First of the Season

I know that its late in the season for this to be my first edible , but distillation season has me getting up at 2:30 am which makes it hard to go out and hunt when I get off work.
Gorgeous! Huh? It weighed over a half a pound by my guess I find it funny that I found it not 50 yards from the distillery. On the other hand this season is not looking so well for Boletes. Other members have told me that there was a brief and small fruiting about a month ago, and so far that has been it. Makes me wish I hadn't used all my boletes in the sausages :( .




Well this little cluster is destined for a stuffing component for the family get together tomorrow along with some wild boar sausage we made the other night, and some wild rice( notice a theme?). I haven't decided whether or not to tell them I found it. I'm positive of what it is, but people can be odd about non store bought mushrooms.

Sausage party...No really!

A good time was had by all this weekend. It was a night of good wine and sausage making. The host needed to clear out his big freezer for a pig he was about to slaughter. It being the season he invited friends over and we made about 40 lbs of links and loose sausage from venison and wild boar meat. Quite a lot of fun!
I brought over some dried King Boletes which we added to one batch, and another gentleman brought spices he grew from which we made spicy Italian sausage. The photos are funny to me because for the most part they show what happened. The women sat around talked, drank wine played w/ the kids(no small feat the kids that is), and the men stayed in the kitchen and cooked. I can't wait to do it again.

In the begining

There is a story I heard when I was young that the Buddha ripped his eyelids off to stay awake, and threw them away. Where they landed tea bushes grew. Gruesome huh?..Well I'm sure we could spend a lot of time disputing the truth of this story, like that tea plants aren't really bushes they are trees that are pruned to grow short...but I digress. I encourage you to go out and try more tea! There is so much diversity in the types of tea and the terroir that shows through in them it is a very gratifying way to get stimulated. I'll Talk more about specific types later but from now consider looking at some of the tea links I have on the bottom of the blog. I've bought tea from both of theses stores and the quality is great. I've been very fortunate that every place I've moved to of recent has a great tea shop near by. If you have a chance stop by either they are more than happy to sit down and taste you through their fine products. These people are truly proud of the products they sell, and really want to help turn people on to all that tea has to offer which is a lot more than Lipton's and Earl Grey.

Malt Whisky Yearbook 2009

The 2009 edition of the Malt Whisky Yearbook will be published on October 1. Readers should also know that it is probably the most up-to-date and reliable source of information currently in print on Japanese whisky. The authors of the Japanese section last year were Hideo Yamaoka and Taylor Smisson, who are both fearsomely well informed.

Sausage!

I took this picture on my phone and I believe that this will be the first of many. I had the chance to see a local chef's meat curing room it was quite a treat. We walked down into a humid basement, and there it was. I can't convey how excited I was to see so much hand-made dry sausage curing. For you that may not know most dry cured sausage in the US involves a "Kill Step" where the sausage is cooked or irradiated or some other disgusting step that big meat processors told the FDA was necessarily when they were being consulted for writing the regulations on making commercial sausage. Its so sad that most Americans have never had anything other than this type of cured meat (unless they are old). I've even heard of some small producers in Europe that refuse to sell to the US because of this demand. Their reasons are that for hundreds of years they have made sausage and cured hams in the same way and no one dies from eating it, so why should they change. Alas our loss.