Its Porcini mushroom season again! ~ Mariella

It’s that time of year again, Autumn brings mushrooms! We waited for just the right sequence of events, knowing that there’s always a chance of coming home empty handed. It rained, we had a few hot days, full moon was a few days away; everything said, ‘Head for the forest armed with knives and baskets’. We did and we were in luck.

We found enough to cook, fry, bake, give to everyone in the family! What we couldn't eat in time, we sliced and strung up to dry in a space in the house with good ventilation.  

I think this is the prettiest Porcini I've ever found!

After baking, drying and giving away, we still had some left over so i made mushroom pate. 

-I peeled any sponge off which had already opened and turn from a fresh cream colour to a dull mustard yellow colour and cut the Porcini into slices.

-Fried in olive oil with garlic and added a little water and salt to taste.

-Blended with a hand held blender until smooth and voila, something new and delicious on Rice cakes (I know its a travesty but we don't eat bread!)

I then added the Pate to an Aubergine and tomato sauce. It was sumptuous and no body could guess what the secret ingredient was!

So there you have it. If you find these decedent and delicious mushrooms at your local deli, do not be afraid! They are as easy to prepare as Denny mushrooms and if all else fails, let them eat Pate!  

Lady Serendipity and Afrika Burn 2014 ~ Mariella

If you've ever felt that impulse to pack a small bag and head for the horizon with an open ticket in your hand and an adventurous spirit speeding you onward, you would have made contact with Lady Serendipity at some point.

That delay at the bus station, that road side vendor with the takeaways taking a little longer than usual, conversations at exactly this right moment, a perfectly sublime sequence of events leading your hand through timeous meeting after timeous meeting…

Trust plays the only part we, the traveler, have any control over in this process. The moment you release the outcome is the instant the outcome comes to you!

I’ve always begrudgingly accepted that Serendipity is the crippled  cannon fodder of routine life, always utterly surprised should I bump into an old friend in a new place, or have seemingly irrelevant things fall into place in effortless flowing ways leading to the ease of very relevant things! It seems that Serendipity is squelched by our pre-planned and overly organised lives but after Afrika Burn 2014, I am adamant to stand at the doorway of destiny and beckon this elusive shy aspect of life into       mine with bells and whistles! 

The theme for this year’s Afrika Burn was ‘The Trickster’, and for me, the Trickster showed itself by reminding me of the natural flow of life. I was witness to it in every direction, from long lost friends finding one another in a crowd of 10 000 people to camp members arriving, sans directions, at their destined camps in the dark amid sprawling suburbs of tent after tent! 

 On our last evening there, I had a brief conversation with a fellow burner concerning the galloping nature of this year of the horse, according to the Chinese calendar, and how perhaps the best advised course of action is to have faith, hold on tight, and go with it. The next piece of ‘litter’ I stopped to pick up off the ground on my way to the next burn was a small plastic toy horse, painted bright red! 

And so it went, people completing one another’s sentences in their absence, someone being there in time to direct someone else to where they need to be when they need to be there. I felt ‘held’! So this is me, reaching out my hand to Lady Serendipity, reaching, reaching into the dark and knowing, without seeing, that knowing she’s there is enough to draw her into the light!