I didn’t set out to eat that big shiitake mushroom growing in my mushroom patch last night.
But as I pulled off the humidity tent to spritz it with water, the mushroom fell right off. As luck would have it, I was already roasting a turkey breast and making mashed potatoes for dinner, so the instant idea was, yep, mushroom gravy!
More or less, here’s how I make mushroom gravy.
First, you buy a mushroom patch from Gardener’s Supply. You refrigerate the patch for a couple of days and then soak it, totally submerged, for 24 hours. After that, you place the patch under a humidity tent and spritz it with water regularly.
Once you have a great big mushroom, keep watching it and spritzing your patch with water until the mushroom practically jumps off in your hand.
Then you chop up the mushroom with some celery, onion and garlic.
You saute the mushroom, onion, garlic, celery mixture with some butter until everything is nicely browned.
You then add 1/2 cup of chicken or vegetable broth mixed with one tablespoon of cornstarch. Stir this into the gravy until it is thick. Then continue adding the broth a little bit at the time, just mixing it in so that the gray stays nice and thick. Season with salt and pepper. You can also add thyme and marjoram.
Sadly, I do not have a nice photo of the finished gravy because it was already 8:30 at night and everyone was hungry.
(Note to self: If you plan to do a food photo series, get a shot of the finished product.)
I did nibble on the fresh mushrooms prior to cooking and have to say that there is NOTHING like a fresh shiitake mushroom. It was fresh tasting and firm. It didn’t have any of that mushy, musty flavor that you sometimes get with store-bought mushrooms. I am anxiously awaiting more mushrooms. (Hurry up, mushrooms!)
Tomorrow on Bumblebee…
How my brother-in-law can turn a discussion of lawn mowing into a 30-minute rant about the importance of his hair. Here’s Captain, the brother-in-law, with his important hair and Ben, my 16-year-old son, also with his hair–perhaps not as important.
Until then,
Robin
At the risk of boring you with mushroom tales, I really have to show you this.
This was the mushroom patch two days ago.
Here is the mushroom patch today.
Okay, it’s only ONE mushroom. But it is a very BIG mushroom. It’s now about the size of one of those portobello mushrooms that I buy at the grocery store to put onto burger buns for a quick dinner.
Also, I can see that other little tiny baby mushrooms are starting to sprout. Eventually, this whole mushroom patch is supposed to be absolutely covered in these shiitake mushrooms.
RuthieJ emailed to ask more about the patch.
This is my first time intentionally growing mushrooms. Yes, I have unintentionally grown mushrooms in my lawn and flower beds. But I don’t dare eat those!
The block is apparently compressed sawdust that is embedded with the mushroom spores. When it arrived, I put it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. After that, I soaked it in a huge bucket of water for 24 hours. Since the patch floats, I had to be creative about piling on pots and pans to make sure the whole patch was submerged.
Since then, it’s simply been a matter of misting and keeping the humidity tent in place.
I plan to harvest my single mushroom success shortly. Yummm. Fresh, home-grown mushrooms. Not sure how it will make it into my cooking yet, but don’t be surprised if I keep it all to myself–like the first tomato!
Bonus photos. Cute little dogs!!!!
Poor Sophie is a drama queen after a bath and nestles with her dad for warmth. Her tongue doesn’t fit into her mouth properly.
Sarah excels at cuteness at all times.
Okay, that’s it for today. I am happily chewing through my home to-do list after having been submerged in a boatload of work for the past two months. I feel like a new woman!
Robin
I am happy to report that, so far at least, mushrooms grown intentionally seem to grow as rapidly as those grown unintentionally, i.e. those that grow in your lawn.
Remember how I just started my mushroom patch a couple of days ago? Well, lookee here.
That shiitake mushroom is about the size of racketball!
Take another look. (This is the beauty shot.)
I mist the mushroom patch about twice a day, although the instructions tell you to mist it “several times a day.” I do keep the humidity tent in place. And although you might think that the mushroom patch should reside in a dark closet, the instructions say that you just need to keep it out of direct light. So that I don’t forget it and accidentally kill all those precious mushroom spores, my mushroom patch is living on the floor of the kitchen next to the cabinets. So far, the little dogs have taken no interest.
In other news about pet projects…
Remember Steve Martin in the movie The Jerk excitedly yelling, “The new phone book is here!!! The new phone book is here!!!”
I did my own Jerk impression the other day, yelling “The new cheese press is here!!! The new cheese press is here!!!”
The little dogs were confused, but unimpressed. I think the UPS guy was just a wee bit curious about why I was skipping back to the house with the box.
I waited about three or four months for this cheese press from the New England Cheesemaking Supply, which was having some vendor issues getting these made. They were excellent about communicating the difficulties and I decided to hold out for this cheese press. I have been working my way through Ricki Carroll’s book on Home Cheese Making with excellent results, so I trusted the source. In fact, we have become addicted to all sorts of homemade soft cheeses thanks to Ricki. My friend Angela said the neufchatel is like crack and she can’t stop eating it.
Off to adventures in cheese making now!
Ciao!
Robin
This, my friends, is not a home acupuncture experiment. It is my new mushroom patch.
I am growing shiitake mushrooms, ordered from the Gardener’s Supply catalog. In just a few short weeks I will have a bloom of mushrooms that will be made into delicious, savory, enticing meals for my family. All in the dead of winter.
As a bonus, I finally have a use for those knitting needles that have been idle for years. They hold up the humidity tent that surrounds the mushroom patch when I am not spritzing it with water.
You see, I have tried on numerous occasions to learn to knit.
First, there was with Mrs. Bashaar, my fourth grade teacher at Butts Road Elementary School. She started inviting me inside at recess to show me how to cast on and do some basic knitting stitches. I’m not sure exactly what prompted the personalized attention, but it ended abruptly when I surreptitiously circulated a petition among my 10-year-old classmates to end what I considered her cruel and unusual punishment of having the class sit boy-girl-boy-girl at the lunch table for being rowdy in class. Mrs. B., otherwise the soul of kindness, caught me red-handed and marched me down to Mr. Bunch, the principal, for punishment. As I recall, I shakily, but bravely, made the case for why lunchtime was an important social event for young children, was sent back to class and never heard another word about it. (It WAS the seventies, after all. I will say that at least while I was at Butts Road Elementary, the teachers never used the odious boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangement at lunch again.)
I tried knitting again after Benjamin was born and had taken it upon myself to be a model mom by staying at home knitting and keeping house until he reached kindergarten. When I proved inept at knitting I took up cross-stitching with such a vengeance that it landed me at the orthopedist’s office for cortisone injections in my wrists to kill the pain.
The good, stay-at-home mom part didn’t stick either. It ended the day Ben, not quite six months old, and I were watching Sally Jessy Raphael’s show on sex slaves. She had some scary dominatrix chick in leathers and jerking around a pasty, pathetic, sweating chubby guy on a dog chain. He was wearing a leather hood and spoke only when spoken to or she yelled at him. (I don’t think Sally allowed her to bring the whip. It was, after all, a family show.)
“That’s it!” I told the six-month-old Ben. “If THIS is what I have come to—cradling my cross-stitch ruined wrists and watching this trash—I am going back to work. You’ll be fine.” (He was and is.)
I spent the next few years working at a grueling ad agency job while my husband sailed around the world. Okay, okay. He was in the Navy. He was on an aircraft carrier. He was flying nighttime missions. Oh, and there was a war going on.
Well. I had a soul-sucking ad agency job and an active two-year old to deal with by myself.
Longing for an after-hours activity that would be meditative and slow down my monkey mind, I enlisted the help of two aging Italian ladies at a local yarn shop to teach me to knit. Yes, I PAID FOR PRIVATE KNITTING LESSONS.
They talked to each other in Italian while they shook their heads and looked at my tiny, tight little stitches.
“Relax. Relax. Relax. It is-a too tight,” they told me. “You should-a drink some wine while you knit.”
Best advice yet! Still, I flunked out of private knitting lessons. After a couple of sessions, I slinked away and didn’t return for my lessons-paid refund.
Then I tried again after moving here to Calvert County. Here I am, out in God’s country. The garden is growing. I have little animals running around. I have actually CANNED MY OWN VEGETABLES. Surely, the knitting gene has kicked in my now, right?
Like any good yuppie, I headed to Barnes & Noble to buy all the basic knitting books I could find. I stopped by Michael’s to stock up on all the yarn colors I liked and a selection of knitting needles. I even had a special knitting bag embroidered at the Annapolis Mall with my initials so that it could hold all my cool new knitting projects.
Now we’re talkin’! I am equipped!
I tried something VERY BASIC. DISH CLOTHS. This is not complicated, I told myself. Failure still. I am SO VERY totally pathetic. I am a big looser in the knitting game. People all over the world teach this to themselves without the benefit of this $100 in hardback books.
What the heck is wrong with me? I can play Debussy arabesques and Chopin preludes on the piano. I can type 70 words per minute, thanks to Mrs. Bryant, my 9th grade typing teacher. But I can’t knit a freakin’ dish cloth!!!?!!!??? Nope.
So, here you have it. I am pleased as punch that these knitting needles, which have been in repose at the bottom of the monogrammed knitting bag in my closet, finally have a purpose.
Aaaahhhh.
The bonus is that I will have some lovely, savory mushrooms that I can point to as the fruits (fungus?) of their labors.
Ciao!
Robin
