Skip to main content

Room for Mushrooms?


It's about this time of year when Peter gets all excited and actually wants to go out for a walk in the woods. The rain has come, the leaf mould is all over the ground and the mushrooms have appeared once again.

Parasol Mushroom
This year, it's a bumper crop. From Fairy Rings in the garden lawn to Parasol mushrooms in the market. Next month Peter will be going on the mushroom identifiers walk once again and this book will be complete with notes on where to find the edible ones.

Fairyring Mushrooms











We had a bit of luck recently on our way up to the Coentral Chestnut Festival - we came across a large Cauliflower mushroom nestling in the woods. A gourmet delicacy we are told! This along with Parasol mushroom from the neighbour’s garden and some Milky caps from the roadside were cooked up for brunch with friends the other day.


Cauliflower Mushroom
Beefsteak Mushroom
Despite having a super book on how to identify the right mushrooms for eating I always worry a little. It's just that there are so many entries in the book which start with 'don't get this confused with the similar looking poison variety'....

Cheating death the neighbours tucked into mushrooms on toast in the November sunshine. Washed down with a little Moscatel at 11am everyone survived the day.


Mushroom three ways


Is it a good time to tell you that I don't really like mushrooms!!!



 And just because I have your attention, here is a photo or two of Lord!





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Building our Barrel Vault Wood Fired Oven

This is a short description of my barrel vault build that I have done here in Central Portugal. The final internal size is a 1m squared floor with a arch height of 50cm. I hope you enjoy and get some ideas from it. I wish to thank ukwoodfiredovenforum  for their advice and support. • 1: First I dug out a hole in the flower bed, on top of the stone wall, where the oven was to be built • 2: Set up a form to pour in the concrete base • 3: Pour the concrete base, which was about 5-6 inches deep • 4: On top of the base I cast 4-5 inches of LECA (light weight expanded clay balls) mixed with cement to hold it's form • 5: Then I cast a 2-3 inch heat retaining base, to add to the thermal mass, using calcium aluminate cement with large grain sand, as a flat base for the hearth bricks to sit on • 6-8: I then dry laid the hearth bricks on a dry bed of fine sand and clay mixture, with th...

oh what a lovely bougainvillea

It was something I wanted to grow, a plant which would cover the wall, give shade, give colour and really stamp the fact we lived abroad.   Bougainvillea. We have the other Mediterranean type of plants growing; we have olives in abundance, we have the grapes thriving, we have the figs establishing, but alas no bougainvillea.    I looked up how to grow it and it says:   Bougainvillea thrives in full sun.   “At least 5 hours a day of direct sunlight is the minimal light required for good bloom. More hours of direct sun are better. Less than 5 hours and the plant may not bloom very well.”   5 hours of sun ‘check’, good light ‘check’, south facing ‘check’….but alas the Med we are not!   This little peak of Central Portugal has cold air in winter (snow even), a vigorous breeze at dusk and is prone to a late frost.   Our courtyard is just too exposed to the elements, there is no little ‘nook’ for a bougainvillea, there is no wall for it to climb...

Chestnuts and Saints

St. Martinho or St. Martin of Tours, became the first non-  martyr  saint to receive official church worship and became one of the most popular saints in medieval Europe. (Source wikipedia). His feast day is 11 November, deep into autumn and the chestnut season. In Portugal, as it's chestnut season 'Magustos'are celebrated in St. Martinho's name. A magusto is a group  of friends and/or family who get together and bake and eat chestnuts.  We have our village magusto at the weekend.  Meanwhile at home I've been celebrating the chestnut instead of the saint.  This 'celebration' involves collecting the chestnut harvest, splitting, cooking and shelling hundreds of these shiny brown chestnuts. Well, there's not much else to do on a wet Monday in these hills. Now I've got a bowl full of chestnuts I'm looking for recipes.  Here's what I've tried so far: Chestnut cake.  Made by using blitzed chestnuts instead of regular flo...