Hike!

[pmb]

I went for a pretty cool 8 mile hike yesterday. James (a fellow CS grad student) and I drove out there on logging roads, and, despite a few mistakes, ended up at a very poorly marked trailhead. We started hiking up, saw some cool views...

...and eventually arrived at the top ...

...after that, we headed down, eventually encountering some people picking mushrooms who told us how to find and identify chanterelle mushrooms. So we found a few

and then Tracy, James and I all figured out what to cook with them once we got back. It was a tart like thing, and quite tasty. More pictures at: http://soy.dyndns.org/gallery/MtJune

Comments

[cubetime.livejournal.com]

Nice blending of the multiphoto shots. Care to share any details about how you did it?

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Non-free software, I am afraid. Along with the camera came some software for OSX that was disigned to do exactly that, and had things like the spherical distortion of the lens coded in.

Free solutions to this problem, while immature and not for the faint of heart, are available as well if you but look. There's a GIMP plugin I couldn't get to work, and some software from a research project at MIT which forces you to take a few test pictures so that they can undo the distorion of your lens.

[ideath.livejournal.com]

Got a recipe for the tart-like thing? My friend Dave is gonna give me some chanterelles and they are totally unlike other mushrooms i've improvised with (and i feel more shame if the improvisation doesn't work out).

Tart-like thing recipe approximation.

[goteam.livejournal.com]

Make pie crust. Pre-bake it. Meanwhile, clean the mushrooms and cut them into maybe centimeter-square pieces? Also mince up some shallots, real fine-like. Sauté the shallots in butter (unless you wanna be all vegan about it, I guess) until they're soft and translucent. Add the mushrooms and a little salt and pepper. The recipe said add a tablespoon of cognac, but we used red wine vinegar and it was good, too. Add a handful of walnuts (3/4 cup?) and cook it all together till it's yum-tastic (five-seven minutes?) Put the sautéed stuff in the pie crust. Then we ate it. The original recipe is here, and calls for stuff like pre-baked tartlet shells (silly) and walnut butter, which might help bind together the pie filling some but we didn't have any and it was delicious anyways. Also they suggest any leftover mushroom-walnut mixture can be tossed with pasta, and I bet that'd be nummy too.

[s3nsational.livejournal.com]

Quite unrelated to this journal entry, I'm adding you as a friend. I'm a friend of Patri's and I saw your comments on vanity press---interesting stuff!

Nice to meet you. :)

[pmb.livejournal.com]

I think I might know you - I may have driven your car south with mauitian and radium after the big party at alpinebutterfly in June.

Is this correct? I was that juggling dude.

[s3nsational.livejournal.com]

I *was* at that party, but I flew in. So perhaps we met in another way. Nice to "see" you again. :)

[nuclear-eggset.livejournal.com]

Hiya! (You probably don't know my online name, but this is stereotype441's sister-in-law. Yeah, yeah, I'm funny about using my real name on the site...)

Those are some nice pics - but you are WAY braver than I am with the mushrooms. I can see working up the nerve to pick them, take them home, and even cook them, but I think I'd turn chicken at putting one in my mouth. :-) I'm glad they were tasty!

[pmb.livejournal.com]

We met a lady who described how to identify them to us, and she had a big basket of them and showed us the salient features. So it was pretty safe.

But yeah - I felt pretty brave.