….on banjo, I came across this video featuring the amazing Jens Kruger, which makes me seriously consider chopping up my banjo to use as kindling for a blazing accordion fire.
I am so looking forward to seeing the Kruger Brothers at Hugh’s Room here in Toronto on December 2!
I’ve noticed, looking at the stats for this blog, that quite a few people have been searching for ways to prepare lobster mushrooms. Here’s one way – the way I prepared them for dinner tonight in fact.
Lobster mushroom and sausage omelet
You need:
In a cast iron pan, sautee the mushrooms with a little vegetable oil on medium heat. Lobsters are very firm mushrooms that hold their texture. As well, they don’t shed water in the cooking process the way some other mushrooms do. After a few minutes in the pan, add some chopped up sausage and let it cook together. You want the sausage to start to crisp up and the mushrooms to start turning a nice golden colour. When this is ready, transfer to a non-stick pan. I know you’re going to say, aw c’mon, do I have to use two pans? The answer is yes. I like the way the mushrooms and the sausage cook up in a cast iron pan, but in the end you’re making an omelet and non-stick pans are great for omelets. So, you transfer the sausage and mushrooms to a non-stick pan. With the transfer, they’ll bring along enough oil for the omelet. Heat up the pan to the high side of medium. While that’s happening, beat up your eggs with a fork. Some people add a little splash of milk. You can do that if you want. I usually don’t. When the pan is hot, pour the mixture over the mushrooms and sausage and move the pan around to spread around the eggs. When the eggs are just about done, toss some of your awesome grated cheese on top (tonight I used an old gruyere). Let it melt on there for a moment, fold two sides of the omelet to the middle and serve it up, maybe with a spoon of good salsa and some fresh ground pepper and just a wee bit of salt. There are a million variations. If you have some fresh herbs, chop them into the egg mixture before pouring it onto the pan.
Or….
If you want something even simpler and still super-delicious, sautee the lobster mushrooms in your cast iron pan until they get nice and golden. Add salt and fresh ground pepper and maybe a wee bit of some ground hot chiles and spoon loads of the mushrooms onto toast. Just that simple.
The Mushroom Hunters – On the Trail of an Underground America, by Langdon Cook, explores a foraging culture the extent of which I had never imagined. The massive extraction on tasty edibles from the woods of the mountain west is driven by popularity of local foods in so many restaurants. The morels in that sauce have to come from somewhere.
The book introduces us to pickers and buyers and gives us an insider’s view of mushroom camps that are more like temporary villages, complete with competing buyers who set up their buying tables right in the camps. Pickers pull out dozens of pounds of mushrooms. Some of these pickers pull more mushrooms out of the woods in a day than I’ve picked in local woods in the years I’ve been foraging. The quantities are staggering. Some of those western woods are mushroom factories.
If I lived out there and knew that all the best mushroom spots were overrun with commercial pickers I might not be so happy (although I’d be happy to find a forest with a fraction of the tasty fungi those characters pull out of the forest). Here in Ontario I’ve never seen those quantities of mushrooms. Maybe there are areas where people can pick commercially, but I haven’t found them. In the areas I forage, if one other picker has been around, it’s time to go to another forest. There just aren’t that many mushrooms to go around.
The Mushroom Hunters is a fascinating insight into a world most of us did not know even existed. It’s a compelling book that focuses on the author’s interaction with a few people who make their living foraging. I think that people who are interested in nature and food and unusual occupations would really enjoy this book. You don’t have to be a mushroom-hound to read it.
Last night we finished up our little grizzly bear project. I’m going to attach some stakes to the back and a buttress for stability and install the bear out back at the edge of our little wooded bit. You know, out by the imagination station. That is of course unless somebody contacts us and says, OMG I NEED that bear in MY garden, please sell it to me, please, please, please. If that happens, I suppose we could negotiate a price and it it could wind up in your garden – but the plan was to install it out back.
We ARE open to doing custom mosaic work, if anyone out there has some grand ideas they need turned into mosaic madness, let’s talk.
These mushrooms appeared overnight, growing from our backyard pressure bench. We’ve had this bench for years and have never seen any fungi growing from it. How strange.
This morning, Memphis and I headed up to the Enchanted Mushroom Forest to see if we could find some tasty edibles. Ellie Mae really wanted to join us (for those who are not regular readers, Memphis and Ellie Mae are our Newfoundland dogs) but with her recently injured leg I thought it best she stay home to rest it. She was not impressed, and later when Memphis and I returned, Ellie didn’t even acknowledge us, that is until I produced a delicious jerky treat.
Our first stop is a forest that often yields both hedgehogs and lobsters (and in mid-summer the occasional chanterelle). This time there was no sign of any lobsters in the forest at all, but I did pick up about a dozen choice hedgehogs. We then hopped back into the car and continued on our way. My plan was to visit a patch that is very reliable for lobsters. Unfortunately, I arrived to find that the prime bit of forest is now posted. I found some nice lobsters in a nearby bit of public forest and then Memphis and I hiked down the trail quite a way. At an intersection with another trail, I noticed what looked like a hedgehog beside an oak tree. On closer inspection, there were a few. Looking all around the oak and nearby oaks, I found quite a few nice small hedgehogs.
I also came across quite a few pear-shaped puffballs but most of them were well past edibility. If I was there a week earlier, I could have brought home quite a number of them.
Memphis had a great time splashing through some deep puddles and sniffing about in the woods. I had a nice hike – and as a bonus, I came home with a good basket of tasty mushrooms.
Yesterday when I told some friends we were going square dancing, most people I talked to weren’t sure just what happened at a square dance. Friends said, “I could never do that”. Believe me, if I can do it, anybody can do it. The caller walks everyone through each dance before striking up the band and everyone learns from one another. Some calls are more complicated and there were moments last night when the group struggled some. Other times, most people picked it up quickly, with only a few people (me) struggling to keep up. It’s amazing how well a good caller like Hannah Naiman can keep a whole group of dancers, many of them inexperienced, on track.
It was really hot in the hall last night and at a certain point, Tuffy and I sat out a dance to cool down a bit. That’s when I shot this bit of footage…. the band is the Old Day Breakfast Stringband.
We had a fun time at the Hogtown Hoedown tonight. Hannah Naiman was the caller and the band was the All Day Breakfast Stringband, from Montreal.
We are not great square dancers but fortunately, there were dancers of all levels there. Our caller taught all the figures, walking everyone through at least once before the band started up. I thought the dances in the first half of the event were at about the right level for the group. I found a couple of the dances in the second half to be a little difficult to follow, but then I have very little experience. The dancers were all enthusiastic and I think everyone was having a great time. The new venue, the Trinity St. Paul Centre, was a good space and location for the dance. The only downside of that space was that it was very warm inside. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for the next dances, which are October 25 and November 15.
I’m looking forward to going again. It will be even more fun as we gain some experience and learn more dances.
I wrote a few days ago about the problem Ellie Mae has been having with her rear right leg. She’s been taking an anti-inflammatory and pain meds, and we’ve reduced her exercise . Ellie has shown great improvement and today she’s been going for walks again. She’s still on the pain meds but soon I’ll cut those back if she continues to do well. She is putting weight on the leg again and most of the time now she isn’t limping.
The problem remains undiagnosed, even though she’s had X-rays and has been examined by an orthopedic specialist. Hopefully, it was something as simple as bruising or a pulled muscle or something like that.
…with Leon
Find the Great Blue Heron
The fishin’ is always good, even when the catchin’ isn’t.
27th Street 