Alive and regular!

Hi! I am 100% sure those mushrooms in my backyard were field mushrooms! And guess what? I think they help regulate your system cause I was doing two a days when I ate them! hehehe. Make sure to correctly identify your mushrooms!

Still Alive

5:44pm and I am still alive. Loved those mushrooms! Gonna look online for other wild things we can eat!

98% Sure I Won't Die

It had been raining for several days and I hadn't been in my backyard for a while. The yard is a mess. Grass, or something like grass, up to my knees and fallen tree branches scattered on the ground. Well. after a few days I was tired of waiting for the rain to stop so I headed out to do some chores. That's when I saw them. Papa Mush, Mama Mush and Baby Mush; I knew they had to be field mushrooms ( or meadow mushrooms, or horse poo mushrooms or Agaricus - something Latin here) because they were...in my grassy "field." There was a huge, beautiful specimen with its cap fully open. The gills had turned a deep brown and the cap was beginning to change from white to brown. Next to him was a Mama mushroom with its cap still white and pink gills. Then there was Baby Mushroom with the cap still closed and the veil attached at the stem. This Goldilocks was THRILLED! I had heard that wild field mushrooms have a stronger flavor then the store bought ones. What's this? You didn't know that button mushrooms, criminis and Portobellas are related to field mushrooms? They are!
So off I go to identify this mushroom to make sure I am not eating a poisonous one. After lots of reading I was 98% sure I would not die. Every website has this warning of death so I was 2% unsure of what I was doing. The field mushroom is often mistaken for the Death Cap Mushroom, lovely name huh? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Cap This guy is responsible for several Political murders back in the B.C. times. One recent survivor says they taste wonderful...but after a full liver transplant I am sure the taste is better left in memory.

Well, how do you tell the difference between the kind and pleasing field mushroom and the wicked Death Cap? 1. Death Cap has a white cap, and white gills its entire life cycle. Field mushrooms have a white cap early with pink gills the cap changes to brown and so do the gills. That is the major difference. 2. The Death Cap has a vulva (this makes it sound very un appetizing) at the base of the stem - field mushroom does not.
Since my guys had pink and brown gills and I saw no vulva on the stem - 98% sure I will live. Plus they had this nice almond scent.

So I fry them. Half my family passed. My husband said he would wait until tomorrow to see if I lived. Our Korean exchange student was game. There must be a biological reason why the Koreans jumped into this. After all, we do eat acorn jelly. Ate the mushrooms at 5pm last night. Fantastic flavor! It was like an entire cream of mushroom soup in one bite! The normal mushroom flavor we are used to was intense with these wild mushrooms. I loved it! I ate them with shredded raw cabbage, some raw tuna and pickled eggs. The salad dressing was Sueannfriendly soy sauce, rice vinegar and a little sugar!

7:35am this morning and I am still alive.

V for very Good

I saw V for Vendetta. I liked the movie so much I saw it twice at the theater. Evening show. Both times. Total $15. I liked it that much. Besides the applicable warning in the move about governments freaking us out over nothing and taking complete control of our lives - I liked the (Spoiler ahead)

cooking scene in the movie. When V is making breakfast for Evey. He made this Egg in Toast thing that my Dad calls flying saucer. V used real butter to fry this - something not SueannFriendly. However, I was craving this thing! Not only will I be a watchdog of our government but I will eat that egg toast thing for breakfast everyday! Here's the SueannFriendly version:

Sliced Sueann Friendly bread - found some "Old Fashion Farm" Bread at Safeway. Made with flour and chemicals - non of which were soy derived.
Cut hole out of bread.
In pan get bacon fat, or Sueann Friendly oil nice a hot. Throw bread in, crack egg in hole - fry. Fry until it is crispy brown and artery ripe! I flipped mine for extra fat intake! If you use bacon fat you get this amazing crunch and texture with a slight meaty flavor!

People should not be afraid of their government; Government should be afraid of their people.

Potato Flour

What the heck do you do with potato flour? My Mother gave me this huge bag full and said it was good. Usually, she tells me what to do but I was in a hurry to leave. My Mom always throws extra things into my car after a visit! I love her! So potato flour is...a flour made from potatoes. It has no gluten so is great for those Celiacs in your life. Hmm. Celiacs and Celicas can't eat what! hahaha.

Where was I? Thank the Lord I can eat wheat. That is a hard disease to live with. Now, back to potato flour. So in one of my Freebird moments I decided to use potato flour for a pizza dough recipe. Yes, I was out of wheat flour. The result was a wonderful, tasty bread. It was dense because of the lack of gluten in the flour but it was so good! Here is my recipe:

Potato Flour Sticks
2 C Potato Flour
1 pack quick rise yeast
1 teas. salt (little more)
2 teas. Olive Oil
3/5 C warm water
Combine flour, yeast and salt and stir in warm water and oil until blended. Knead dough until smooth. Let rest for 15 minutes. (yeah right... get to rolling!) Roll portions of dough and cut into long strips, braid, spritz with olive oil or egg wash. Bake 350 degrees for 8 minutes.
SWEET: when braiding spread some jam in and sprinkle with sugar
SAVORY: sprinkle granulated garlic onto braided sticks. Maybe some black pepper too...try curry powder...even paprika! FREE BIRD COOKING!

Morelistic1

I took a mycology class in the spring and it was very interesting! Fungus is everywhere! Did you know that 80-85% of plants have a symbiotic relationship with fungus? Most mushrooms are not poisonous, but when they are you will most likely die or be severely compromised. For example, if you eat the white angle of death cap mushroom you will die of liver failure. I hear it is a slow death. Then there are the LBMs - little brown mushrooms. Some like to boil them in teas and get "high." But most of the time they boil the wrong mushrooms and get stomach cramps and gas. Of coarse, they could also be "high" but I imagine that is not the best chemical of choice. The LBMs go into the category of "not really edible but let us know if you live" mushrooms. The Vikings used to take the toadstool, that pretty red cap mushroom with white polka dots, and make some drink out of it. The side effects were acid-like followed by intestinal problems and perhaps impedance- oh wait, we call that E.D. now. There are tons of mushrooms in this category - not E.D. mushrooms, but ones that are not tasty and probably won't kill you. Finally, we have the mushrooms we love to eat. Button mushrooms - which are meadow mushrooms commercially cultivated. Did you know that when you let a button mushroom grow up it turns into a $7lb. Portobella mushroom!? Shitakis, oyster...uh...that's sorta it for commercially grown mushrooms that I can think of. Then there are the expensive ones: Chantrells, Morels, Truffles. These have a unique relationship with tree roots. I think that is why they have not been commercially cultivated. If someone can figure out how to grow these they would be RICH! So for now, people hunt these mushrooms and it is a real sport! I had the opportunity to go on a hunt with my professor. It was amazing! I collected 6 morels in 4 hours! Yes. That is sad but it was about the process, the patience...getting lost and running madly in the woods (which you are not supposed to do) and communing with nature. Some lucky SOB found a patch of 30 morels in 15 minutes. That made me look harder...only to find some coral mushrooms which looked edible but are not. Funny thing, when I was madly running through the forest I found more morels - about 4 of them! The other 2 took about 1 hour each to find. But they were worth it! At the store they go for $20lb. Just yesterday, we were camping in Idaho and guess what? We found a patch of 16 morels at our site! LUCKY!

MORELS and EGGS
Slice morels length-wise (as many as you want or can afford!)
Fry morels in bacon fat or live oil, lightly salt
Add about 4 - 6 scrambled eggs and mix of flip when ready.
Eggs and morels are a good combo!

Chapche (Jap-Chaye) - Korean Rice Noodles

After making all that Sueann-Friendly soy sauce I decided to make Chapche. These rice noodles are different than the Thai kind and can be found in the Asian (Oriental- if you still say this) store. When my mother would make this, I would imagine we were eating worms! But unlike other kids, I wasn't grossed out, but found this thought entertaining. I am a Free-Bird cook. Meaning, I follow the basic structure of a recipe but add ingredients I have at home. For this Chapche I put in two jalepenos for some spice and left out many veggies because...they weren't in my fridge.
I was told that this is normally a side dish - Wha??? This is a one dish meal to me!

In a large pot:
Korean Style rice noodles - boil in water for about 5 minutes then eat one to see if it is cooked through. Unlike dry pasta, these cook fast. If you boil them too long they lose their texture and taste like paste. Run under cold water and grab some scissors because these noodles are long! I pretend I'm attacking an alien creature (of coarse it attacked me first) and I stab and cut in many directions!

Take the same pot and FRY these with some soy free oil - DO NOT fry in sesame seed oil because it has a low heat...fat something... and will burn: Tastes awful.

Thinly sliced beef
Shredded carrots
Shredded green pepper (not too much-kinda overpowering)
One thinly sliced onion
Now add these towards the end of your frying.
Shredded Shitaki mushrooms (or Button mushrooms - or canned)
Leaf spinach (do yourself a favor and buy frozen-defrost before adding to pan)
Now add the sauce to the pot and turn the HEAT OFF (Just enough heat to lightly fry noodles -be careful because they stick to the pot!) then mix.

1/2C Sueann Friendly Soy Sauce
2 T sesame oil
3 T Brown Sugar (or a little less of white sugar if you are out of brown)
Garlic - I use about 1 T granulated garlic but do this to your taste - not too much though!
Black pepper
I usually add a little more sugar until you get a nice balance of sweet and salty. You are going for a terkiyaki flavor. Mmmm worms!