Corning and Shay's house

A trip to Ithaca, NY is not complete for us without a visit to Corning, where Adam's brother lives.

Corning is a cute town with picturesque churches and many Victorian style homes.

We saw my niece in a children's theater play then walked around the downtown area.

I loved this yellow and black storefront for rent:

close up of the oak leaf stencil in front window:

Adam's brother travels extensively to Asia for work, and has lived abroad 3 different times, so his house is full of lovely, exotic treasures.

And many beautiful textiles like this indigo batik.

 I learned a lot about silk rugs from India:

Antique moon cake moulds:

We got to spend a casual day with their family, playing with toys and doing yard clean up projects.

Arlin and Darwin:

A walk through their beautiful oak woodland yielded many mushroom photos:

 Monotropa uniflora, a parasitic plant!

 Oak gall:

 A Russula pushing up leaves:

 Amanita pantherina (?)

 Black Chanterelles

 Then we closed out the night with s'mores around the fire pit.

Thank you, Shay and Tirzah for a great visit.

Birthday 2013 and 2014

Today is my 29th birthday! I went walking with my boys and planted seeds - giant sunflowers for Elliott, Cerinthe major 'purpurascens' for the bees, and a seed mix to improve soil and insect populations....should be good. Tonight, we planned to go to Yogurtland as a family, but a few hours before we went, I uncharacteristically mass messaged my local friends to see who might want to join us. I was very happy I did; it is great to celebrate with friends and this year I wasn't able to host my annual mushroom themed birthday party potluck due to tiny home/ongoing remodel/new baby.
A picture from tonight:

And some pictures from last year's mushroom party:
My dear Adam made something of his own volition for the potluck! (Pastrami and cheese on toast)

The famous mushroom log cakes. This year's flavor combos were hazelnut with orange marmalade filling and almond with cardamom filling.

An early shot of the mushroom potluck...

Thank you friends!

At 29, I am now older than my older sister ever was: Briana died almost 3 years ago, right before her 29th birthday.

Mushroom Party

I turned 27 yesterday!

27 seems like a milestone because when I was in college, all my friends who I thought wereway older than me were about 27. Now, here I am 27 - it feels good. I'm going to like this year.

To celebrate the day, we had a mushroom party at our house. This is my typical way to celebrate my birthday, though I skipped 2011 (can't remember why) and 2009 (busy being engaged with wedding plans and drama - and didn't have any friends in Seattle yet!). The general idea is that it's a food party where everyone brings something made by, of, with, or from some kind of fungi.

So:

moldy cheeses like brie, gorgonzola, or bleu, etc.

yeast leavened bread

Kombucha (tea, fermented with yeast/bacteria colony)

tempeh (mold fermented soy beans)

any dish with actual mushrooms (Porcini polenta, stuffed mushrooms...)

any food made into the shape of a fungus or mushroom (potatoes cut into mushroom shapes, mushroom cake pops, mushroom meringues, etc.)

I always make a rolled "log" cake and decorate it with mushrooms. Each year I do different flavor combos; this year, it was a vanilla bean cake with orange-mascarpone cream filling inside, and whipped chocolate ganache outside. I must say it turned out really well :)

Elliott wore his new wool mushroom pants from GrittyPretty:

I LOVE them :)

Friends!

I searched through old emails and found my hand drawn invitation to my first mushroom party in 2007:

catching up

Ahhh, I have about 6 half-finished entries to post with photos of Elliott, my parents visiting, our new house, and more...but I am supposed to be working from home today. I'll post tonight after I get my work done (I am aligning and editing ITS and 28S gene regions from some Cortinarius mushrooms...if you were curious).

For now, here are photos of Elliott at work last week and the week before :)

...and this is the box where he takes naps!

Leavenworth

Yesterday, Adam and I went to Leavenworth, Wa - a town just on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. We were hoping to catch dry weather and climb a few routes, but we got rained on a few times.

Yes, I still climb a little...but don't get too excited, because I climb very easy things that aren't vertical. It's amazing how hard it is to climb without ab muscles. Plus, the climbing harness is starting to hurt my stomach.

The day went like this:
I climbed one route called "Baby's Bottom" at an area called "The Playground."
Then we hid from the rain:

Then we drove to "Castle Rock" in another canyon that looked dry but the rain caught up with us.

We decided to stay out in the rain rather than go home early. Adam likes to practice "setting pro" and quiz me about building anchors and removing protection - so we did that for a while. We were right next to several well known and well loved climbs that Adam really wanted to try, but everything was too wet.

Then it looked like the rain was over so we drove back to Icicle Creek to find another certain well known and well loved crack climb called " Old Dog New Tricks." We didn't realize before we started, but it involved a mile of bushwhacking through wet plants and over huge fallen logs - partially through private property - to get to there.
On the way, we stopped at "The Pound" to climb a crack. It turned out to be the only climb Adam got to try the entire day and he said it wasn't very exciting.

***The good news is that while bushwhacking, we found: mushrooms!
Helvella corium!


and a morel!


Joy :)

Other things we accomplished over Memorial Day weekend:
Friday-climbed at Marymore Park
Saturday - went to the Seattle Folklife Festival, Adam decided to spend a few hours getting signatures to support the legalization of marijuana for adults.

and then watched a wonderful, beautiful animated film called "The Secret of Kells." (Both Adam and I totally recommend it - the art is beautiful and the story is universal).
Sunday - went to church and watched "Ponyo," a Japanese Anime that we thought we would love, but didn't. It was okay, but when it was over, the movie seemed a little pointless.
Monday - Leavenworth

It was a good weekend together, we can't wait for Adam's paternity leave!

Death by Matsutake

I went matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare) hunting this morning at 6:30 AM. I had to be back in Seattle before 12-noon, and I am happy to say I had a successful hunt and made it back in time, too.

The drive to Lake Kachess, about an hour East via I-90, was beautiful at that hour. It was dark when I started. The moon was a tiny sliver, low in the sky and I drove into the sunrise. Here is Lake Kachess with rising morning fog:

I found so many matsutake! The name is Japanese for Pine Mushroom because they grow in association with Pines and have a spicy pine/radish/cinnamon odor and taste. They are very distinct, I don't think you can confuse it with any other mushroom if you combine the distinct odor with a few characteristics such as:

manly white mushroom with brown fibrils on cap, a squat appearance, thick cottony veil:

that is often fully intact:

tapered/rooting stem with brown scales:

Matsutake often completely develop under "duff," leaf and needle litter on the forest floor. You see puffed up, bulging areas of dirt and if you excavate further, you find this:

a nearly missed matsutake.

Here is an older fruit body. The cap has alredy turned upward and the gills have turned pink with age:

The odor/taste is strange. I actually like it, but I'm the type that sniffs every mushroom I see (I'm trying to learn all the mushroom odors - there are thousands). It was really satisfying to collect matsutake and get a "stamp of correct i.d."

I found my first matsutake last year (here's the post) and ate it sliced thin in a broth soup. It was pretty good. This year, I found about 15 large matsutake. I gave 4 away so I still had way too many to eat. I decide to try every interesting sounding recipe I found so I could get them all out of my system and not have to worry about mushroom hunting or mushroom taste testing any more this year (the collecting season is over anyway).

Here are my ingredients (I'm really proud of myself for chopping everything before I stared cooking, for the first time in my life):

Here is what I made:

clockwise from top: Matsutake broth, grilled matsutake, Matsutake rice (gohan), and Matsutake sukiyaki (stir-fry noodle soup).

The best one was the sukiyaki, then the rice, then the broth soup. The grilled matsutake were not so good. I think it would have been better on a real BBQ grill, not our panini grill :)

Now, we are sick of matsutake (Death by Matsutake, as Adam said) and our freezer is full of matsutake leftovers. It's funny to think this is one of the most expensive mushrooms. It can be $100 / pound in Japan - though around $15-$25 / pound in U.S. As a reference, one average matsutake is 4-5 ounces. So, 4 mushrooms make one pound.

Here is the log bridge leading to the secret matsutake hunting grounds!

Here are the recipes I consulted:

Matsutake gohan (rice)

Matsutake sukiyaki (stir-fry noodles)

Matsutake broth soup

Grilled Matsutake