dcarch

I grown both the green and the purple in my garden They taste the same. Very decorative plant. Every year, they self-seed. dcarch

As I remember, sweet potato belongs to the Morning Glory family botanically. They taste pleasantly interesting. Mild and with a hint of fragrance. Always tender and not fiber-y. I grow them in my garden. A creeper and a climber. Massive supply of greens for stir fries. Can't eat them fast enough. dcarch

Speaking of spinach, the Chinese stores here in NYC has Malabar spinach. I also enjoy sweet potato greens ans snow pea shoots. These three vegetables are not that cheap. dcarch

Puff The Magic Calvatia Gigantea I was doing some work in the garden, found this giant puffball. It seemed to have magically appeared. It wasn't there a day ago. Made SV beef tenderloin on sauteed giant puffball steaks. dcarch

Sorry, steam is liquid water. Water vapor (moisture in air) is invisible. If you can see cloud (steam), it is water vapor already condensed into liquid water droplets. Haha! I am in a nitpicking mood. dcarch

That is a very small sink. Is that the only sink? Is this considered normal size sink in your area? Interesting picture. What kind of lens/camera? Doesn't look like a fish eye lens. dcarch

This is what I do. I also work from the stem end, but I dump the cabbage in boiling water first to soften the leaves first. This way they will not crack. Or, I use napa cabbage, much much easier. dcarch

Pawpaw can survive to zone 8. I am growing two in my garden. You need at least two for pollination. dcarch

Regular sandpaper will not work very well. Use silicone carbide paper, or lapidary silicone grits, or diamond grinding plate. Polishing stone requires a lot of material and work. Send it to a stone shop instead. dcarch

What are those? Look like the ones I have in my garden. dcarch

4 hours at 142F. It was very good. dcarch

SV Rainbow trout with vegetables from the garden. dcarch

We missed your cooking. dcarch

Simple. Weigh the options before and after cooking, do a percentage calculation. dcarch

A few years back I thought it would be nice to grow some shiitake mushrooms. I did this plug in logs thing. I followed instructions, maintained the logs regularly. A few years went by, nothing. Wasted all this time watering the logs. I basically gave up and pilled fire wood on top. This morning I took a few pieces of wood for my fire pit. I was shocked to find these on my inoculated logs. A few small ones and a couple of overgrown ones. What are these? they look like shiitakes and smell like shiitakes, and they are on the logs I inoculated with shiitake plugs. I came across this Cornell U article: https://blogs.cornell.edu/mushrooms/id/ Basically the picture they show is identical to the ones I found. Good news is that, according to that article, "---Shiitake will ONLY be found growing from hardwood logs that have been inoculated. There have been no occurrences of other species with a similar form emerging from an inoculated log, ---" And the one poisonous look alike does not look much like shiitake to me. I did a spore print, the print shows white, which is what a shiitake should show. Should I find a recipe to enjoy my surprise find? dcarch