Saturday Linkages: Corona Borealis

...d Be. Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice Musso & Frank Martini lesson Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures Meet the Coronavirus Profiteers Mike Davis: Reopening the Economy Will Send Us to Hell Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks Bianca about a very, very wide dress I Cut My Hair With a Vacuum Cleaner Introducing Coverage Critic: Time to Kill the $80 Mobile Phone Bill Forever This caused...

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Saturday Linkages: Juneteenth

...Oakland mural by Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong. A Juneteenth of Joy and Resistance Joe Lamp’l Rants about Mosquito Spraying Services, and 9 More Things Here’s All the Free Online Stuff You Get With Your L.A. Library Card How to Bribe a Los Angeles Lawmaker Making Jam from Frozen Fruit Ancient receipts I’m Not Wearing a Mask Arizona Public Media: Behind the Mask A Brief History of Listening In on Police Radios...

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A Low-Tech Experiment in Growing Oyster Mushrooms

...By January 18th the oyster mushrooms were “pinning,” that is, beginning to fruit out of the 1/4 inch holes. On January 27th, I harvested my first cluster of mushrooms. I can report that blue oyster mushrooms are delicious, with a concentrated umami/super-mushroomy flavor. One curious thing: the mushrooms I harvested look more like the Italian Oyster mushrooms that North Spore sells, so I wonder if a mix-up happened. I’ve written North Spore for a...

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Mushroom Mania

...t bunch of pearl oyster mushrooms and it looks like the reishi is about to fruit. In the class, McCoy showed us how to handle liquid mushroom cultures in a low-tech technique called PF Tek invented by Robert McPherson, aka Psylocybe Fanaticus. McCoy will speak at the next meeting of the Los Angeles Mycological Society on Monday, March 21st at 7:30 p.m. via a livestream you can access on YouTube. The oyster mushrooms we’ve grown this winter have be...

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Hoshigaki Season!

...eted. If you’ve never tried making hoshigaki, a kind of transcendent dried fruit product that’s very expensive to buy, I can report that it’s one of the more worthwhile DIY projects on this blog and we’ve got directions here. EaterLA has a post on different methods and the history of the practice. Our original post on the subject resulted in one of the more surreal episodes over the years running this blog: being invited to be on a Japanese realit...

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