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Archive for the ‘hardcore’ Category
Friday, January 4th, 2013
We had Christmas at about 5 different houses this year. Bouncing from family to friends and back again. We wanted to have Christmas day at our own house though. So since we’d already made the rounds, we extended and invite out to any friends who didn’t have a place to go on Christmas…Christmas Orphans. We had a couple of people take us up on the offer and I decided, since it was a small group, to make something a tad fancy: Rack of lamb.
I made the recipe that I love but can’t take credit for, I didn’t make up the amazing combination of cocoa, cumin and coffee that’s in the dry rub. I honestly would never have put those together. But it is so good and is the only way I make lamb now.
Alongside the lamb I served a simple salad of fennel, satsumas and pomegranates in a pomegranate-lemon-shallot dressing.
The lamb turned out perfectly. I had gone to Whole Foods assuming I’d be picking up lamb imported from New Zealand since it’s winter. Turns out there’s a northern California rancher raising lamb year-round now so I got locally raised, grass-fed lamb. I was pleasantly surprised.
I hadn’t planned dessert but my eight year old jumped in and scooped up some Mission Hill Creamery Salted Caramel ice cream and topped it with some chocolate-covered pralines we made for gift bags. Not bad for no planning huh?!
The day after Christmas we went to our friends’ place for their annual Boxing Day party, had a lovely time, and came home with a bag of porcini from their “back yard.” Most were dryers, one was a griller. Perfect, firm, white, awesome.
We mostly struck out on our Thanksgiving foraging trip so this was a treat.
I’m finally coming up for air after the crazy holiday season. Just when I get back to the real world we’ll be leaving for the Cayman Cookout again this year. Our once-in-a-lifetime crazy trip is happening again. I can’t wait. I’ll be reporting live as much as I can!
Posted in amateur, christmas, dinner, flavor, food, hardcore, holiday, mushrooms, porcinis, santa cruz, self pleasuring | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2012
This year’s hardcore adventures were a little more low key than usual. My husband got in a motorcycle accident at the end of September and, although tremendously lucky, severely injured his left foot and, after 9 weeks, still isn’t walking on it.
So, foraging fell on to me and our 8 year old. Hubby stayed in the car with the walkie talkie to alert us if rangers came…none did. So, we didn’t cover as much territory as usual or stay out as long but we found a couple of porcini and about five pounds of chanterelles.
The other task that isn’t usually mine was the charcoal grill. I am the master of our gas grill but fire building is not one of my skills. I managed to get the fire lit (which was a surprise, I thought it was out but it smoldered to life). Still, the porcini didn’t get to the crispy state I like and the chanterelles took FOREVER.
The next night when I cooked the chanterelles down on the stove top and put them on top of NY steak, now that was how I know how to cook!
Posted in chanterelles, dinner, food, hardcore, porcinis | No Comments »
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Posted in chanterelles, cumin, dinner, flavor, food, hardcore, mushrooms, organic, photos, seasonal menu, table dance, wine | No Comments »
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
 Prepping potatoes for the campfire There’s no reason not to eat well when you’re camping. I packed my CSA and garden veggies, chicken and eggs up and hauled them to Lassen National Park for a weekend camping trip. Before we left I cut the chicken into pieces and put it in a ziploc with wine wine and herbs so it was all ready to go.
 Grilling chicken and potatoes I always pack my knives with me wherever I go so it’s quick and easy to prepare everything. The potatoes go into foil with onions, garlic, butter, salt and pepper.
 Campfire dinner: Chicken, potatoes and homegrown tomatoes The tomatoes don’t need anything but salt! When they’re straight from the garden, they need no additional flavoring.
 Searing albacore When we go to my dad’s cabin, we cook many nights over the campfire but we also have a propane-fueled kitchen so I can get even fancier with my dishes. We had seared albacore with an orange-reduction sauce.
 Steaming clams in white wine and garlic Alongside the albacore were clams that I steamed with white wine, garlic, butter and parsley.
 Grilling the one porcini we found Every year we go to to the cabin we find ONE porcini. Just one. Every year. It’s wonderful and frustrating at the same time. It gives us the hope we’ll find more and we never do. Unfortunately there are cows that are left to roam wild and they eat the mushrooms! I bet that beef tastes fantastic.
 Gorgeous grilled porcini We sliced and grilled the porcini over the campfire, just like we do every Thanksgiving trek. It’s the only way to eat porcini as far as I’m concerned.
Next time you head into the woods, don’t pack trail mix and hot dogs. There’s no need. If you prep beforehand, you can have just as wonderful a meal as you would at home….plus, everything tastes better in the mountains. I have no scientific evidence for this but it is true. Try it!
Tags: albacore, camping, clams
Posted in amateur, chicken, dinner, flavor, food, hardcore, mushrooms, porcinis, potato, self pleasuring, tomatoes | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
The trumpet is a trickster. It hides, disguising itself as a leaf shadow. You can be looking at a hillside covered in leaves and see nothing. Then, you find one trumpet! Score! After that you realize there are many more around you that were hiding!
Hunting these is so different than hunting porcini–which are so huge sometimes you can see them while driving by. My husband’s first porcini was a drive-by find! Or hunting chanterelles which is like an Easter egg hunt–pretty little (or big!) orange beauties peaking out from under the leaves. Both of those mushrooms you can hunt from a relative distance, they stand out. Not black trumpets. They blend, they hide in the shadows.
My apologies for the quality of this pictures, it is from my phone, but that will just make the challenge that much more fun. Pretend it’s blurry because you’re foraging in the rain and your vision is obscured by it.
Now, find the trumpet:
Did you find it? It’s a lone little creature, not hanging out with any of its friends.
Do you see it?
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Does this help?
They are well worth the search. I know, finding it in the picture does not help you taste them but maybe it will inspire you to find a local mushroom group or foray and search for youself!! Just a disclaimer here, if you’ve never foraged for wild mushrooms, don’t do it alone and randomly eat things you find it the woods. I don’t want any of my readers to die from hardcore food porn attempts. I want you to live on to eat well!!
I will be sad when this season comes to an end since I’ve found some good new trumpet patches this year! I will just have to enjoy them while they last.
Posted in black trumpets, hardcore | No Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010
 I have a hard time just hiking. Hiking to me is like an easter egg hunt. I rarely look up, I rarely even look at the path, my eyes are always scouring the hillsides and duff.
Unfortunately, I usually don’t have my real camera with me either. So the photos are less than perfect but these lovely little fungi were just popping through the green moss (is that moss?) that was growing on the hillside. I don’t know what it is but I never find trumpets on flat land, it’s always somewhere that I have to perch precariously on a hillside and try not to slide all the way down it!
I did pretty well yesterday. Enough for this weekend’s frittata at least!
Update:
I cooked up the black trumpets the same way I did last time but had many more to savor today!
I put them in olive oil with one small minced clove of garlic over medium heat and let them cook off their water.
I think the best way to enjoy trumpets, or really any tasty wild mushroom, is simply on a piece of buttered french bread. Well, I didn’t have any french bread! So atop a frittata they went again.
I don’t know if these are one of my favorites because I get so few of them or not. I’m torn between trumpets and porcini as my favorite. My son said this morning that his favorites are grilled porcini and black trumpets (he’s 5). I think I agree!
Posted in black trumpets, hardcore, mushrooms | No Comments »
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
I went for a hike, knowing there was a chanterelle patch in the area but really not wanting to find any. I’m done with those for the year (I found two anyway, even though i wasn’t looking for them!). I was really on the hunt for black trumpets. It looked like good terrain for them, I was convinced they were there.
So, like staring at one of those 3D prints with the hidden pictures, I stopped and stared at the hillside. Slowly, these leaf shadows become mushrooms before my eyes. Success!
Unfortunately, I scoured the area and only found a small handful of these black beauties but that’s fine by me. I’d rather have a few than none, they are truly one of my favorites. Nom nom.
And since I had so few and wanted to savor them as much as possible, I sauteed them in just olive oil and shallots and put them atop my Sunday food-church frittata. Sooooo yummy. I also added the two little chanterelles I found just because, what else could I do? I couldn’t let them go bad. I need to head out and find more trumpets, this whet my appetite for them, they are such a wonderful little fungus!
Posted in black trumpets, craterellus, hardcore, mushrooms | No Comments »
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
This was not a planned mushroom hunt. I went on a hike with my son’s kindergarten class and stumbled upon a nice little patch of chanterelles. I told the teachers I’d catch up and piled the shroomies into my sweatshirt!
I made the lovely salad I’d made at Thanksgiving and the “To Die For” meal in December. I tossed the chanterelles in olive oil.
Grilled them until nice and brown.
Tossed the salad with shallot vinaigrette. Topped that with green lentils cooked in chicken stock. And the lovely surprise chanterelles on top. Oh, and bacon.
Posted in bacon, chanterelles, dinner, hardcore, lentils, recipe, seasonal menu, self pleasuring | No Comments »
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