Lazy Pumpkin Weekend

I really love Fall. We got our engagement photos taken a few weeks ago and were lucky to get them done on the perfect fall day. It was brilliantly sunny and the leaves were amazing shades of gold and red. We'd even planned for rain, and ended up not needing my adorable new umbrella.

Althea Wiley http://www.thezengun.com

With Kevin's new job, our schedules have been nearly opposite. I work weekdays and he works weeknights, so when I get home, he's working, and when I'm sleeping, he gets home. The good news is we have Fridays off together, as well as part of Saturday (he gets Saturdays off, and I work my second job on Thursday and Saturday nights, and all day Sunday.) A day and a half off together is not too bad. We're luckier than many couples.  

This Friday together we mostly just cleaned the house, something that really needed to happen after two weeks of us taking turns with a nasty head cold. After a few hours of vacuuming, dishes, laundry, dusting, etc., we decided to do NOTHING ELSE and lay on the couch and marathon through Fringe on Netflix. We stopped after a few hours and Kevin made a huge batch of pasta, then we ate that while we continued our TV marathon until we both fell asleep.

Normally, since I don't have many days off,  I like to use my days to get things accomplished, but more often than not I stress myself out by cramming everything into one day, then ultimately end up in a corner of the living room, anxiety ridden, because I have not finished even half of what I'd set out to do. But I'm trying to get better at that. Days like this past Friday are much needed sometimes.

Saturday we planned on carving pumpkins before I had to go to work. We'd picked up two fat pumpkins at a local fruit stand in east Olympia the week before, knowing we wouldn't have time to carve them until the following weekend. Saturday morning I got up and gutted my pumpkin and set aside the seeds, but Kevin accidentally slept in too late and I had to leave before we got to his. When I got home that night, I gutted his for him, too, and washed and set out all the seeds to dry. (I really like gutting those things.)

It took 3 days/nights before we got to carving. Sunday after work I roasted my pumpkin seeds, following Angela's (of Oh She Glows) recipe, then Monday and Tuesday just kind of slipped by due to after-work shopping for Halloween props and groceries and spending my evenings prepping a presentation for Friday. After scraping out the little bit of mold that had been growing inside my poor, neglected pumpkin, Kevin stayed up until 3am on Tuesday-going-on-Wednesday, carving these babies:

It only took 11 days (from purchase to carving) to get where we are now. Not bad, right?

  

Sick Days and Paper Ghosts

This weekend I was sick again with yet another cold. It's the second one I've had in a month and bad enough that I was couch-bound for the majority of Thursday. I had to practice being content with my lack of productivity, something I am often not good at being OK with.

Kevin's new job at the book store has so far been beneficial for our bookshelves. In fact, we've had to clear off two other bookcases we'd been using for other things to prepare for what is to come.

Today we started decorating for Halloween. I had enough energy to make some paper ghosts. The blue lights are because we don't have orange lights. And also blue lights give the room a black light effect at night, which is pretty spooky and kind of awesome.

Chanterelle Hunting

Over the weekend, Kevin and I were invited to go mushroom hunting for chanterelles in a fairly secretive location. Neither of us had ever gone mushroom hunting before, even though it's something I've been wanting to do for a while. 

We arrived prepared with pocket knives, buckets and bags, and bright orange clothing (since it just so happens to be deer season.) We hiked a little ways up a few logging roads before we were told by our friends to head into the woods to start hunting. Kevin and I started on one side of the road, and our friends on the other. At first, I didn't really know what I was looking for. I knew what a chanterelle looked like, but I kept questioning every mushroom I came across, then started getting really excited over how cool ALL the mushrooms were. Eventually, we found a few clusters of what were unmistakably chanterelles, and then started finding more and more. 

After spending the afternoon hiking off-trail and getting spiders in my hair, we came home with bags and buckets full of beautiful chanterelles. Currently, in Olympia, chanterelles are $10/lb at the co-op and $13/lb at the farmer's market, but we ended up collecting over six pounds for free. 

We got them home and laid them outside on cardboard for a few hours to let the spiders and bugs run for safety somewhere other than the corners of our kitchen. Then we bundled them up in a paper bag in and left them in the fridge until the next day when we would have time to clean and cook them. 

Processing them took a while. We spent a few hours brushing the dirt and leftover grime off each mushroom, inspecting it for mold, cutting off the woody stems, and listening to Les Claypool's "Of Fungi and Foe" for good measure.

This was Kevin's favorite chanterelle of the whole batch. 

Next step was to cook them. Raw chanterelles can apparently cause tummy trouble. They also don't rehydrate well, so dehydrating them wasn't an option. I googled several ways to properly process the mushrooms and we decided on sautéing them in Earth Balance. We cut eat mushroom up into smaller pieces and cooked them for 15 minutes in the frying pan until they were swimming in their own juices. 

After the pan was 50% water, 50% mushroom, we strained it and packed the cooked mushrooms into muffin tins, where we would freeze them.

Once frozen, we'd have perfect little serving sizes for soups and whatnot. I'm thinking chanterelle and wild rice burgers.

We used some to make a vegan version of this recipe. Kevin thought it would be better as a side dish, possibly with a steak or something (tempeh steak, amiright?!) Either way, it was great with a glass of merlot.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!