Stropharia rugosoannulata (Wine Cap)

Delicious and often enormous, the Wine Cap pops up commonly in the hardwood woodchips used in landscaping mulch around trees and along tended pathways. This mushroom can be identified positively only in the presence of both the young and mature specimens. The buttons are sometimes but not always a Burgundian red wine color on top. When the veil is still closed over the immature gills, there is a coglike star pattern around the stem. In the mature fruiting bodies, the gills change from pink to a dark pinkish grey to grey brown color while the color of the cap lightens to a light brown to beige color. The spore print is purplish black in color.

I recommend eating only the young mushrooms of this species which are firm and bug free. The buttons of this species can reach 5-6” in diameter while still immature. They are meaty and rich and are well paired in meat sauces and sautés.

When large, it can be cut into strips, brushed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with herbs, salt and pepper and grilled to perfection.

So once again I have too many mushrooms. Dont feel sorry for me this happens all the time. Seek and ye shall find. I wish in my life it applied to something more than mushrooms.

Fleet Week

Sailors from all points hither cometh to New York City cause its Memorial Day Weekend. The girls go crazy the gays go nuts and the tourists are in awe. It would be senseless to go anywhere close to a popular part of town right now and that is just about anywhere. So since there is no gettin' out of it and when in Rome...well you know how that goes. I am going to try and get as many sailor pictures as I can and post them as I get them....lets see if this years Fleet Week measures up.



All I got is Google, can you believe I did not see a single sailor. We ARE at WAR right now and it isnt as sexy to be a sailor I guess. Past fleet weeks during non war times have included boats and sailors from other countries. The city was a little quiet, the tourist areas were not as congested either. Typical long weekend where it seems like a ghost town - not the usual 20 million people more like around 12 million to make it seem quiet.

Nacho Chips w/ Nacho Cheese

When is this a bad idea? You make some chips you melt some cheese and there you go.

Nacho Chips w/ Nacho Cheese

Dried Mushrooms - just string em up and let em dry.

Mycophagy

Well I made mushroom omeletes and mushroom quesadillas and mushrooms alfredo with linguine and I also made a mushroom



chile and sauted mushrooms with early peas as shown here but I still have some left. Oh I failed to mention there is one food my onivorious child will not eat and that is mushrooms, so I am at this one solo. What i usually do when I have too many mushrooms is to let them dry. Dried mushrooms have a lot of flavor, they pulverize into a fine powder very nicely and they can act like a secret ingredient when added to soups or breads or sauces or even scrambled eggs. I am going to make a pissaladiere next, well actually I am not going to make the whole pizza thing just the topping to spread on other things, crackers, celery who knows.

A Fungus Amoung us

I find them, I buy them and I really want to grow them, I could eat them with anything except for some reason I dont like them raw and that is mushrooms. I have had so many varieties both wild and tame from here to Timbuktu, but today I just have a big bunch of regular button mushrooms and I am eager to try something new. Any suggestions?

Beans

Whenever I am hungry for something fast and easy I make food that comes naturally to me. I could make this in the dark and blind drunk and it would always come out the same, delicious. I am talking burritos. Nothing is easier than rolling up some beans and rice and cheese in a flour tortilla and drizzling some chile, either red or green, and grating cheese on top. It is good it is filling and it is spicy all the things I like. Its like the hot dog for little southwestern children, my mom would make brakfast burritos, lunch burrtios any kind of burrito and they were always perfect - especially since she made the tortillas too.

pizza

we ate pizza at johns. and then it was evening.

Seeds

Everytime I eat an avocado, and that is weekly and during peak season sometimes daily, I plant the seed. I have 8 avocado plants right now and many seeds germinating. I have given away 4 plants recently and many more in the past. Avocado plants are so cool. They sprout up real tall and have the biggest most "new looking" leaves you could ever see - plus they make me feel tropical.

These are in the bathroom since this room gets the most light all day long.

If you look closely you will see a new one sprouting up. It takes a few months for the seeds to germinate. I have not calculated or measured or tracked how long but someone once said the germination time is relative to seed size. This is a view out one window of a sunflower.

And these are two other windows - one with squash and cucumber. I like vine plants since they crawl up and shade the window with green in the summer plus you get squash blossoms for fritatas. The other box is beans. I buy the bag of beans in the supermarket that are for mixed bean soup because you get this nice variety. Beans are cool because some climb some dont but they all have different colored flowers and they all produce green beans.

Class Camp-out

The kids third grade class had a sleep over field trip in Wading River Long Island. So after climbing down a hundred steps we learned about the beach or in this case the Long Island Sound, and we learned there are no sharks.





Then our group threw spears and touched snakes. We slept in cold cabins and came home.





I did not photograph everything because for some reason me an one of the camp directors became instant nemesis's, so much that during the racket that was a drumming circle he managed to hear just me and asked if I could stop because I wasnt doing it right - to which I replied no. He got upset and left the room. I got upset and left the room later only to be asked by the drum leader to sit in the middle and play some more-right next to my buddy the nemesis.





Fun had by all.


So we came home and I made Oso Buco with Jasmine rice.

Wet

We went to a swimming birthday party on Sunday and everyone had to wear swim caps! 7-8 kids all together and one teenager and one adult enjoyed the pool.



I didnt get in the water but I thought I would show you my wet head anyway. Its early in the morning and I look a little tired, plus it isnt too easy to take pictures of yourself. Canned ravioli, Big Macs and store brand soda around these parts lately so no food pictures in fact I am going over to Mushy's now to get some canned inspiration. (not true just not making anything interesting and not taking any photos, lots of smoothies and protein shakes, and repeats of favorites. How often can I post rice balls or sushi?)





Later in the day...I guess its not tired just old. I look cranky, like an old crumudgeon, is that even how you spell it...I need to know since that is the new me. I had a makeover. I went from young to old and this is the result. Why am I so cranky? At least I am living to complain about it, complaining is a good thing it means you are alive and pathetic. I hate complainers and now it tis the new me. I am on a mission to discredit the school librarian. She hates me and I feel the same. She mistakenly told me once that "she knows whats best for my child"..well things changed at that second. Any suggestions on how to go about this will be tried once, evaluated and if the evaluation is positive they will be used till exhaustion.

The Dogg and the Pupp are ready for summer!

Music

This blog keeps me coming back because of the changing theme song. I love theme songs. I wish I had a theme song and a camera crew that followed me around like Marlo Thomas. I used to wish these things before the web before cell phones, damn I was wishing for this back when they told us that in the ninteys all the cars would be hovercraft. Popular Mechanics was a popular mechanic magazine. Now, though, things are more rooted. We dont seem to be predicting a Sci Fi future anymore, simply advances in existing technology. I bet if you went back to old Omni magazines you would not find mention of the Internet. The internet came out of nowhere, and when it did - it did. Blogs are maybe only three years old at best maybe four for the total originators. So all this being said I want a theme song and camera crew.

Wysteria

When I am am not polluting my body with mind altering illegal substances or tatooing my already well inked corpse or engaging in countless meaningless relationships or eating butter by the spoonful I am out enjoying the splendors this world has to offer and my favorite of said splendors, besides dirty jokes, are flowers. Dumb as I am I like to call everything Wysteria because it rhymes. Wysteria rhymes with hysteria and mysteria and well its an excellent name for a flower, in fact I vote that if you are unsure of a flowers name it is perfectly safe and even recommended to call it a Wysteria.

A "treehouse" a "gazebo" and a "pond" down in my "hood"

It looks like I live in haiku land...

Mac&Cheese

Who doesnt like macaroni and cheese? This is easy kid bait, and probably for most adults too.



Wisconsin white cheddar, sundried tomatoes and toasted bread crumbs.



Play date, two little skate punks trying to be Tony Hawk.

Squash

Grilled Squash and fired Garlic light up this soup. Add some heavy cream and its golden.

Remember the ribs? Well after they were done and while the grill was cooling down I threw on some squash.

Burnt it basically and then blended it into a soup with the garlic adding some barbequed chicken and some mexican sour cream for looks, add toast and you 're done.

Out-takes just for fun....