Blog Update! Mushroom Report! All this and more!

First, a quick update on the blog - I didn't manage to get anything posted over the weekend, so there's another quick post below this one, with possibly a third to come this afternoon if I remember what it was supposed to be about.

Ideally, I will get two posts written about coriander tomorrow and start week four off on Tuesday. That's what we call "aspirational." If that doesn't happen, I'm not sure what I'm going to do - I will probably throw in some short filler posts, either cumin-related or Batman-related, and then start coriander the Monday after.

I have to admit, the pace I set for myself is more than a bit ambitious. I really like having a solid posting schedule, and being able to have something go up every weekday. However, it seems more than likely that I'll find that I simply can't keep up with it, and I'm going to wind up taking a week off every three or four weeks. I don't particularly like that idea. The big problem I'm running into is this - when I have the weekend free, I can sit down and write most of the week's articles. But when I don't - like last weekend, when I went to visit my parents, then I fall behind very, very quickly. Luckily, having a baby means I don't have much of a life, but still...

So with that on the table, I'll repeat something I said a while ago - I'd love for people to contribute. Now, you wouldn't just have the enjoyment of participating - you'd also be helping me keep the schedule going! Either way, I'm going to try to keep juggling the best I can, and when I need to, I'll take a few days to catch up.

Or play Civilization IV. You know how it is.


Victoria and I tried something different with the mushrooms this week. Now, ideally, every week the mushrooms would use precisely the same recipe, because of SCIENCE. But the problem that I've mentioned before - that the mushrooms come out watery - is a vexing one, so I'm tinkering a bit. The first question that needed answering was where the water actually was coming from. I know that sounds odd - but I had a hard time figuring out if the water was pooling in the mushroom cap, or if it was being squeezed out of the mushroom itself when I bit down into it.

We decided the way to test that would be to put holes in the mushroom caps. Mushrooms are so spongy, though, that any holes would have to be fairly substantial in order to actually let water through - if you just stuck a knife into one (as we did) the hole will essentially close itself back up. So we tried a bunch of different methods on different mushrooms, to see which would be the most effective. In addition to the knife-slit, we did three other things:

1. Used a syringe to punch holes in the mushroom. These holes were also small enough that they pretty much just closed up.

2. Put one big drain-hole in the middle of the mushroom cap. This worked well - the water was unquestionably pooling in the cap, probably squeezed out of the mushroom itself as well as the fillings. The big hole let the water drain out, but it also ruined the structural integrity of the mushroom cap. Nobody wants to eat a floppy mushroom.

3. Put five smaller holes in the cap. Bigger than the syringe holes, smaller than the drain-hole one. To be honest, I have no idea what Victoria used to actually make these holes. This was the best of both worlds - enough space for the water to drain out, but the smaller holes didn't really interfere with my ability to pick up the mushroom and shove it into my mushroom-hole.

Mushroom mushroom mushroom. Mushroom. Okay, that word has lost its meaning.

So, those are preliminary results - we'll keep tinkering. Still got forty-nine trials left; I'm sure we'll get it.

As for the cumin - it was great. The mushroom experiment is a little bland - that's by design - but cumin had the power to make this a worthwhile dish on its own.

One thing I've really noticed is that some things really bring out the piquancy of cumin, while others do a great job of dampening it. (Piquancy is the sense of "hotness" you get from food - I'm going to use piquancy because using the word "spiciness" is pretty confusing in the context of a blog about spices.) I was told recently that lemon juice, for instance, does a great job of cutting the piquancy. Something in the mushrooms or the spinach kept a lid on the hotness; we used a fairly hefty amount of cumin but Victoria was still able to eat them comfortably.


There's still a lot to learn about cumin, to be honest - but I feel like I've made some good headway. Time for some sleep.