Mushroom Magic

In an attempt to become self-sufficient, I've recently attempted to grow my own veggies. To be fair, I'm not the most green-fingered person I know, and I can usually kill a cactus within 7 days or so, so I figured it would be best to start the drive for all that self-sustaining eco-hippiness malarky with a wee bit of mushroom growing. Nice and simple I thought.

Two weeks of fartin' about with logs, cardboard boxes, 'shocking' methods and clingfilm later, and the little funghi were ready to start growing in abundance.

The resulting crop has, unsurprisingly, been a whopping 2 mushrooms. Which, considering my lack of horticultural skills, is more than satisfactory to me. A resulting smug grin has spread across my face for the last couple of days, and I must confess to having a rather jaunty spring in my step to match an attitude of: "See, you chaps down at The Guardian aren't the only peeps to grow one's own veggies and feel good about it... us plebs can do it too, so nah nah nah". Plus, one of the mushrooms is (or rather, was) the size of a dinner plate - who knew funghi could be so impressive? And then, when I was relating to my friend about the size of the wee fellas, the resulting "Noooo waays" and "Nooo, reallys" made me feel like one of those people you see on documentaries that grow oversized prize-winning marrows and onions for agricultural shows... I had a true flush of pride at my skills.

So anyway, last night was the night of the BIG EAT... whereupon I was forced (for practical reasons -the 'shrooms had started to look less than thriving) to harvest the wee fellas and make something with them. The problem, of course, is that I am on a diet, which is never a good time to eat 'shrooms, as I am of the school of thought that the only genuinely fabulously best way to eat mushrooms ever is to smother them in creamy, cheesey sauce. I mean, after all that effort I does seem a little decadent to then throw them away, does it not? I did briefly feel a sense of queasiness, in part because it felt like eating one's cute pet fungus (if such a thing existed), but mainly because they are shittake mushrooms, and I never feel particularly comfortable eating anything with 'shit' in the title.

Nevertheless, they were delicious, and I found a low-fat creamy(ish) sauce on t'interweb, which I naturally added more creme fraiche to for added luxuriousness... Ahhh - who really cares if I never lose any weight, eh?