Here is my mushroom patch. It is in the rubbermaid bin to keep spores from dirtying the carpet. The mister bottle is to the right. The plastic beyond the mister bottle is a humidity tent, and the skewers in the patch help hold the tent up. You can see a new mushroom at the right of the far end of the patch.

Here is one shiitake mushroom that I clipped from the patch.

The kit came with a number of recipes, but so far I've just been sauteeing the mushrooms in a bit of oil or butter. It's delicious.

I have read that the stems get too tough for cooking, so I boil the stems for soup stock. I then freeze the stock for future use.

Here’s my shitake cooking recipe so far.

Ingredients

• fresh shiitake mushrooms
• oil or butter

Directions

• Wash the mushrooms
• Cut off their stalks, save for boiling in water to make soup stock
• Slice caps in half, then cut into sections
• Heat oil or butter in pan on medium-low
• Add mushrooms
• Sautee until done.  The color will change and they will cook down.
• Serve hot

Mmmmmmm…..

I asked where such a beautiful shimmering cake could come from, and then I heard about the Denver Cake Nazi (a la Seinfeld’s “soup nazi”). If you are interested in a one-of-a-kind, rare, special, cake like this one, you must know: He only selectively calls people back, you have to “know somebody”. He doesn’t take cake requests, he tells you what kind of cake you’ll get. You must pay cash. And finally, be ready to meet in a parking lot to receive the cake. (It’s probably best to keep this article hush-hush…)

Chocolate Espresso Torte (above), is a wedge of deliciously dense velvety chocolate with just a hint of espresso.

Classic Chocolate Cake (above) is moist and fluffy with a light and creamy frosting, not too sweet.

Here are some tips on freezing corn.

• The first step is to get some good ears. Get to know your vendor. Choose ears that have been kept cold. Avoid ones with “dry” cut ends. With fresh corn, the silk will still be moist. It should be brown, but not black. The husk should feel tight.

• DO NOT PEEL THE HUSK BACK! This is a big no no because it ruins the ear for anyone else. If you feel the need to peel it back — buy it. The husk keeps the kernels moist and fresh.

• Ask WHEN it was picked. (You want to hear “last night” or “early this morning.”) Keep it cold. Bring a cooler and take it directly to your fridge.

• Before I get to husking, I get organized. I like to husk outside, so I pile up all my ears next to a clean pan for husked ears. I use a wheel barrow to throw all the husk and silk in.

• When I peel back the husk, I think the most efficient way to do it is to split the silk at the top and grab at least 1/3 of it firmly, then peel it off. Repeat this until you have it all off. If you just pull on the green parts, it will take forever. Grabbing from the silk ensures you will get most of that off at the same time.

(Make sure you keep an eye on your dogs while all this is happening.)

• While I husk, I put my biggest stock pots on the stove to boil. This time, I broke the ears in half before dropping them into the water. This allowed me to get 3x as many ears in the pot.

• Blanch the ears for NO MORE THAN 3 minutes.

• Take them out and drop them into cold water to stop the cooking. I use one half of my sink. (Make sure it’s sparkly clean.)

• Beside the sink, I have another set-up: a cutting board with a towel on top. The towel does a pretty good job of keeping the “corn juice” from bouncing all over the place.

• Make sure you hone your knife. In the 40 ears I cut, I stopped to clean and hone my knife three times.

• Try not to eat too much of your cut corn. It is y u m m y !

• As I cut, I transfer corn into a large bowl. I don’t bag it until the very end because I feel it is more efficient (unless you have a little helper that is willing to bag while you cut.)

• Bag in small freezer bags (just enough for one dinner), freeze and enjoy!

So I decided to get crazy. (I’m on the 4th night of my husband being away, after all.)

I started with this. (looks pretty good, huh?)

I split it in half, dropped a little bit of oil on each side, and sprinkled salt and pepper. Then off to the grill it went.

Success! It was easy and yummy.

side note: Beside the eggplant is a ground turkey burger I pulled out of the freezer. I stole this recipe from Whole Foods. One day they were grilling these burgers in their parking lot. And they are so nice about listing the ingredients for everything. So I got out my pen. To the best of my memory, it’s:

• ground white meat turkey
• green curry paste (about 2 T. per pound)
• coconut milk (to keep it moist)
• cilantro
• green onion
• lime juice

I over-cooked the turkey burger, so I poured some left over pesto over it.

Last night I treated some new friends from LA to one of Denver’s finest restaurants, Sushi Den. We dined on spicy firecracker rolls and Bincho (seared tuna) accompanied by chilled sweet plum wine and ice cold Kirin. Our tuna appetizer was drenched with a light and tasty Ponzu-like sauce — yum! Nat & Rob suggested that I try the roe (slightly salty fish eggs) which was probably the only thing that I wasn’t a fan of. Good food, great company and fantastic weather. See you at Sushi Den.

positives:

• fresh, fresh, fresh. and yummy sushi.

• their space has a very nice clean design. lots of white. lots of natural light.

• they were very accommodating to our friend with special dietary needs. His special-request dishes were artfully laid out on his plate. It didn’t seem to be any trouble at all.

• good value. 8-12 bucks for a roll.

• edamame came with some type of spice mixture sprinkled around the edge of the plate. If i had to guess, I’d say it might have had cayenne in it. quite a tasty detail.

negatives:

• We were there for 2 hours! It seemed like an awfully long time to wait for our food. But, to be fair, I’m not sure how this compares to other sushi joints when you’re talking a party of 13.

• Our friend Mike pointed out that there were no fish tanks — something of a staple in sushi joint decor. But it didn’t bother me. Fish tanks are so 2007 anyway…

At the beginning of the spring, I did a little research into selecting a CSA with a friend who split the share with me. We started our research from Mixed Greens’ CSA list. (Mixed Greens lives in Boulder and has been getting a food share from a nearby farm Pachamama Farm, for a couple of years. It sounds like Pachamama has a superb set up.)

Our list of criteria:

• organic
• large enough share to feed 5 people
• Denver pick-up
• have a web site and/or be responsive via email (this was our main method of finding a farm)

Bonus criteria:

• fruit share available
• nice
• organized

We emailed about 6 or so different farms. Only two replied. One of the two that replied was Delaney Farm in the Denver area, Aurora to be specific. They mailed me a two page info sheet about the farm, the costs, our responsibilities, how it worked and the veggies folks could expect to receive in a typical year. (That was pretty much what sold me.) So we signed up for the full share designed to feed 4-5 people with fresh veggies every week, as well as a fruit share which would come every other week from a farm on the Colorado western slope.

Delaney Farm in early spring:

A sampling of early season vegetables we received:

• mixed baby lettuces
• garlic scapes
• spicy asian greens
• rainbow chard
• radishes

Mid-season vegetables:

• summer squash (zucchini, yellow squash, patty pans)
• tomatoes (all kinds: roma, red and yellow grape, a variety of heirloom)
• cucumbers (including lemon cucumbers which I am in love with!)
• potatoes
• onions
• carrots
• garlic
• spinach
• snap peas
• multi-colored string beans
• green bell peppers
• spicy peppers

Late season vegetables:

• all kinds of fall squashes (acorn, sunburst, pie pumpkins, spaghetti…)
• more potatoes
• more tomatoes

Successes:

• Receiving fresh local organic food is so cool. Seeing where the food was grown (so close to home!) was neat. I felt good about supporting a local farm.
• The fruit share was super! We received a case of fresh fruit every other week. A late freeze made the cherry harvest much smaller, so we didn’t receive any cherries. We were loaded up with incredible peaches, a variety apples and pears. The fruit share cases came with notes from the orchard — which I really appreciated learning about.
• We showed up and the food was ready. We didn’t have to pick it. We did select our individual veggies from the various bins.
• The farm was overall fairly organized and was very friendly. Always nice! This gets big plusses in my book.

Challenges:

• Driving across town during rush hour is rough. We were responsible to pick up the fresh food every week in Aurora between 4:30 and 6:30. Coming from Denver that was a hard task with rush hour. It also seemed counterproductive to drive an hour each week to pick up a bag of fresh food.
• Bad weather happens. The possibility of bad weather always exists. And the possibility became a reality. A large spring hail storm damaged the crops.
• Coordinating a group is hard. As there was more than one family splitting this share, we (my friends and I) had to coordinate who would pick up our share and also retrieve the food from the person who picked it up. This turned out to be way more difficult than expected.
• The farm seemed inexperienced. I was disappointed with a few things about the vegetables. All the summer squashes (zucchinis, yellow squash, patty pans) were gigantic and not very tasty in such a monster size.

I think it was an invaluable experience despite the challenges. The Delaney Farm CSA share seems an ideal set up for someone near the farm in Aurora.

I plan to buy into a CSA again next season. However, I won’t be joining the Delaney Farm because of the drive. And I will get a half share for my partner and me, instead of splitting a full share with others so we don’t have to coordinate with our busy friends. I would like to find a Colorado farm that has a delivery point near our home (which I seem to recall from my research last year there were a few).

If you’re not ready to join a CSA, I highly encourage you to visit a nearby farmer’s market regularly. You’ll have access to most (or more!) of the same tasty vegetables from Colorado farms and you’ll get to hand-select your favorites. You’ll be getting the freshest local food available and you’ll be supporting Colorado’s farm community.

Here is what I put in it: butter, EVOO, salt, italian parsely, walnuts, currents (because I didn’t have golden raisins,) mint, cherry tomatoes.

The rest of our lunch today included Pacific Natural Foods tomato soup (I added chili powder and pepper), grilled cheese mini sandwiches made with french bread, and cucumber sandwiches with Haystack Mountain goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. At the last minute, I realized I had some avocado to use. It was excellent in the soup as a garnish.