Kitchen experiment update...

When I grabbed a handful of dough yesterday to make bread, most of it came out of the container I use for refrigerator storage, so I ended up making a loaf whose size reminded me of the one that didn't bake all the way through, so I let it rise for an extra 10 minutes and increased the baking time by 25% (to 38 minutes), and that apparently did the trick, as it baked all the way through. After the baked loaf cools down, I've taken to keeping it in a plastic box, which has done an exemplary job of keeping the bread soft.

A couple of days ago, I checked on the kombucha that I had started brewing using a home-grown scoby and off-the-shelf Lipton sweet tea, and got a nose full of something that smelled every bit like chemical solvent. Nail-polish remover, perhaps, with overtones of something more industrial.

This transformation surprised me, as I had decanted most of a gallon bottle of the tea into a clean, clear plastic bottle that had originally contained spring water and set it off to the side to brew with the scoby, but then I got to thinking that I've never brewed kombucha in any container other than glass, and that the plastic might easily have become involved in the complex chemical changes that occur during the brewing process.

Indeed, a "traditional" batch of kombucha (green tea with sugar and a scoby) I put up soon after starting my experiment with the commercially sold tea is brewing away quite nicely, giving off a nice, slightly vinegar-like aroma.

Cheers...

Tally ho!

I made the ham breakfast this morning and had a nice time. I brought Shiloh along (she waited in the van while I ate), and after breakfast, we took off for site Lima - still no mushrooms - and then off down a Forest Service road not far from Treasure Falls.

The road was rougher than I remember it, and there were a couple of places I could not avoid scraping the bottom of the car against rocks jutting up from the road bed, but we eventually got to the trail head, where we got out and looked around.

I heard running water, so we headed in that direction. Shiloh had fun splashing in the water while I scanned the trees along the river's edge. To my great surprise, I saw a clutch of mushrooms, growing out of a live conifer about 15 yards from the water's edge.



I'm still waiting to get a spore print, but a preliminary pass through a couple of my handbooks suggests (a) it's not edible, and (b) that it may be a member of the Pholiota family, despite the fact that the cap isn't slimy to the touch (it hasn't been very wet around here for several days).

In other places where, in years past, I have spied mushrooms growing, there was nothing. It's still too early.

Cheers...

P.S. Cross-posted, mostly, to the mycology community (where comments are more likely to be found).

Update: The spore print is brown, and the gills are free or adnex, which supports the Pholiota hypothesis