Snow Day!

That patch of bare driveway was left after my poor husband had to go in to work today. One of the perks of being a teacher - snow days! Technically, today is more of an ice day. The valley floor got less than 1/2" but it had been so rainy and it is so cold now that the roads can be rather treacherous. The high today is supposed to be 32. It's currently 27. Getting snow this early in the year is rare for Eugene; I wonder if it's a portent of things to come.

Now we just have one school day before the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm so excited about my day at home to get ready for company on Thursday!

Mushroom Tasting

We went to the annual Mushroom Festival at Mount Pisgah and my enthusiasm got the best of us. We ended up with three different kinds of mushrooms. (In addition to our weekly CSA ration, which is still almost all chanterelles with a few hedgehogs thrown in.)

Lobster Mushrooms

Lion's Mane Mushrooms

Buttercap Mushrooms

For dinner the night after the festival we had a "tasting". I sauteed each type separately in butter with a little bit of salt and garlic powder.

The lion's mane did not live up to its reputation (although I may have just not cooked it long enough). The little tentacle things provided a neat texture though. (I realize calling them tentacles detracts from their allure).

The buttercaps were a surprise treat. They were rich and delicious, rather...buttery? :) I can't seem to find mentions of them anywhere online (including Rain Forest Mushroom Company, who we purchased them from).

We'd heard so many crazy tales that place lobster mushrooms as one of the great delicacies of the natural world that I doubted they could possibly be true. Turns out, they were. Buttery, rich, meaty, tender, flavorful...I don't think I have enough adjectives for them. Eat these mushrooms every chance you get. :)

Our final order, out of the mushrooms we've experimented with are...
1)Lobster
2)Buttercap
3)Chanterelle
4)Lion's Mane

We got more chanterelles in our veggie box when we went and harvested our turkey today so it's a good thing we're mushroom fans. I'll have to post pictures when the turkey is cooked. We helped the farmer process 15 turkeys and we bought the second largest one, a beautiful 24 pound, biodynamically raised bird. Mmmmm...

Hello World!

Wow! We've been busy. The last few weekends have all been completely full with commitments and we've had little time to relax long enough for me to have the energy to post. I'm hoping to get the "Great Mushroom Taste Test" and "My First Metalsmithing/Glassblowing Experiment" up this weekend.

Jenna at Cold Antler Farm posted a link to Victorian Farm on Youtube a few days ago. I really loved this show although it's a little sad to see how Victorian times were the start of modern farm practices that have evolved into the unhealthy industrial system of today. Warning, if you start watching it might be difficult to stop. :)

Q posted a couple of pictures of the bedside tables we are making. We need to sand everything down, finish making the drawers, glue them together and finish them with oil. So close and yet so far away. I was hoping by Thanksgiving. Christmas is probably more realistic.

We got our yearly leaf delivery so we've got most of the beds tucked in for the winter. We still have a couple yards of leaves left in the driveway though. Maybe onto the strawberry bed?


The measly squash harvest, collected before I ripped out the vines and covered the bed with leaves. This cool, wet summer really did in almost all of our crops. The celery stalks are small but still do the job so I've left the plants out there. I left the yellow squash and zucchini since they both still have fruit that might get a little bigger if the weather holds. Although this is unlikely...snow is forecast on the valley floor for Sunday night!

Broken Cookies!

I got assigned to make 120 cookies for the school's Halloween festival. The 7th grade teacher (a baker in a former life) was responsible for finding the recipe and then each of the three middle school classes were assigned 120 cookies for a total of 360. It's a great recipe and they end up soft and almost cake-like. I don't know where it came from but here it is...

Glazed Pumpkin Cookies (makes 30 large cookies)

Cookies:
Mix together in a bowl and set aside:

• 5 c. flour
• 2 t. baking soda
• 2 t. baking powder
• 2 t. ground cinnamon
• 1 t. ground nutmeg
• 1/2 t. ground allspice
• 1/4 t. ground cloves
  
• 1 t. salt

Cream together with a mixer until fluffy:

• 3 c. sugar
• 1 c. (2 sticks) butter, softened

Mix in:

• 2 eggs
• 15 oz. pumpkin puree
• 2 t. vanilla

Add the flour mixture and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Measure out 1/4 cups of dough onto a greased cookie sheet and gently shape and flatten with damp hands to make 1/2" thick disks. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 minutes, rotate pans, bake 8 minutes more. Remove from oven and cool.

When the cookies are cool, drizzle glaze (see below) over them and allow it to set.

Glaze:
2 c. powdered sugar
1 T. melted butter
3 T. milk
1/2 t. vanilla


I started the cookies at school on Friday and gave my class some as a Halloween treat. I brought the rest home to add to what I was making Saturday morning. When I unpacked them I was irritated to learn that I had packed some up while they were still slightly warm and they had fused together. I had to make an additional batch, but what to do with pieces from about 8 large broken cookies?

And so Pumpkin Spice Tiramisu was born!

We used this recipe and replaced the ladyfingers with cookie pieces. The only other change was sprinkling the top with cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg instead of cocoa powder. We had dinner guests last night and it was delicious then. It was even more delicious this afternoon after the flavors had more time to blend.

Now it began feeling like some nonsense children's story. In using up the broken cookies (and solving what to serve for dessert at our dinner party) we had created 6 egg whites that currently had no use. Back to the internet and...

Meringue ghosts finished up the baking triathlon!
One of my students at the party I took them to pointed out that my devil meringue...
doubled as a Dracula meringue..
Although he looks a bit like Cthulhu in this picture.

I should have whipped the meringue even more because the first few had good body but then they got a little droopy. The eyes were some Halloween bat shaped sprinkles from the bulk foods section of the grocery store. There was enough meringue left over after making the pan of ghosts that I spread the rest out flat and made a pavlova-like crust. Add some vanilla yogurt and defrost some strawberries and it's a pretty good treat in and of itself. (Not as cute as the ghosts though.)

Pixie Hat Pattern

Thank you to my hot chocolate, oatmeal, and flour jars for being models. I don't have any toddler or child heads around here for modeling. The friend I gave one to says her toddler is adorable in it. :)

The Pixie Hat

Caron Simply Soft doubled on size 13 needles to get 3 st/inch.
Sizes: baby/toddler - 16" (small child - 18")
Color changes happen at the beginnings of rows according to the knitter's preferences.
Cast on 48 (54) stitches and join in the round.
Work 3 rounds of garter stitch.

Work 12 (15) rounds of stockinette stitch.

Next row: K 10 (11), k2tog, k 24 (28), ssk, k 10 (11)
Repeat this decrease row 11 (12) times (the middle set of knit stitches decreases by 2 every row) until there are 2 (4) stitches left between the decreases.

Remaining rows -
K 8 (10), k2tog, k2tog, ssk, ssk, k 8 (10)
K 6 (8), k2tog, k2tog, ssk, ssk, k 6 (8)
(For 18" only - K 6, k2tog, k2tog, ssk, ssk, k 6)
Both sizes:
K 4, ssk, ssk, k2tog, k2tog, k 4
K 2, ssk, ssk, k2tog, k2tog, k 2
ssk, ssk, k2tog, k2tog

Cut yarn and pull through all remaining stitches.
Weave in ends.

Food Flexibility and Latest Projects

This is tonight's dinner...
It was originally going to be biscuits topped with ham, eggs and melted cheddar cheese. We've been slowly working our way through a ham we cooked after buying it from Biancalana at the market last Saturday.

While I was putting together the biscuits, I decided to cube the paneer I made earlier this week, fry it, and take it as part of my lunch tomorrow.

For anyone who has never made paneer before, it is an Indian "cheese". If you're a cheese nerd it's not a "real" cheese because the curdling is caused by an acid rather than by enzymatic action. Basically, you heat the milk to boiling, stir in enough lemon juice to make it curdle, drain the whey from the curds, rinse, and press until solid. I've tended to press out too much liquid before I formed it into a patty and it's been a little crumbly the two times I've made it. This last time, I added lemon juice a little at a time to see exactly how much it took and formed it while there was still a fair amount of liquid left. It turned out beautifully creamy and uniform with a smooth texture. It's never melted before as I fried it for saag paneer. This time, when I looked over at the pan, it was turning into a gooey melted mess. New plan...

Cheese sauce!

I made a roux with flour and butter, whisked in milk, cooked until thickened into a white sauce and then stirred in the cheese bits that had been partially melted and then rechopped apart. I knew the resulting sauce would be super bland so I started salting it. I also added some dried parsley, pepper, and garlic powder. By that time it was palatable but was missing a certain zing so I threw in a few tablespoons of white wine. That did it. It became rather good.

And that's the story of how we had "eggs benedict" for dinner...with ham instead of Canadian bacon, biscuits instead of English muffins, and cheese sauce instead of Hollandaise. Q says that that's about on par for my usual substitution habits. ;)

Over the weekend we went to the inaugural Fill Your Pantry Market and stocked up on pinto beans, red and white wheat, rolled oats, honey, squash, potatoes, and onions. It was successful beyond their wildest dreams, they ran out of a bunch of items and the lines were absurdly long. They said they'll work out some of the kinks before next year. It was great getting to buy direct from the farmer and pay slightly less than retail.

Here are our purchases along with those we picked up for friends.

Here's the first batch of flour ground from our new wheat. We got a new Kitchen Aid Grain Mill attachment on sale a few months ago and so far (based on its first trial today) I like it better than the old Magic Mill grinder we'd gotten from Q's mom. It's way less dusty, quieter, and seems to do the job just as well.


I've been super busy but have been failing at getting pictures of the projects. In the last two weeks, I/We've...

1. knit and designed three hats as gifts for friends

• a Mario Mushroom beanie (knit replacement for a crocheted one that was left at an airport and perhaps a new design for the shop as well)
• a chunky brown hat inspired by this hat as a friend's birthday gift (looked at the picture and then recreated the look in a much bigger gauge - 3 st/in?)
• a funky toddler "pixie" hat, which I'll hopefully be debuting the pattern for in a couple of days

2. Got about 4" of the Hawthorn Sweater completed. I'm adapting the pattern to make a cardigan using some dark brown sock yarn I bought several years ago because I needed a brown cardigan. (I still need the sweater...I can just feel that this is the year!)

3. Made progress on the bedside tables we're making at the University Craft Center wood shop. We have class on Tuesday nights but have gone in a little between classes since we're adding a shelf and a drawer to the basic table that was the purpose of the class.
Here are the scraps, enough to do something else cool. They're black walnut so they will match the cedar chest we were given this summer. So far we've got the aprons and legs milled, the legs have mortises cut, and the tops and shelves are almost milled and glued up. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a full post on the completed projects around Thanksgiving.

4. Started the next laundry room upgrade (really Q's project that I'll just benefit from)
We got this table top at Bring that matches the '50s feel of the cabinets I inherited from my grandmother's house. Q has now stacked the washer and dryer. He's going to cut the table top down and make it into a counter. There's going to be a huge laundry sink set into it, the litter boxes will live below and the trimmed edge will hopefully be repurposed as a backsplash to give the whole thing a finished look. Sooooo excited... :)

5. Made cold cream (seems more like body butter to me) and lipstick with my class as part of Organic Chemistry. We're going to make them each a tube of peppermint lip balm tomorrow. Considering how super cheap ingredients (mineral oil, beeswax, paraffin) can be transformed into body products, I'm pretty sure I'll never buy lotion or lip balm ever again. It's also made me want to finally dive in and make soap. (Although that's a whole other layer of complexity.) I'll do a proper post on the lotion and balms as soon as I get pictures taken.

I'll try to get better at posting more regularly again. It's not that I don't have things to say (as if I ever run out of things to say). :)

Mushroom Madness

We joined a Mushroom CSA this year! The forager happens to be a parent at the school so we get delivery straight to my box at school each week for 10 weeks. Yay! I love mushrooms.

It's created a delightful challenge though - using 1 - 2 pounds of fantastic mushrooms each week. For the first three weeks we have gotten golden chanterelles (like the ones pictured above). Can you believe the size of them?

Week 1 - sauteed mushrooms/onion/garlic/olive oil mixed with pasta

Week 2 - zucchini pancakes with mushroom gravy (remarkably like a hippie version of egg foo yung) (Note: I didn't actually follow the gravy recipe. The most important difference being that I didn't put in summer savory and used Better Than Bouillion rather than defrosting stock)

Week 3 - Surprise Biscuits (my name) or Biscuit Pasties (Q's name)
This recipe was my own brain storm tonight and used only about 1/2 lb. of this week's 2 pounds so we'll probably have sauteed mushrooms mixed into tomorrow night's pesto.

Biscuits
3 c whole wheat flour
1 1/2 T sugar
1 1/2 T baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
3/4 c shortening
1 c milk

Filling
1/2 c. diced onion
1/2 lb. diced mushrooms (we used chanterelles)
5 strips of bacon, cut into pieces (ours was thick sliced from a local farm so probably about 8 slices normal commercial bacon)
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix all of the biscuit dry ingredients together, cut in the shortening and mix in the milk to form dough. Set aside.

Sautee the onion in olive oil until it starts to soften. Add the mushrooms and cook until most of the liquid is gone. Put aside in a bowl. Cook the bacon in the pan, drain, and add to the mushroom/onion mixture. Scramble the eggs and add to the rest of the filling.

Divide the biscuit dough into six parts. Shape each part into a deep bowl in your hands, add filling, then close the top so it looks like an extra large round biscuit.

Place the biscuits on a pan and bake for about 10 minutes or until done.

Sorry I don't have pictures. I was in a hurry when they came out of the oven and by the time we were back home they had all been eaten in the car. Q informed me that they need to get added to "The List" - tried and true recipes that need to be made over and over again.