Showing posts with label forest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forest. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Oyster mushroom grove

Last weekend Wil an I originally planned on going fishing. 
On the way to the lake we spotted people with baskets, obviously mushroom pickers.

We pulled over immediately, grabbed our basket and knives and ran into the forest. Wil found some boletus mushrooms right away, and later we found an oyster mushroom grove.


It's almost ridiculous how happy mushroom picking makes me. 
It's both exciting and relaxing at the same time.

That is if you don't run into a bear mama and her cubs or a hungry cougar....


Back home we made homemade pasta with mushroom whisky sauce, a Murray-classic at this point.

I never had wild oyster mushrooms before. They are much milder and less earthy tasting then chanterelles and porcini. Maybe that is because they grow on trees rather than on the ground.

What was very interesting was the slight anis flavor and smell that added a new twist to the dish.



Sunday, July 15, 2012

Wild berries & jam

Last weekend Wil and I went to the forests in order to search for the first chanterelles. We didn't find any mushrooms, but came back with a basket full of rasp- and blueberries. They were everywhere!


We also surprised a wild boar family. There is no photo of that because I was busy peeing my pants. Wild boars can be quite dangerous when you surprise them, especially when they have litter.
In the end they were just pretty cute and funny and even more scared than we were...

Over 1kg of berries!

Back home I decided to make jam out of our berry harvest.
I've never really done it. Therefore I just got one of those packs of preserving sugar 1:1.
You just follow the instructions on the package and after 4-8 minutes you have jam. Easy as that.
I would recommend to look out for the 2:1 (2parts fruits : 1part sugar) or even 3:1 packs. It's less sweet then. The jam still turned out fantastic, but yeah, it could have used a little less sugar.


Also, next time I'd rather try the "ancient" method and make jam oldstyle, by making a syrup out of regular  sugar and water and then adding the berries. Aside from getting the exact temperature for the syrup, it's as easy as making jam with preserving sugar...

My raspberry-blueberry jam on cream-cheese and homemade sourdough-bread.

I thought I also share some more images of our foraging adventures...
On an earlier trip we also found a whole bunch of wild strawberries. They taste really funny. They pretty much taste like artifical berry-flavor in chewing gum or drinks. 



That same day we also picked camomile and corn flowers for tea...

cornflowers are probably my favorite flowers. They look so beautiful,
especially with those bright red poppies!


In other news: I have a new camera! Ah! You can't imagine how happy I am about this. I even got a smoking deal on ebay. The camera was sold used but is pretty much brand new.