cream of Chanterelle Soup, trading for important things like wild salmon fillets, and I have been enjoying playing mushroom fairy and leaving paper bags of ...
Life
A Perfect Autumn Weekend Morning
A boy, his cat, his comics and his pumpkin. What more could you ask for? ...
Fall Garden
Fall gardens are an interesting dichotomy. While many plants are winding down and dying away, keeping time with the happenings of Nature all around them, the cool season crops are just getting started. For whatever reason, fall and winter gardening have always seemed a bit mysterious and tricky to me. With the help of hot-houses I feel like I've gotten early spring gardening down, but things I've ...
Homemade Soy Sausage
Why, you may be asking yourselves, is this wild, omnivorous mountain woman who eats smoked raccoon and bear brats for breakfast posting a recipe for soy sausage? Well, dear readers, I will tell you that it is because this soy sausage is REALLY good, and because I fell in love with a vegetarian mountain man. Wanting to impress him and make the best mountain man breakfasts possible, I naturally ...
Finding Fungus Among Us on the Homestead
At our place, we grow mushrooms the size of a man's head! Here's to the happy discovery of chanterelles on our very own propery. Big ones! ...
Cream of Chanterelle Soup
It has turned out to be a most abundant mushroom season so far, and we have been faced with the very good problem of asking ourselves daily, "What to do with all these Chanterelles?" Last week we received some culinary inspiration from a friend who was making large batches of cream of mushroom soup to freeze for her recipes throughout the year. Since we can't get enough of cream of Chanterelle ...
Pressing Matters
Fall just wouldn't be complete without a cider pressing, so I managed to finagle it in to the hustle and bustle of life last Friday evening by renting a press from our local homebrew supply shop with some friends. Everyone jumped in and enjoyed turns at different stations. My friend's daughter enjoyed getting in the thick of things and getting sticky with us, taking a break ever so ...
Cut and Dried
During the month of September, I deeply enjoy the routine of drying fruit. Every couple of days, the dehydrator gets re-filled with slices of Asian pears, plums, apples, grapes and any other fruit on hand. The aromas of the fruit as it dries are delightful, and it's fun watching jars fill up with delicious snacks for the coming winter months. With the last of the fruit picked off my trees before ...
My New Favorite Chicken!
I am happy to report that the mushroom hunting is good in the new neighborhood. There are a couple of fungi out there that I always hear about other people finding, and how they were delectable and amazing, and I have seemed to never find them. Everything I ever heard about Chicken of the Woods sounded fabulous to me, including reports of a meaty texture and lemon chicken-esque flavor, not to ...
Equinox
With the official turning of the seasons toward fall, there is much to enjoy and be thankful for around here. The woodshed is filling up with the last of my firewood I cut and split last year, and a load of wood we had delivered. It is mostly thanks to my hard working mountain man, working diligently to get all our seasoned wood protected from the torrential fall rain in spare hours here ...