Category Archives: food

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Lion’s mane

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #81, a Lion’s mane mushroom from up in the Olympic Mountains, taken with my cell phone.

I hiked with a friend. I am not good enough at identifying many mushrooms to pick them on my own, so I go with him. We saw at least 30 varieties most of which we left alone…. when in doubt, don’t touch.

We went out Saturday and Sunday. It rained most of the day on Saturday. I was dressed warmly enough but was very wet. Sunday it rained less and I dressed more appropriately and stayed dry…

Delicious sauteed until brown…

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Mmmmm

We hiked yesterday on the Olympic Peninsula and these are oyster mushrooms. My friend  knows about 16 edible mushrooms now. We found six edible kinds with the oysters in the lead. They are year round. I lost track of how many mushroom species we saw: black ones, lavender ones, coral mushrooms in orange and white and cream and yellow. Slimy looking mushrooms, hen of the woods that are past and falling, tiny orange ones the size of my fifth fingernail. Beautiful.

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Panoply

I took this for Photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #79 and then am delighted with Jithin’s post. I love the row of pans, a panoply of pans. Also the breakfast was fabulous. We were the second table occupied on Sunday morning, and many of the pans were in use by the time we finished!

I was in Bellingham just Saturday and Sunday to wish my daughter happy birthday. Who can identify the restaurant?

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Katy B’s Fruit Torte

Katherine White Burling was my maternal grandmother, and this recipe is attributed to her. I still have the small three ring binder that my mother gave me when I was in high school, explaining that my sister and I had to do some of the cooking. We told her what we wanted to make and she would write the recipe in our book and help us. I wrote this recipe out in the 1970s.

preheat the oven to 350 F

cream: 1 C sugar
1/2 C butter

while the butter is softening enough to cream, cut up fruit: apples, pears, peaches, rhubarb, or use berries…

Add: 1 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
salt
2 eggs

Spread in in a buttered, floured pan. Cover with chopped fruit: apples, pears, peaches. Today I am using rhubarb and a peach. I particularly like the tartness of rhubarb.

Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice
Dot with butter on top.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven.
Cook until browned a little in the part that rises around the fruit, and when a toothpick comes out clean.

mmmmmm

For a while I lived at 7500 feet and had to alter recipes:
subtract 3 tablespoons sugar
use 3/4 tsp baking powder

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V is for vegan

V is for vegan, in my alphabet of feelings.

Wait, you say, I am not vegan.

Yes, but have you ever felt vegan? Have you ever felt vegetarian? Have you felt voracious?

We are very protective of our diets. When people make a big diet change, some become food fascists for a while. They can be very vocal about the change and about how their diet is endorsed by an on line doctor or naturopath or dietician and how everyone else should try it. Not everyone. Some people are very quiet.

Vegan isn’t in Webster 1913, though everything2.com has a number of writeups under the word vegan.  The definition at Dictionary.com:

noun
1. a vegetarian who omits all animal products from the diet.
2. a person who does not use any animal products, as leather or wool.
adjective

3. of or relating to vegans or their practices:  vegan shoes made of synthetic leather.

Have you ever tried being vegetarian? Vegan? Or are you firmly ensconced as an omnivore and sometimes even wish you were a carnivore…. Just for a moment, try being one that you’ve never tried. I have never tried being a vegan. What associations come up with the word and do they annoy you? Are they accurate or are they just assumptions attached to that word and that “group” of people. Maybe some vegans have no choice and not enough to eat.
My daughter is off to college soon and she plans to try being vegetarian. She says that it is partly that she just doesn’t like meat much and partly because meat is costly to raise and partly that she disapproves of eating meat… but she still likes fish and shellfish. “I will be a pescatarian,” she says, “except I may eat meat sometimes if I go to someone’s house, so that they don’t have to cook especially for me.”
My daughter got home from a three day orchestra trip and made breakfast: not vegan.
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G is for gluttonous

Welcome to 7 sins and friends, where I am writing about a feeling for every letter of the alphabet…. including the 7 sins.

I spelled gluttonous “glutinous” first…. a quite different feeling. I had to look up the spelling of gluttonous.

  1. marked by or given to gluttony<a gluttonous appetite>

Now I need a definition of glutton:

a :  one given habitually to greedy and voracious eating and drinking
b :  one that has a great capacity for accepting or enduring something <a glutton for punishment>

When I started this topic for the A to Z challenge, I had to look up the 7 sins. I could only name four and I always want to include murder. I get the ten commandments a bit conflated with the 7 sins.

Gluttony is an interesting sin and I did not think of the second definition. I have only seen it used in “glutton for punishment”, but the way the definition is written, I wonder if Nelson Mandala could be seen as a glutton ….. his courage in enduring imprisonment for so long. That meaning would not be a sin, would it?

G

When my daughter was in grade school, her sitter’s family hosted an exchange student from Uzbekistan. He was a teenager, very thin, and he seemed appalled by the US. He showed us slides from home. They had electric power for an hour or two a day at most. The cooking facilities were out door stone ovens burning wood. I think that he considered us to be gluttons because not only did we demand more than one meal a day and snacks, but also we demanded different food at each meal and always look for something new! And we ate until we are obese and then obsess about losing weight!

I spent a year as an exchange student in Denmark in high school. I continued with the language in college and got a scholarship to translate a book one summer. The book is Livsens Ondskab, by Gustav Wied, written in 1899. It is fascinating and very dark and funny. It is about a small town, fictional, but this town has a “Glutton’s Club” where the richest men get together and have fabulous rich meals. The meal descriptions are glorious. But their goal is to eat as much as possible and more…..

I am in the Rotary and love it. The Rotary helps 9000 exchange students world wide: I think that going to another country, another place, and trying to understand and be understood is one of our biggest hopes for peace.

My daughter made the cake for my birthday last month!!! mmmmmmm

 

 

 
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Danish pie

I copied recipes from my mother’s cookbook before I went to college. This one had the name Estie on it:Ester White, then Ester White Parr. She was one year older than my maternal grandmother Katherine, and when she was sent on errands as a child, she took my grandmother with her to do the talking as soon as she could talk. They were born in Turkey because my great grandparents helped start Anatolia College in Turkey, leaving when my grandmother was 16 and the Armenians and some Christians were being killed. I don’t know if this is Danish or not.

1/2 Cup flour
3/4 Cup sugar
1 diced raw apple
1/2 Cup chopped pecans
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder.

Mix in any order. Beat well. Bake in greased tins at 350 F for 30-35 minutes. Serve with ice cream.

I made this for the first time this morning. I used blueberries instead of apples and walnuts instead of pecans. Delicious anyhow! Enjoy!