Skip to main content

Enjoy Free Bounty

Do you enjoy free food when you find it?  When friends offer free food do you take it?  How about going out an looking, hunting or fishing for free food in the "wild"?  Well, we've always taken whatever has been given for us for food, but I have to say that this week's gift of found food has to top the list for us!  We were given fresh morel mushrooms!    What a gift and blessing, for sure!
Setting aside Mr. Right's want to just fry them in butter and eating them, I decided to look for a new recipe to spread out the enjoyment a little more.  My son let me know that he had some onion scapes read to harvest, too, so I was excited to find a recipe that called for chives, so I substituted the onion scapes instead, making another free bounty for our meal.
Here's what the scapes look like, garlic scapes taste even better than these, but they don't even have as strong of a taste as chives do.  Cutting the flower off the onion before it blooms encourages the plant to focus on the onion, so this actually helps the plant!
 The recipe that I adapted for this recipe can be found here at Cooks.com.  Instead of the asparagus in this recipe, I used large, fresh button mushrooms that were on sale (cheaper than the asparagus this week!).  To clean morels, soak them in lightly salted water for 2 hours.  Rinse and use as directed.

Morels & Buttons with Fettuccine

  • 1/2 lb. Button Mushrooms, washed and chopped
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 3/4 lb. morel mushrooms, stems trimmed, cleaned and cut in half lengthwise
  •  2 C. heavy cream (I used half and half, with heavy cream)
  • 2 tbsp. flour
  • 3 tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp. lemon zest
  • 1/2 lb. fettuccine pasta
  • 1/2 c. fresh chopped onion scapes or chives
  • 3 tbsp. fresh grated parmigiana or Romano cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste
In a large skillet over high heat, add butter and scapes or chives, heating until it just begins to brown. 

Meanwhile, start water boiling to cook the pasta.  Add pasta and cook to al dente.  Transfer to  a strainer and rinse with warm water.  Set aside until mushroom sauce is ready.

 Mix in flour and add morels and buttons.  Cook until tender, about 5 minutes. 

 Add cream, cooking until thickened, about 10 minutes.  Add lemon juice and zest.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Transfer pasta to the sauce in pan and let it warm up briefly if needed.

 Sprinkle with fresh parmigiana cheese to serve.
Mr. Right is not crazy about eating meatless meals, but he even commented that this tasted so good, he'd go without the mushrooms!  I know it's a basic sauce, but his opinion was that it tasted  like a stroganoff and was so good, he didn't miss the meat in it!  Trust me, that's a huge compliment!

Hope you enjoy!  I just wanted to share how we try to Enjoy the Free Bounty during morel season - thanks so much to our good friends!  Check out those blogs I love to link up to.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks so much for your comments! I love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

DIY Pig Feeder

  This is our second year of raising pigs for the fair.  We've had some bumps along the way, one of them was our homemade feeder of last year.  I tend to have ideas, and then Mr. Right gets the pleasure of trying to execute my ideas.  Most of the time it works out, but last year, our feeder was a fail.   This year, we need a feeder that can go a long period of time, since our pigs are not on our property where we live.  Our neighbor made a complaint about the smell of the pigs last year to our landlord, so the landlord told us no more pigs. (Keep in mind, there are only 2 pigs on 6 acres and they are only here for 5 months and then go to the 4-H fair and livestock auction) Thankfully, another neighbor graciously allowed us to pen up a corner of her horse pen, to put our pigs in.    This year, I wanted to be sure that Mr. Right did a quality version of the pig feeder that would make it through the entire five months, and hopefully...
Post a Comment
Read more

Local Harvest

I am so surprised at the amount of people who don't take advantage of local farmers and produce!  We heard about a place called "Tomato Toms" and just had to check it out. (Especially since it seems nearly impossible to grow tomatoes in our town.  I think it's something about the elevation)  We took a Sunday afternoon to drive to explore local produce and find Tomato Tom. This drive, I thought for sure that no one could be possibly growing anything on such dry land (see the background to the first picture, below).  Then we drove up a scary driveway and look what we found: Tomato Toms was a fantastic sizable garden of u-pick heaven!  We picked 60 pounds of tomatoes in 10 minutes.  Then took about twenty more minutes to figure out just what onions and peppers we needed to go with our tomatoes. The tomatoes weren't store perfect, as in no blemishes or anything, but they were beautiful and tasted wonderful off the vine!  I don't normally ...
12 comments
Read more

Burlap and Ticking

I found a queen size bed ruffle with  a ticking ruffle on it.  Immediately, I picked it up (for only $1!) at our local thrift store.  I knew that I would combine it with my find of burlap bags.  ( I picked up 200 of them for only $10!  Yes, that's right, they were only $.05 each! I overindulged in them, and could take no less than 200 because of the price.)  One of the problems with my new bags is that they are a little smaller than the printed ones that I have.  I personally like really long table runners because I have a really big table, but I decided to get over my own feelings and make this runner as long as I could (the ruffle really helped, too).  So here is the runner.  I think the ticking and the burlap really look great together.  I know how to make ruffles and have ticking, but for $1 I thought that this really was worth using from a different source! You could have it in the middle of a big table like above, or you co...
25 comments
Read more