I am not a mushroom expert. There are only a few species that I know and like well enough to harvest and consume. Morels are at the top of the list. Like a lot of edibles, they have a season and now is it. I have been thinking about taking a walk in some of the habitat I know they like to see if I could find enough for a meal but I’ve been pretty busy and my foaraging partner is out of town. Well, last night Bruce came up from the bee enclose with one in his hand and asked if it was a morel They are very disticntive, looking like deformed brains on a stick (bet that discription makes you want to run right out a get a few for dinner). I scooted down to bee enclure to find a FABULOUS patch, right in my own backyard. There are plenty for dinner for 5. I plan to make a butter/wine/cream sauce for them and serve them over some fresh pasta. Add aspargus and it’s a meal fit for royalty.
The morels would have been plenty for one day but I had one other nice surprise. It’s dandelion season and, as my foraging partner is also my winemaking partner, I wanted to find something else to do with them. I have had the blossoms as a fritter but I leave fritter making to an expert. I decided to come up with a jelly recipe. A little searching uncovered several. I did some mixing and matching and the result is the best jelly I ever had. It’s a beautiful, clear, true yellow. I had a bit on a spoon with some peanut butter and it elevates the most simple of foods to the sublime. I want to try some with chocolate cake. I can also imagine it with some pepper flakes and cream cheese. The best use might just be slathered with melted butter on a scone.
There was nothing to it. The hardes part was pulling off enough petals to fill a one quart measure. Maggie and I did that together and the conversation made for a pleasant 1/2 hour. I then boiled the petals in 2 quarts of water for about 10 minutes. I strained the mixture twice through a layer of cheese clost and let it cool for a bit before adding the juice of a lemon. I added a box of pectin (way out of date I might add but it worked just fine), brought three cups of dandelion broth to a boil, added 5 cups of sugar and boiled that for another minute and a half, skimmed it, ladled it into 1/2 pint jars and water bathed it for 10 minutes. I may not have needed to do the water bath but I will be selling some of this and I need to be sure the seals will hold. I had 2 cups of dandelion broth left over so I added a cup of orange juice to make three cups and made a second batch of jelly. Next time I might add some dried pepper to the jelly to make a pepper jelly to serve with cheese.
My fruit trees are in blossom. It’s early and I’m just hoping that we don’t get hit by a late frost. It looks like we might get an actual fruit harvest if the weather holds but it’s New England and a late frost is always a possiblity.
May 13, 2011 at 8:59 am
Thanks very much for the dandelion recipe! We have a bumper crop of dandelions and I think I will try this.
May 13, 2011 at 9:06 am
How exciting. We went mushroom hunting twice last week and came away with 6 lbs of morels…and oh did we feast! There was even enough leftover to dehydrate too…but what can you do with dehydrated morels?
May 13, 2011 at 9:53 am
Did I mention that you only use the yellow part of the dandelion? That takes some time. 6 lbs is a treasure!!!! I’m thinking you can just rehydrate them in hot water. I have seen them in the supermarket for some crazy price like $11.00 for a tiny little package.
May 13, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Cream cheese and pepper flakes?! Why didn’t I think of that? I made corn cob jelly last summer which is nice but mild. It went well with quick breads but didn’t have the ‘umph!’ to stand up to peanut butter on wheat. I think i’ll be serving it up with crackers on our next plate of noshes.
I think I have a patch of chicken of the woods mushrooms near my compost heap but I don’t know anyone who can ID them safely so I’m leaving them alone. One more thing I need to learn…..
May 13, 2011 at 1:35 pm
I made dandelion bread this year- I made white bread, replacing some of the water with an egg. added a good dollop of honey instead of sugar (probably 2 tbsp instead of 1 tbsp of sugar) and a cup full of dandelion petals. It was so delicious fresh we ate it without butter. The next day we had it toasted with butter
May 13, 2011 at 3:46 pm
A friend of mine makes what she calls Dandelion Honey…sort of a loose jelly and uses it as a treatment for allergies, sort of holistic. I’m glad to hear about this jelly though, I have a ton of the buggers in my yard right now.
Nice find on the mushrooms!
May 13, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Dandelion jelly! Fun!
May 13, 2011 at 4:06 pm
please pray for us during the flooding in Mississippi.
Thanks
Tommy
May 13, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Oh Tommy! We will! I’m so sorry for your troubles. Having your home and community in danger much be terrifying. (((( ))))) from your cyber community
May 14, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Kathy, you’ve inspired me to seek a book at the library on identifying edible mushrooms in our area. My plot in the community garden is overrun with cute little fungi, but I’m wary of plucking and sauteing them without more knowledge.
Tommy, are you in the path of the spillway to be opened? Blessings to you! Donna
May 15, 2011 at 12:41 pm
An off-topic question … I’ve been pouring through the Ball books that I have and put my google fu to the test (admittedly my google fu is sub-par at best) but I can’t seem to find anything. Is it possible to safely can (either hot water or pressure) hot fudge sauce at home? I make a fair amount of ice cream on a regular basis and would love to be able to can some of my own sauces (starting with hot fudge) to keep in the pantry!
May 15, 2011 at 9:23 pm
Picked strawberries from the garden! Wonderful! Husband is in heaven.
Took a canning class on Saturday and got “So Easy to Preserve” from Coop Ext The Univ of Georgia (but nothing on Hot Fudge Sauce, Erin. Sorry) To tell you how well I did, my jar floated to the top and all the juice leaked out. Guess the jar lid wasn’t screwed on tight enough. She had said to finger tip tight. Guess I should’ve went a wee bit harder. Live and learn.)
Kathy’s previous post about everyone stopping by and learing and trading with friends and family around. This is probably my weakest area – community. The canning class was great because I was around people of like mind, but people came from different states just for the class. I need to find a way of meeting like-minded people closer.
Thoughts and prayers for Tommy! We’re getting some rain here, but today we saw a rainbow so I like to think there’s hope.
May 18, 2011 at 9:57 am
@ Erin, I found a chocolate sauce for ice cream here, you might like to try this one. http://lasaan.tripod.com/canningrecipes/chocolate_ice_cream_sauce.htm.
Not hot fudge, but maybe OK for you.
May 18, 2011 at 10:26 am
Unfortunately, I found this:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/nchfp/factsheets/choc_sauce.html
I never really thought water bath would be appropriate for a hot fudge or chocolate sauce, but I’m still not quite believing that pressure canning is dangerous. Of course, I’m not exactly willing to try it out on my own kids either.
Plus they cite a document from 1994, seems a bit old. I found a lot of recipes for sauces and the documentation says canning butter or milk products, even with pressure, isn’t safe. Blah. There are good freezer recipes and I know making the sauce keeps a long while (certainly longer than it’d take us to use it!) in the fridge — but I was hoping for a long term solution because I think hot fudge in a jar is one of those comfort factors in a long-term emergency. Oh well.
Since I’m asking off topic questions … anyone know the answer for canning chicken in gravy? I’ve seen canning chicken in water or broth recipes in my Ball books but not in gravy or even for just gravy alone. Being a long term cancer patient, I need to keep more foods around that are easy for other members of my family to make and I thought if I canned chicken in gravy it would be easy enough for my husband or oldest son to throw together some chicken & biscuits when I can’t cook.
May 18, 2011 at 12:26 pm
It isn’t a good idea to can anything in a gravy. The sauce is too thick to insure a safe product. Milk and flour products don’t take kindly the treatment from a quality standpoint either. I can in broth. When I want a quick meal, I mix up a roux of cornstarch and milk and us that to thicken the gravy. A bit of poultry seasoning and you have a meal.