Need another reason to smile??:)

Where the Hell is Matt?

Shiitake update

I am posting some pictures, as promised. We have had a couple of meals with our home grown shiitakes and we can honestly say they are the best we’ve ever had. But, maybe that is like saying your own child is the cutest baby you’ve ever seen. It’s still true, but there is a little bias, I’m sure.  The taste and texture were like nothing we’ve had in Shiitakes before. There are more little buttons coming out every day, so we should have more several more meals to come:)

BY the way, we learned that by drumming on the logs, you can have a more prolific fruiting. As far as we know, that may be the only reason that we got mushrooms this year. Plus, it is pretty fun to pound on the logs, so we’ll keep it up

Soaking the logs in our swimming pool

Our log resting places

A nice cluster

This is what they look like when they first emerge

baby mushy

The Shiitakes are coming!

Wow, it’s been awhile since I have posted. I guess I was waiting for something exciting. And then it happened….one day we were outside in the yard and noticed some tiny little brown things coming out of our mushroom logs.

After we had almost lost hope, our shiitake logs are starting to produce little mushrooms! Two and a half years ago, we put mycelium plugs in several maple logs as an experiment. We were hopeful, but not convinced that it would work. After moving these logs twice to our various houses, we were about to give up on the next move. Then, all of a sudden the weather warmed up and the logs started growing little, baby mushrooms. We are so excited.

Shiitakes are different from many other mushrooms, in that they like the spring time and warmer weather. In order for them to sprout, you have to soak the logs for 24 hours, and then continually water them as they are sprouting. We didn’t even soak them and they started sprouting. We have been watering them and watching them grow for the past week.

It is still an experiment because we are not sure how fast they should grow and what temperatures are ideal. We would consider it a success if we get a meal out of it at this point. But, we hope that we will have a supply of shiitakes for the next several years. Sometimes it just takes a while for the mycelium to spread throughout the log. Theoretically, this is only the beginning of many years of shiitakes to come.

I will post some pictures soon.

Socks!

I found a new place to spend time online: Sock dreams:) I’ve linked to it on my blogroll. I absolutely love this site (maybe because I love socks and tights). They do free shipping, though I have yet to order anything. They are based out of Portland and are opening a warehouse where you can shop in person soon. I really just think the site photos are pleasing to the eye. What a fun job is would be to order socks and take photos of them around town. Sock dreams=dream job (and I didn’t even know it until now). Ahhh socks….

Garlic & Shallots, oh my!

Last weekend we planted eight 50 foot rows of garlic and three 50 foot rows of shallots from our spring harvest.  Now that we have the planting done, we can eat the rest of our pickin’s:)  yay!  and if you’re nice, maybe you’ll get some too! 

Mushies!!!

We went mushroom picking today up in the mountains looking for chanterelles and boletes (porcinis), of which we found a few. What we really scored on was the Matsutakes!! We didn’t expect to find many of these and we were pleasantly surprised! Matsutakes are really great for soups and hold up really well when you dry them, unlike many other wild mushrooms. Matsutakes are really sought after in the mushroom world and their smell is unmistakably sweet and cinnamon-y. You can smell them just walking through the forest, if your nose knows what to look for! I LOVE them.

Matsutakes grow extremely well in the NW, but they are most prized in Japan. Their name comes from Japanese for pine (matsu) mushroom (take), as they grow under pine trees in Japan. They grow in Pine forests on our coasts too, but in the mountains they prefer rhodies, manzanita, and firs.   Since Japanese forests are not plentiful enough for all the matsutake demand, they are often imported from the pacific NW.

Several years ago, people here could export them for $500/pound! The young (most prized) matsutakes could sell for $100 for one mushroom! That’s crazy! Unfortunately, the matsutake hunters here became so competitive with the outrageous pricing that many people were carrying guns to prevent their harvests from being stolen. Not something that I want to be a part of. The price of the matsutakes has come down quite a bit now ($15-40/pound).

Another unfortunate part of matsutake hunting is that the most valuable mushrooms (the young) have to be harvested before they even pop out of the ground. So, it is common for the hunters to rake the entire forest floor damaging the delicate mycelium. Even today, we found lots of bare forest floor where people had raked the ground and did not replace it. When we harvest matsutakes we don’t discriminate against the older ones that are already popping out of the ground. If we find some under the duff, we always replace the duff and try not to disturb it too much to protect the precious mycelium.

We found our limit of 15 each and were very happy with our harvest, along with our chanterelles and boletes! I can smell them in the food dryer right now. mmmmm….

The best part of the whole trip was being with the maples as they turn all shades of reds and yellows.  The smell of rain makes me happy too.   Fall is truly my favorite season (as if there was any doubt after reading this post….I could go on and on and on and on about fall……………………………).

More beer…….mmmmm

So, today we bottled our second batch of homebrew. In another 2-3 weeks we can start drinking it! Our first batch was an IPA and the latest one was a pale ale. The IPA turned out great. It’s still a little young and could use some more fermentation for the real hoppy bitterness to prevail over sweetness, but it is delicious just the way it is too! We bottled some of the IPA in wine bottles because that’s what we had and that beer seems to need more time than the 12 ounce bottles. One of our friends thought our slogan for the wine bottle beer should be “better than a 22″. I like that idea.

I love making beer. It’s definitely worth all the work when you can taste the love in the beer!

long time….

Well, a couple of weekends ago, I attended the NCWHS (link) for a weekend of camping and going to herbal/sustainability classes. I learned how to make raw goat cheese from an awesome woman. I loved that the cheese was raw, it had so much flavor. The finished product was so tasty! I also got more ideas of crafts and medicines that I can make at home. This event always inspires me to be more creative. yay!

Concert at the Zoo

Well, Friday night, we went to an amazing show at the zoo, of all places. Apparently they have a lot of concerts there, but I’ve never been. The only drawback is that zoos make me feel really sad for the animals.

But alas, back to the awesome concert. We saw two of my favorite bands. The Be Good Tanyas opened the show with their amazing female harmonies and Old Crow Medicine Show rounded out the night. I’ve never seen the Tanyas, but I have all of their CDs and I love them. (And I finally understood some of the lyrics that have been eluding me for years!) This is the 3rd Old Crow show that I have seen and they never disappoint me. For the encore, both bands came on stage and played Bob Dylan’s “lay lady lay” in a way that I have never heard. It was amazing hearing 9 people harmonizing on the chorus. Definitely the highlight of the show. The first time I saw Old Crow, the did an amazing Bob Marley cover for their encore. They really know how to make the songs their own, as they sound completely different than the originals.

So, the zoo has a large outdoor amphitheater with a huge grassy lawn to sit on and people bring blankets and picnics. But, of course, I rarely sit at a bluegrass show and this one was no different. As soon as the music began, we were right down in front of the stage in the dancing area and we didn’t leave until it was over. I don’t know how people can listen to this music sitting down. It just makes me want to dance all night long. Anyway…..

Before the music started, the zoo was showing off some of their birds of prey that have been rescued in the wild. The way that they do this is they call the birds from a spot far away and they come flying across the audience and land on their perch on the stage. Now, I missed the announcement about the birds flying in and I was walking back to meet T. when I heard the lady on stage say “look up”. Just then on the walkway, a red tailed hawk flew head level about six inches in front of my face on its way to the stage. If I hadn’t looked up, my head would have been a hawk flying casualty! Luckily, it wasn’t the bald eagle, because I would have been taken out for sure!

Back to the show: I got a couple of picture on my phone, but they are not the greatest. My favorite picture is the trippy light show one when I didn’t hold the camera still enough. I’m not sure why I can’t get that one picture of Old Crow to be right side up. hmmm…Oh well, you’ll have to imagine it straight up:) I’m really sad that my phone died before the encore, so I couldn’t take a picture of all of them on stage together. So sad. I guess I’ll always have memories….:)

A view of acupuncture in the media

Acupuncture

I thought this was funny, although probably not too good for the profession. If the media is your only experience with acupuncture, then you might think some crazy things about us:0)