Buttered Lips

I’m coming to Utah! Excited to announce that I will be speaking at the Psychedelics in the Beehive event, January 19th 2024. Come see me speak about mushrooms, other psychedelics, and maybe even the bees! 🐝 I’ll also be answering some of your burning q’s, so be sure to keep your eyes here to submit a question. More info: https://psychedelicsinthebeehive.org/

Well, we're already into Autumn, but the farm and garden are still producing a lot of goodness! The past few weeks have been filled with apple pressing, dehydrating, making apple butter and hard cider; steaming grape juice; making powidl and cordial from the Italian plums; pears as sauce, canned slices and pear liqueur. Still have to harvest the sun chokes and potatoes. It's that crazy time of year when everything is ready at once 😳

I stopped focusing on the fruit bounty long enough to see that I had basil, tomatoes, chiles and herbs to use. So, tonight dinner was pasta with garden yummies. It's a riff on pasta primavera (spring pasta). But, I'm calling it Pasta di fine Estate (end of summer pasta).

I hope your harvest season is a happy one 🍁🌾🌻🍂

I'm heading back to Germany, with a side trip to Italy, in October. My friend and I always choose some cooking challenges for ourselves and one of them I want to tackle this time is homemade Flammkuchen. The direct translation is "flame cake". The best way to describe it is like a French-German 'pizza'. It was originally only made at home by bread bakers, to test the heat of their wood-fired ovens. The Flammkuchen / Tarte flambeé was put into the oven, after the coals were pushed to one side. If the oven was ready, the Flammkuchen would be done in two minutes, with the edges crispy and dark brown. The basic, traditional "Elsass" (Alsace) recipe is a very thin crust, with a topping of crème fraîche, speck (German bacon) and onions. There are variations, but the original is pretty damn perfect. SO, that's what I want to conquer this time around!

Mushrooms are made of hyphae. What are hyphae? Hyphae are filaments of mycelium. Mushrooms are made of mycelium. Please see this great article to become better educated.https://bioinspired.mech.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2022/05/43-Porter-D.-L.-Acta-Bio.-2022.pdf

I've neglected this cooking page for a while. As previously posted - two knee surgeries stopped me for a bit. Then - Covid hit. So, that pretty well shut down the cooking classes, both public and private.
Of course, I never stopped cooking, experimenting, tasting, traveling (the second that travel opened again!) and getting new culinary inspirations.

So, when I have an open public class, I will post it here. I'm available for private classes again, as well. In the meantime, I will be posting here, once or twice a month, about all things food and drink!

Thanks for being here-
Gayle

Manicotti - ricotta, parmigiano reggiano and spinach filling

Hello, my fellow kitchen-obsessed friends ♥ It's been ... a while. Two knee replacements later (and, NO, I'm not old enough for that - humph) PLUS the mess of a pandemic has put a damper on my cooking instruction.
I haven't posted here for far too long, which I really should have been doing while in recovery, but somehow, I didn't.
This year has been ... a LOT. For every single person on this planet. This wasn't what we all had in mind when we wanted world understanding, hey?
Cooking has and always has been my solace and therapy. I just haven't had the energy to do more than create and eat what I made. But, still, I took notes, took pics and had fun, which I can now share with you all, going forward.
To get things going, how about we all comment on what our favorite dishes or baked yummies we have made during this bizarre time? And, while we're at it, we may as well share some flubs and thumbs down kitchen experiments. It's all good here!
Disclaimer: I grew up with a very German great-grandmother, my Oma, and was raised with many peasant foods which used ALL of the animals and plants.