[Courtesy Bizarre Bites]

As I mentioned in my post about going mushroom foraging, my friend and I found two edible mushrooms, pig’s ear and hedgehog mushrooms. Pig’s ear mushrooms are a breeding ground for maggots and supposedly don’t taste that great, so we didn’t eat them. But we did try the hedgehog mushrooms. And I was impressed.

So, again, mushroom foraging can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s best to do what I did and go with an expert who can help you identify the mushrooms.

However the hedgehog, which grows through the United States and parts of Europe, is a very distinctive mushroom. Its underside has “teeth” that are reminiscent of the coat of a hedgehog. You know, these little guys:

[Courtesy World's Most Amazing Things]

According to the book All That The Rain Promises and More, the hedgehog mushroom “is a blessing for the novice: it is plentiful in many regions, it is usually free of maggots, and it has no poisonous look-alikes.”

My friend and I cooked the hedgehogs in olive oil with a sprinkling of Kosher salt. As they cooked, the mushrooms turned brown and became slightly crunchy on the outside.

We had tasted the hedgehog mushrooms raw and thought they tasted like a button mushroom with a little bit of spiciness. In other words, not impressive. But cooking them brought out a surprising amount of flavor. They were nutty and crunchy and so good, my friend asked if I had added any herbs in the pan when cooking.

Nope, I said. These mushrooms taste that good on their own.

Needless to say, I am now a fan of hedgehog mushrooms.

I have two Meyer lemon bushes outside. With that many lemons coming in every year, I’ve become an expert in what you can do with them.

For instance, here are five things you can do with lemons:

Lemon Meringue Pie Bars. It’s lemon meringue pie in bar form.

Make Your Own Limoncello. It’s surprisingly easy to make this delightful digestivo–especially if you compare it to the price of limoncello in the store.

Perfect Lemonade. I am always surprised how few people have tasted lemonade made from scratch.

Lemon Bars. A classic. Great with coffee, too.

Lemon Pudding Cake. A soft, silky dessert that “mysteriously divides into a quivery layer of lemon custard on the bottom and a light a spongy cake on top,” according to the Joy of Cooking.

Need more lemon ideas? Check out 100 Things To Do With Lemons.

One of the things that helps my life be easier is to make food ahead of time and store it in serving sizes. Usually this means dividing soup or an entrée into freezer-safe containers and pulling them out as needed. It’s frugal and saves time. Call it homemade convenience food.

Here are three clever pre-made food ideas:

Pre-made Freezer Smoothies. The Tidy Nest divided berries and frozen yogurt into serving-sized plastic bags and stuck them in the freezer. All you have to do in the morning is grab one and dump it in the blender for a quick, nutritious breakfast.

Pre-made Manhattans For Burning Man. Brady Forrest made 80 Manhattans and vacuum-sealed them in individual bags that could later be opened and poured into a glass. He even added a dried cherry in each one. A great idea for camping. (Note: Boing Boing is down to protest the SOPA bill. It will be back up tomorrow.)

Salad In A Jar. If you want to bring a salad in your lunch, keep them from getting soggy by layering the ingredients in a jar. If you layer it just right, you can make the salads ahead of time and grab a jar on your way out the door in the morning.

Unconsumption points out a use for old chairs: turn them into swings. Looks like all it takes is taking the legs off the chairs, painting it, and attaching the rope.

Peppertowne had a similar idea. Different chair, equally whimsical results:

I’ve mentioned mushroom foraging once or twice on here. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile now. So on Sunday, I finally went.

Mushroom foraging simply means going out into the woods and picking mushrooms. In my local woods, you can find morel, chanterelle, porcini, button, and oyster mushrooms as well as many edible varieties you can’t normally buy.

However, since wild mushrooms can be poisonous, it’s important to go with someone who knows what they’re doing. I would not recommend mushroom foraging unless you have an expert with you. In my case, I went with my local mycology club.

The way it worked was, a friend and I went into the forest and picked mushrooms for an hour and a half. Since she and I had never been on a foray before, we picked every mushroom we saw under the theory that at the very least, we would learn what it was. Considering how dry it has been this winter–mushrooms usually flourish after rain–we gathered a pretty big haul.

Then we went back to the table and had the experts look at the mushrooms we had collected. It turned out that only two were edible, the Pig’s Ear and the Hedgehog Mushroom. Otherwise, we had collected mushrooms that, while not exactly poison, were not good for eating. Here are some pictures:

Russula amoenolens were all over the woods. This one is spicy. The mushroom expert had us hold it to our tongue (but not eat) and it burned about as hot as a habanero pepper.

This little Smurf house is called a waxcap. Not edible, but pretty.

I didn’t catch the name of this mushroom. I was hoping it was a chanterelle mushroom, but alas, it was not edible. If you know what it is, I would love to know it.

So while we didn’t come away with much to eat, I had fun and learned a lot about mushrooms. I see going mushroom foraging again in the near future. In fact, I even bought a book on the subject.

Mycological associations are a safe way to be introduced to the world of mushrooms. If you’re interested in going foraging, try looking up the club in your area. They may have regular mushroom forays you can tag along with.

ETA: Check out the follow-up post The Hedgehog Mushroom.

I never thought of making a Pomegranate Mojito before, but I bet it’s good. This recipe from Katherine Martinelli turns white rum, pomegranate juice, lime juice, and mint into an intriguing-sounding drink–especially right now, when pomegranates are in season.

Here’s the recipe:

Pomegranate Mojito
(Makes one drink)

Ingredients:

1-1 1/2 oz white rum
1 oz sugar or simple syrup
Juice of 1 lime
2 to 3 sprigs fresh mint
1 oz pomegranate juice
Pomegranate seeds
Club soda
Ice

Directions:

Select a big glass with room for plenty of ice. Put rum, lime juice, simple syrup and pomegranate juice in glass. Mix well. Taste, and add more sugar or lime juice if needed. Add some crushed lime peel if you like. Crush mint leaves from one sprig, add to drink and mix. Add a handful of pomegranate seeds. Add a one-second to second-and-a-half pour of club soda. Top glass with ice. Garnish with remaining mint leaves.

Read more about the pomegranate here.

[DIY Cocktails]

Here’s a good post from Design Sponge: Turn a painting into secret storage by attaching a box to the back:

I like that this project is easy to do and a great way to turn questionable art into something useful.

Plus I love any concept of secret storage.

This would work great in a library, don’t you think?

It’s time to plan this year’s garden. And right on schedule, the seed catalogues are appearing in the mail.

Have you ever noticed how the vast majority of these catalogues have the same plants in them? In every magazine, there are the same broccoli, tomatoes, beans, and carrots seeds you can get anywhere. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can get boring, especially when you start to realize the vast swath of edible plants out there just waiting to be tried out in our gardens.

Luckily, several seed companies do go out of the their way to provide access to a more interesting variety of plants. Here are three see I particularly like:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. This company, which goes out of its way to “promote and preserve our agricultural and culinary heritage”, provides vegetable seeds that you don’t normally see in the hardware store–purple carrots, white eggplants, peppermint tomatoes, striped beets, purple bell peppers… I’ve used their seeds several times and the plants have grown up great. Plus, they are “non-hybrid, non-GMO, non-treated, and non-patented seeds.” Order Baker Creek’s free–and rather beautiful–catalogue here.

One Green World. While this company doesn’t offer vegetables, it does offer a host of other fascinating-sounding trees, vines, and fruits. I mean, what exactly is a Tasmania Vine (pictured above)? What does a silverberry taste like? When I finally get around to planting honeyberries or tea bush, I will look here first. Request a catalogue here.

Bountiful Gardens. This is a great seed company that offers “untreated open-pollinated non-GMO seed of heirloom quality for vegetables, herbs, flowers, grains, green manures, compost and carbon crops.” What I particularly like about Bountiful Gardens is the variety of products. Not only do they have the usual vegetables, they have categories like “mushroom kits” or “unusual hot-weather heirlooms” or “grains, fibers and oil crops.” You can get the Bountiful Gardens catalogue here.

What is your favorite seed company? Why?

Hello. So as you can see, I’ve redesigned the site a bit. I wanted to make it cleaner and easier to use, plus add some new features and bigger pictures in the post in the process.

At the top, I have put all the categories for the site. These are the same categories that have always been there, but now you can click on them on the bar under the header:

The categories are Cleaning/Decorating, DIY (do-it-yourself projects), Food/Drink, Gardening, Kids, Money (focusing on frugality and saving money), News, Pretty/Cool (products I like), and Recycling.

I’ve also added a section on how you can more easily follow this blog. You can do this through the RSS feed, Twitter, or Facebook.

Side Note: lots of you have asked me for a mailing list so you can follow Savvy Housekeeping via e-mail. I’ve heard you on that and am planning to add that in the near future. Stay tuned.

Let’s see, what else? There are some other features to check out, including a “Top Posts” section and the new “About” page if this is your first time here.

Other than that, it will be business as usual. Hope you like the changes!

Oh, thanks to Liam Boylan for help with the header and to Mr. Savvy for help with the Wordpress stylesheet.

I love this idea from Rosebud’s Cottage: turn an old globe into a pendant light.

This would be so easy to make and such a cool use of an old globe. All it would take is cutting the globe in half (sometimes they just unscrew) and attaching it as a shade to a pendant light. Brilliant. [Unconsumption]