Shitake Mushrooms, Music, and Meditation

Cooking as a career takes an obvious toll on people. You have people from the front and back of house in your face all day everyday, while trying to attain and maintain a consistent and quality production of food. That being said, the balance a cook does or does not find comes from what you do in your off time.

While I tend not to delve into a lot of my personal life outside the kitchen, I think it has a place in this blog as much as any stories about cooking.

This last week in particular, I’ve been fortunate enough to have several exciting things come along.

The first was the purchase of a mushroom log home kit from Sno-Valley Mushrooms. I cannot express enough the satisfaction in cooking food you grew yourself. And during this season, when it may be 35* and snowing the first day of spring and 60* with a cloudless sky a week later, it’s the perfect time to cultivate something you can keep indoors. The directions Sno-Valley gives are clear and easy to follow, plus the biggest upkeep of the log is washing it once a day for the first two days. After that, it’s just spraying with a spray bottle. By 8 days after purchase (7 days after starting it) we had a log full of grown mushrooms. I weighed them out, and our first harvest netted us over 6 ounces. Consider that a pound of mushrooms is enough for at least 4 different dishes. I made some philly cheese steaks last night, and sauteed them up with a bit of butter and white wine. Their meaty but delicate flavor came through pretty well.

Home grown shitakes 😀

  A second bit of excitement was a rather bittersweet story involving my acoustic guitar. It had been a present from a now long since ex boyfriend for my birthday. While the guitar itself was lovely, and had a nice sound, I never felt like it inspired the music I wanted. Aforementioned ex had tried to give me some guitar lessons, but he was inconsistent at best and the whole process fell to the wayside. I finally came to terms with the fact that a new guitar would be more likely to inspire me than staring at a reminder of an unpleasant past and messy breakup. With Alexir and my long time friend Jon in tow, we braved Guitar Center. As always, they “just going to look” sentiment didn’t last long. I wandered along a few walls of new and used guitars, and was stopped in my tracks by an Epiphone Junior SG. It was cherry red, with an atypical matte finish (as opposed to the high gloss that most guitars boast), and a black pickguard. I was instantly transported back to my childhood. Weekends spent doing homework at a family friend’s kitchen table while dad had band practice. The smell of Dad’s antique case every time he opened it. Plucking a few weak notes out during my angsty teenage years. It looked like a guitar version of my Dad’s bass.

Dad, rocking his 1969 Gibson EBO

My new Epiphone Junior SG

 

Needless to say, I walked out of the store with that in hand. Gibson owns Epiphone, which produces a more or less “budget line” models of Gibson originals. She may not be a one of a kind or something a pro would play, but she feels right in my hands. The same week, I sold Ivy (the acoustic), and hope to move on to a more musical future.

The last bit of awesomeness awarded to me was on Sunday. My Dad was kind enough to sign me up for a meditation workshop at the studio where he earned his yoga teaching degree. The woman who taught the workshop, Kathy, was completely down to earth. I won’t get too into the specifics of it, because a lot of people get sketched out by the “woo woo” vibe of things like meditation or color therapy. Let me say this though, the focus was on “meditation snacks”. These very short meditations offered different types of focused, and were accessible in just a few minutes. No candles or incense necessary, just the willingness to quiet your mind.

And so, with mushrooms, music, and meditation snacks in hand, it’s time to brave Seattle Restaurant Week. I have several new dishes to adopt on my station, and it’s likely to be busier than normal the next two weeks. I feel ready.

One of the poems we were given to ponder during meditation