I debated putting this in the Gardening thread, but I was finally able to get some of the tomatoes I've been trying to grow all summer before the woodland critters got to them, and along with some of the fresh basil made a nice garlic infused bruschetta. The key is to chop up the tomatoes, liberally salt them, then wrap them up in some cheesecloth and drain in a colander for a few hours. It seasons them and draws out a lot of the excess moisture, making them a lot more firmer to the bite. For the garlic, I took a couple of cloves, sliced them super thin, then lightly fried them in some EVOO, just enough to make them crispy. You can mix in a bit of the infused oil, and also crush up the garlic 'chips' to mix in with the tomatoes and basil. Then just scoop onto some grilled/toasted bread and drizzle on some balsamic glaze if you want. The whole plate lasted approximately 3 minutes.
@jdoogie well done. That looks fantastic! My mouth is watering. Yeah, I bet it didn't last more than a couple minutes.
I just wish I hadn't lost so many tomatoes to squirrels and chipmunks already this summer. Next year I need to put up some sort of fencing around the planters.
I finally picked up sesame seeds the other day to make tahini for babaganoush. I had enough smoked eggplant to save 2 portions for future dip. This stuff is SO good, so smoky. I think I'll be smoking all the eggplants this year and freezing for later. I think I will be making burgers with the babaganoush as a bun spread. Today I made pizza. I cooked the sauce from the garden tomatoes yesterday and used a lot of basil too. Pizza is my all time comfort food and this is hitting the spot.
As usual our deck potted tomatoes didn’t yield much. We’ve got about 20 tomatoes among 3 plants but only 6 have ripened enough to eat. The green ones are all pretty small.
So, this kit was gifted to me. You can usually get 3+/- flushes of shrooms from the substrate. On the instructions it says it can take 2-3weeks to pin but it took 2 days for my brick, another few days to mature. So, for me, totally worth it. Low effort, free kit. I probably got 8-10oz of mushrooms in this flush. You can do the math to see if the price of the kit is worth it to you. At Christmas, hubs gifted me a shrooms tub kit. I can link it if interested. You inoculate your jars or bricks and allow the mycelium to impregnate the whole substrate, and change conditions for pinning. I purchased syringes of spores. At this larger scale, depending on what you're growing, it can be reasonably cost effective, or you can grow specialty varieties that are expensive. I grew magic mushrooms so that was the draw, but you could grow any kind. It becomes much more cost effective once you get into cloning with agar plates but since hubs is getting laid off I can't rationalize the purchase of supplies. Otherwise I'd be growing all winter. There's a bit of a learning curve on the shroom growing but the kit I showed a pic of makes it easy. Getting the substrate innoculated without contamination can be a challenge, but this kit is already done on that step. I used the oven method when I did the tub kit and didn't have a problem. The serious guys use laminar flow hoods.
Sorry. I have spent a LOT of time learning how to grow mushrooms and take some of the understanding for granted. They are completely different than plants. Its absolutely fascinating. I read about them from a bunch of different sites before I felt confident enough to try. The instructions that came with the tub were excellent but again.... So many terms that I didn't really understand... I don't like blindly following instructions like that. It would feel like ritualistic voodoo or some shit. I need to understand first. On a basic level, a mushroom has mycelium, which is the actual "body" of the organism, and fruiting bodies, which are what you think of as a mushroom. The substrate is the "soil" (it's not actually soil) that the mycelium will totally impregnate before fruiting. Mycelium is white and threadlike, but you're ready to fruit when the substrate is totally white. Pinning refers to the tiny baby mushroom heads that peep out first. Sometimes the pins don't turn into mushrooms, but are followed by the fruiting bodies. A flush is the group of fruiting bodies that mature about the same time. No shit required.
After my first grow, I watched a documentary about mushrooms and fell in love with them utterly. They are like the silent missing ingredient to a healthy biosphere. I can't quite explain what is so great about them, but perhaps watching the documentary will help share the feeling. Fantastic Fungi on Netflix if you've got a little time.
I find mushrooms like a bunch of other things... you can have a simple mushroom flavour, or you can get more complex and nuanced. Same goes for wine, balsamic vinegar, hot peppers/sauce, etc. I haven't really experimented with a ton of different mushrooms, but kind of know when to use shitake vs brown vs white. The complex earthiness that mushrooms give is amazing, and one thing I hope to dig into and experiment a bit with this winter. (Because to me, most "winter" food benefits from that mushroom earthiness).
Yeah, I don't know much about culinary mushrooms passed that either. For me, it's a good off season hobby to do indoors. I just love growing things. I get stir crazy in late winter waiting to grow outside.
The fact that a mushroom is genetically closer to a human than it is to a potato will never not blow my mind.
Yeah, it blew my mind when I learned that too. A mushroom's life cycle and needs are so different compared to a plant. I've been gardening since I was a young girl and find it very intuitive. I understand what is supposed to happen, I can sort of read the signs. Mushrooms are fucking alien. I read obsessively for months before growing and still only have a rudimentary understanding of the process. Mushrooms are amazing.
Check out Lion's Mane mushrooms. We get a veggie box once a week and it came with a head(?) of it. For funsies I made a vegan crab cake and if I didn't tell you that wasn't crab, you would've never known. It's a dead on substitute for crab.