Lemon a day

size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

The hunt for this year’s bumper crop of ceps has taken up rather more time than usual. On a normal year, you go out and come back with a few bits and bobs content to have had a good walk. This year a short walk can yield two hours of cleaning and slicing.

That and the start of the school term is my feeble excuse for not blogging much this week. I feel a sense of having got out of rhythm, of getting a little off centre. On the plus side the jars of beautiful dried ceps are quite cheering. Yesterday we feasted on Parasol mushrooms which have to be one of my favourites, their rich nutty taste just goes so well in a proper fry-up. I also raided the freezer for chicken carcases (the remains of several months of Sunday roasts) and made a chicken stock so that I can quickly make cream of chicken and wild mushroom soup. The chives have regrown fresh new leaves so the soup was filled with snipped chives to give the onion taste and slivers of celery to increase the colour and taste.

One evening returning to the car I spotted some pale toadstools under some trees, they were nothing to get excited about but once I was under the trees my eyes adjusted to the low light levels and I saw the biggest cep I have ever found in edible condition. It weighed 1lb 10oz and was a good eight inches across the cap. An unusually disappointing walk had turned to a legendary experience.

There are a lot of other fungi out there this year , we think we have found The Miller and have checked that the spore print is pink….but as there are near identical poisonous species around and divided opinion on how good it is to eat ,we gave it a miss. The recommendation is to spore print check every one you eat before cooking it…. good grief get a life, get a cep- it’s easier.

The flowers in todays painting are a gift handed on; one of my neighbours had a birthday shortly before going away so I was bequeathed her splendid flowers. There were carnations and lilies and roses in addition to what looked like some sort of gentian.

The sheer numbers of apples that have been uneaten and are past their best forced my hand and I decided to help the school lunch situation by making a tray of apple cake and, as I tend to avoid cake due to the egg in it, I also made a flapjack using pecan nuts and muscavado sugar. Both turned out well.

#125 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog

Eat me said the giant mushroom.