A delicious meal with cyttaria espinosae

Good morning friend, hope you slept well. In my case, I had those annoying family dreams, where we bicker with my siblings about stupid things.

The day has begin with rain, which is great for fungi and all the things I'm growing this year, not so good for my firewood which I left uncovered last night, because I could see the stars so I thought it wouldn't rain.

Today I went out to do some foraging and harvest some greens from the garden. I've shared these mushrooms before, they are called digueñes here and their scientific name is cyttaria espinosae. As for the greens it's a mixture of kales, chives, curly dock, and varied brassica leaves.

This was an early harvest. It's usually done when digueñes have grown more and are juicier, but for me this was great because the texture was so much better in the early stage.

It's recommended to soak the digueñes first in a mixture of water and vinegar as there are little worms that live inside. The truth is I didn't know this until last year, so all my life I've been eating worms without knowing 😅. Anyway, I've begun to practice this and when I see the worms coming out I discard that particular mushroom so I don't keep hurting the creature.

People actually used to eat worms from the same tree these shrooms grow from, maybe it's the same one. To me it's not disgusting or anything, but I always feel plant based is cleaner both in chemistry as in the spiritual sense.

I would normally stir fry these with garlic and salt, but since I was out of garlic I used chives from the garden, which works really well as replacement. Chives have become one of my favorite allium as they grow very well in this climate and are an abundant source of taste in early spring.

Later some of the garden greens were added to the pan and the rest saved to be eaten raw. I might live humbly but I do make sure to have an awesome nutrition 💪

Finally, I served this with lentils, a combination I had never tried. I lived it from the first moment because it had quite the meaty feel. Some people actually call digueñe "the ham of the woods".

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On the homesteading side, I'd forgotten to mention I've begun a countdown of 365 days until I leave this place for some long due travelling. I really want to see more of the world, not ready to settle down for life but I have to put a limit because there is always much to do here and it's easy to just keep going.

There are three main things I want to have finished before I leave: fence all the perimeter from the house to the garden (there's a big space in between so lots of work), add the remaining layers of cob to the house, and change the remaining plastics for windows. Hopefully I'll get all that done before the countdown is over, but if not, I'll leave anyway.

Spring still doesn't want to pick up in full force, it feels chilly again so had to go back to keeping the fire going. It had been really nice to light up the stove only to cook and then have time to do other stuff, but I guess I'll have to kick back and enjoy drinking hot cacao and herbs 💚.

Thanks for stopping by 🌱