Up at a reasonably early time... early enough to see the children anyway, and then spent the morning doing a York in Transition facebook page update, and then a message about all the forthcoming events. I had a few Scrabble moves, a couple of phone calls about Fiddlesticks bookings and WNBR stuff. General 'paperworky' stuff!
During the afternoon I did a bit of chainsawing but I'm finding my chain is not really able to cut properly, despite my sharpening the teeth on it with a special little file. So I phoned Shannons/Kutters, the bike and lawnmower shop, and they found my chainsaw model and said they would order a new chain, for £18 plus VAT. I said go ahead. I could buy this part over the internet, but I like the fact that this local shop will repair things, and I've had my shredder and chainsaw repaired here, so I'll continue using it.
I cooked tea... the Chicken of the Woods, cubed, with an onion and flour to make a white sauce, and a few flavourings, and this made a 'Chicken of the Woods Fricassee' which could be reheated later.
Then I did quite a bit of work in the back garden, moving the compost heap from where the bee hives are going to go. I also wanted to move the Sun Mar 400 'CompostFlow' and I pulled it... and the cylinder came out of it's supporting cradle, trapping my finger and damaging some skin. However, I extracted it and then emptied the cylinder by hand, putting the contents into a builders bag. I'll find another position for this tumbler, where it will remain horizontal.
Then I did a lot of weeding/plant removal from where the pond will be... one day. I pulled out brambles and ground elder. I also planted a few more yams and beans in the radiator beds.
The compost removal had made me really dirty, so I came in at 8pm and had a shower. Gill and the boys had eaten... the boys didn't like the mushroom dish so Gill made them an omlette, but Gill had eaten some of the thing I'd made, with potatoes, carrots and peas. She wasn't feeling that brilliant. I microwaved a plateful and had some potatoes too, but within an hour I was feeling sick. Gill was sick, and felt much better.
I looked on the internet for bad reactions to Chicken of the Woods... and yes, apparently the older specimens, and ones growing on certain types of tree, can occasionally cause a mild stomach upset and headaches, dizziness, etc. Although I've had Chicken of the Woods many times before, this was the first time I'd had a bad reaction... indeed it's the first time ever that I've had a bad reaction from any mushroom. Once I'd vomited, I felt a lot better.
So, an unusual end to a good day.
Showing posts with label Chicken of the Woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicken of the Woods. Show all posts
I got up at 9am to get myself ready for work, a gig starting at 11am in Haxby. So I set out with all my circus and balloon stuff at about 10.30, and got to the private house at 10.55, in costume, and just managed to get my bike and trailer down the passage at the side of the house to the marquee set up in the back garden.
The birthday girl had about 30 friends there, most of her age (she will be 7 tomorrow) and so this looked like the perfect party for me; a good-sized audience and the perfect age for what I do.
But there were also a good sized group of grown-ups, which I like too, as some of my humour is aimed over the heads of the children to the adults whom I like to sit on chairs behind the kids who are usually on a carpet or rug in front of my 'stage' area.
The show went well and absolutely as it should do. Afterwards several adults also said they enjoyed it, which is always nice. I got paid and got everything packed up and set off towards home. I called in on Robin on the way back as I wanted to talk to him about a possible job removing a dead tree but he hasn't got a decent chainsaw at the mo so that's off for a while.
Then, when nearly home, I spotted a big lump of Chicken of the Woods on a Cherry tree, so I with much glee used my penknife to slice that off and bring it back. This is my favourite edible mushroom and I'll do something special with it tomorrow.
I picked up one small sack of compostables at Freshways and about half a dozen loaves.
I needed to rest a bit when I came in, but then Gill started going on about buying some potatoes for tea so I cycled down to Country Fresh and got spuds, carrots, broccoli, bananas and eggs.
Then after a coffee I went down the garden to do a load of compost management. I started to move the compost heap from where the bee hives will be going, putting the contents into two empty daleks for it's final sit. I'm also going to reposition the Sun Mar 400 tumbler as it has moved away from being horizontal and I want it to be more level, as it should work better.
Gill cooked the potatoes and broccoli for tea and made a nutloaf with bread, baked beans and grated carrot. Very orange and delicious.
Lots of emailing and facebooking tonight, following the mega social weekend. I took the dressing off my ripped up knee to let the wound scab over: it is hideous. And still painful.
The birthday girl had about 30 friends there, most of her age (she will be 7 tomorrow) and so this looked like the perfect party for me; a good-sized audience and the perfect age for what I do.
But there were also a good sized group of grown-ups, which I like too, as some of my humour is aimed over the heads of the children to the adults whom I like to sit on chairs behind the kids who are usually on a carpet or rug in front of my 'stage' area.
The show went well and absolutely as it should do. Afterwards several adults also said they enjoyed it, which is always nice. I got paid and got everything packed up and set off towards home. I called in on Robin on the way back as I wanted to talk to him about a possible job removing a dead tree but he hasn't got a decent chainsaw at the mo so that's off for a while.
Then, when nearly home, I spotted a big lump of Chicken of the Woods on a Cherry tree, so I with much glee used my penknife to slice that off and bring it back. This is my favourite edible mushroom and I'll do something special with it tomorrow.
I picked up one small sack of compostables at Freshways and about half a dozen loaves.
I needed to rest a bit when I came in, but then Gill started going on about buying some potatoes for tea so I cycled down to Country Fresh and got spuds, carrots, broccoli, bananas and eggs.
Then after a coffee I went down the garden to do a load of compost management. I started to move the compost heap from where the bee hives will be going, putting the contents into two empty daleks for it's final sit. I'm also going to reposition the Sun Mar 400 tumbler as it has moved away from being horizontal and I want it to be more level, as it should work better.
Gill cooked the potatoes and broccoli for tea and made a nutloaf with bread, baked beans and grated carrot. Very orange and delicious.
Lots of emailing and facebooking tonight, following the mega social weekend. I took the dressing off my ripped up knee to let the wound scab over: it is hideous. And still painful.
An earlyish start as the builders came at 8.30am and started putting up the noisy scaffold tower. I got up and made them tea and coffee, and asked about the TV aerial which is attached to the chimney which is coming down. I was prepared to go and buy a new bracket/fixing, but realised that I'd need a new pole or pole extension... and might also need a cable extension, so I decided to ring round various areal people and see if a professional can do it.
After several phone calls, I found someone who can sort it tomorrow.
Then I had to get rid of a pile of compostables from the kitchen, and whilst I was doing this, collected a load of composting worms which conveniently put themselves in the bin lids... perfect fro harvesting and relocating into my new 'worm cafe' which is already filling up.
Then I cleaned myself up, had a wash and found a clean York Rotters tee shirt. I was due in town for midday for 5 hours of volunteering at the Parliament St and St Sampson's Square 'Big Green Market', where York Rotters and the Council's Waste Minimisation Team have a stall.
As I walked through the market stalls, I wondered why it was called a Big Green Market as the majority of the stalls were not what I'd call green.. Venison burgers and dead duck pate, trinkets from the other side of the world, lots of stuff to buy which had a huge embodied carbon footprint.
But then again, I'm a purist. I found the Rotters stall and locked up my bike nearby and got myself launched into the unsuspecting public, using the usual ruse 'Would you like to tell me about your compost heap?' when someone looks at our cut-out dalek with the perspex sheet in, behind which are examples of assorted compostables. These include a rubber glove and a cardboard box with coloured printing, plus some plastic fruit and veg, flowers, scrunched and shredded paper, some fabric, wool and other bits and bobs. This format is immensely successful... because punters expect you to try to offer them something ('do you want one of these?') but my question is the other way round. But it's a hook. They bite, mainly saying 'yes, my heap is '... and occasionally 'I haven't got one'. This then has a response 'What do you do with your banana skins and apple cores?' Those with compost bins are about half 'working well' and a quarter 'too dry' and a quarter 'too wet', each answer can elicit a question about what do they put in the bin. Anyway, I'm in my element during these kind of events, I really love them, my enthusiasm knowing no bounds.
After each meeting I logged the information about whether they were a 'non composter' or 'existing composter' and whether they were from York or out of York. It's important to record how many people we are engaging.
I went for a wander around for my lunch break at half past one, and got a pastie and a sandwich, and bought a 'turks turban' squash for a pound which will be delicious roasted in the next few days.
During the afternoon I met a young lady I met before on the train coming back from Sheffield Green Fair (she recognised me) and I chatted with her and her partner, who have moved to York... and I think I'll be meeting them again. Also floating around were Kate Lock, on the Oxfam stall, my old friend Mary Brandon, older friends Sue Lister and John Whitworth, Rakesh and quite a few others. Jo turned up, to be the next most enthusiastic Rotter, Candy came too. It was a good session.
I finished just before 5pm and went to the Oxfam shop on Goodramgate for coffee, and popped into Kyi-Po for a vegan mayonnaise but they didn't have the one I wanted. Then onto Sainsburys for a general groceries shop, including goats milk as the nearest Co-op is having problems with keeping enough stock, and have been running out of it. Somerfield never used to! I treated myself to a treat(!)... a few months ago my cafetiere glass got broken, and as I do now and again like 'real' ground coffee, I bought myself another one, for £9. But Gill had also asked me to try to get some sparklers for the boys. Sainsburys had run out. So I popped into the Co-op on the way home but they didn't have any. Quite by chance, Lynn was in there and overheard my request, and she said that she had some spare!
When I got home, Gill reported that some lads had come asking for some logs and she said to come back later when I was at home after the Rotters stall. So I bombed round to Lynns with a bag of dried fruit in swap for 20 sparklers, and cycled back just in time to catch the lads again (students?) who wanted a small bonfire in their back garden. I let them have two half sacks of kindling and about 15 or 20 split logs. They offered me £3.90 in loose change. Seemed reasonable!
Then as I was finishing that transaction, a lady cycled up and introduced herself as the person who had left a couple of messages on the answerphone as she has some apple logs she wants to get rid of and an apple trunk still standing which she wants cutting down. I agreed to go and do this for her next week.
By this time I needed to go in and warm up. I made my own tea... some finely chopped chicken of the woods which Simon found growing on a pile of woodchips near where he works, which he'd shared with me, with 'trombone' courgette/squash, green pepper and the last of our own tomatoes, with rems of nutloaf, with a baked bean and cheese sauce. Terrific! Delicious! The best meal since... well I don't know, but it was very very tasty. Cheers Simon. And I only had half of the mushroom he gave me!
Some nice chats with family before the boys went to bed and I settled down to some email deletion as my inbox is again full. Whoops.
An enjoyable day. Tiring, but I was still up til 2am doing assorted things round the kitchen and on the laptop...
After several phone calls, I found someone who can sort it tomorrow.
Then I had to get rid of a pile of compostables from the kitchen, and whilst I was doing this, collected a load of composting worms which conveniently put themselves in the bin lids... perfect fro harvesting and relocating into my new 'worm cafe' which is already filling up.
Then I cleaned myself up, had a wash and found a clean York Rotters tee shirt. I was due in town for midday for 5 hours of volunteering at the Parliament St and St Sampson's Square 'Big Green Market', where York Rotters and the Council's Waste Minimisation Team have a stall.
As I walked through the market stalls, I wondered why it was called a Big Green Market as the majority of the stalls were not what I'd call green.. Venison burgers and dead duck pate, trinkets from the other side of the world, lots of stuff to buy which had a huge embodied carbon footprint.
But then again, I'm a purist. I found the Rotters stall and locked up my bike nearby and got myself launched into the unsuspecting public, using the usual ruse 'Would you like to tell me about your compost heap?' when someone looks at our cut-out dalek with the perspex sheet in, behind which are examples of assorted compostables. These include a rubber glove and a cardboard box with coloured printing, plus some plastic fruit and veg, flowers, scrunched and shredded paper, some fabric, wool and other bits and bobs. This format is immensely successful... because punters expect you to try to offer them something ('do you want one of these?') but my question is the other way round. But it's a hook. They bite, mainly saying 'yes, my heap is '... and occasionally 'I haven't got one'. This then has a response 'What do you do with your banana skins and apple cores?' Those with compost bins are about half 'working well' and a quarter 'too dry' and a quarter 'too wet', each answer can elicit a question about what do they put in the bin. Anyway, I'm in my element during these kind of events, I really love them, my enthusiasm knowing no bounds.
After each meeting I logged the information about whether they were a 'non composter' or 'existing composter' and whether they were from York or out of York. It's important to record how many people we are engaging.
I went for a wander around for my lunch break at half past one, and got a pastie and a sandwich, and bought a 'turks turban' squash for a pound which will be delicious roasted in the next few days.
During the afternoon I met a young lady I met before on the train coming back from Sheffield Green Fair (she recognised me) and I chatted with her and her partner, who have moved to York... and I think I'll be meeting them again. Also floating around were Kate Lock, on the Oxfam stall, my old friend Mary Brandon, older friends Sue Lister and John Whitworth, Rakesh and quite a few others. Jo turned up, to be the next most enthusiastic Rotter, Candy came too. It was a good session.
I finished just before 5pm and went to the Oxfam shop on Goodramgate for coffee, and popped into Kyi-Po for a vegan mayonnaise but they didn't have the one I wanted. Then onto Sainsburys for a general groceries shop, including goats milk as the nearest Co-op is having problems with keeping enough stock, and have been running out of it. Somerfield never used to! I treated myself to a treat(!)... a few months ago my cafetiere glass got broken, and as I do now and again like 'real' ground coffee, I bought myself another one, for £9. But Gill had also asked me to try to get some sparklers for the boys. Sainsburys had run out. So I popped into the Co-op on the way home but they didn't have any. Quite by chance, Lynn was in there and overheard my request, and she said that she had some spare!
When I got home, Gill reported that some lads had come asking for some logs and she said to come back later when I was at home after the Rotters stall. So I bombed round to Lynns with a bag of dried fruit in swap for 20 sparklers, and cycled back just in time to catch the lads again (students?) who wanted a small bonfire in their back garden. I let them have two half sacks of kindling and about 15 or 20 split logs. They offered me £3.90 in loose change. Seemed reasonable!
Then as I was finishing that transaction, a lady cycled up and introduced herself as the person who had left a couple of messages on the answerphone as she has some apple logs she wants to get rid of and an apple trunk still standing which she wants cutting down. I agreed to go and do this for her next week.
By this time I needed to go in and warm up. I made my own tea... some finely chopped chicken of the woods which Simon found growing on a pile of woodchips near where he works, which he'd shared with me, with 'trombone' courgette/squash, green pepper and the last of our own tomatoes, with rems of nutloaf, with a baked bean and cheese sauce. Terrific! Delicious! The best meal since... well I don't know, but it was very very tasty. Cheers Simon. And I only had half of the mushroom he gave me!
Some nice chats with family before the boys went to bed and I settled down to some email deletion as my inbox is again full. Whoops.
An enjoyable day. Tiring, but I was still up til 2am doing assorted things round the kitchen and on the laptop...
A fairly relaxed day... spent most of the morning writing my last Community Care blog, and doing other computery stuff. I went to buy bread, visited several ripe skips, had lunch and spent some time in the garden. Raj rang and I went down to Freshways. I planted more squash plants, some in the remaining spaces in the raised beds and others in containers.
Gill went to pick up our youngest and I cooked tea. I harvested the Chicken of the Woods mushroom, cleaned it up (it incorporates bits of wood etc into it's surface) and cubed it quite small. Fried onion, rescued peppers and cubed a squash which again, was a freegan find. Added the cubed Chicken of the Woods. Then chopped up 3 tomatoes and put them into the frying veg, and added some of the new season basil out of the conservatory. Finally, added a tin of cannelini beans to this. Gill then fried some already cooked potatoes in extra virgin olive oil, and we all had this, with the last of yesterday's asparagus quiche. The mushroom/pepper/bean thing was the best meal I'd had for ages, and I always like Gill's quiche. Lovely meal, everybody loved it!
I made a phone call at 7 to my Sister who knows more about Runescape and billing than I do; we did make a payment for our son to be a paid-up member of this a month or two ago, but the other day this level of access stopped, so I turned to Anna for advice. With her help, I resubscribed to a small monthly payment.
At 8 zoomed round to Lynn's to help her celebrate her 45th Birthday. Glad to see so many friendly old faces, Will, Phil, Helen, Stephen and Alison, and new friends Tony and Sharon.
I got home soon after 10.30 and settled down to try to empty my perennially over-full inbox, write this, and get some water warmed up to do the washing up...
Gill went to pick up our youngest and I cooked tea. I harvested the Chicken of the Woods mushroom, cleaned it up (it incorporates bits of wood etc into it's surface) and cubed it quite small. Fried onion, rescued peppers and cubed a squash which again, was a freegan find. Added the cubed Chicken of the Woods. Then chopped up 3 tomatoes and put them into the frying veg, and added some of the new season basil out of the conservatory. Finally, added a tin of cannelini beans to this. Gill then fried some already cooked potatoes in extra virgin olive oil, and we all had this, with the last of yesterday's asparagus quiche. The mushroom/pepper/bean thing was the best meal I'd had for ages, and I always like Gill's quiche. Lovely meal, everybody loved it!
I made a phone call at 7 to my Sister who knows more about Runescape and billing than I do; we did make a payment for our son to be a paid-up member of this a month or two ago, but the other day this level of access stopped, so I turned to Anna for advice. With her help, I resubscribed to a small monthly payment.
At 8 zoomed round to Lynn's to help her celebrate her 45th Birthday. Glad to see so many friendly old faces, Will, Phil, Helen, Stephen and Alison, and new friends Tony and Sharon.
I got home soon after 10.30 and settled down to try to empty my perennially over-full inbox, write this, and get some water warmed up to do the washing up...
