Food

Are you a fungophobe or a fungophile? I love mushrooms, well the edible ones anyway. Mushrooms are great on pizza, in a pasta sauce, grilled, stuffed, in a soup or nearly any dish. Have you ever wanted to taste something beyond the ordinary button / Portobello mushrooms that most grocery stores carry? Some grocers carry more expensive varieties like oyster, shitake and enoki. A great way to find more interesting species of mushroom is to hunt them in the wild.

It's Labor Day weekend and summer has begun winding down. I can only hope that it won't be winding down too quickly because it was just in the past few days that I noticed little proto-green beans on the vine. However, people are back in school, it is cool in the morning, and the scent of roasting green chile has permeated the northern New Mexico air. As the days get shorter, I feel this mad desperation coming over me to preserve what I can of summer.

What: 1st International IFOAM Conference on Organic Animal and Plant Breeding
Where: Santa Fe Convention Center, Sante Fe, NM, USA
When: August 25-28, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, I have canned. It was a hot, sticky, dirty dish producing business. However, I have two lovely sealed jars of apricot butter waiting for my use some time this fall or winter. It better be this fall or winter, because I did not go through the processing step and hope that I kept everything clean enough to avoid botulism for awhile.

Carbon Footprint. Peak Oil. Energy Independence. All of these are different ways to talk about how fossil fuels are a finite resource and supplies are running out, quickly*. Given that crude oil, dirty coal and natural (methane) gas reserves are at, or near, peak production how will you prepare for short supplies and high prices? In other words - Do you move off the grid or stick it out in town? Doug Fine has staked his claim on the Funky Butte Ranch in the backwoods of southwestern New Mexico while I'm here in suburban Santa Fe, NM.

Can you believe summer is half over? I know this not only from the calendar but the contents of our Beneficial Farms CSA box. Apparently, the recent heat spell signalled the end of the flood of greens (kale, collards, chard, etc.) or at least a pause until cooler weather this fall. I can't tell you how happy the sight of summer squash made me when it showed up this past week.

Oh I felt so clever last night. I had radishes and pearly barley to use and, strangely enough, I found a recipe that used both. Thumbs up! But it involved turning on the oven to roasted some very pretty cubes and slices of vegetables. Thumbs down! It was hot yesterday evening and the house had not cooled off yet. But when I get an idea in my head...

The garden is so very alive these days and it is incredibly exciting. I went out to snip some mint last night at about 10:30 p.m. An all night produce department! There has been an almost daily rainstorm and that is perking things up considerably. Birds and butterflies have been visiting our yard looking for insects, seeds, sustenance and we have thoroughly enjoyed their flittering about. Then there are the bees.