#23 Mmm...mushrooms

#23 Mmm...mushrooms

I found a calendar online that tells you what important events are celebrated on every day of the year. Would you believe today is "Stuffed Mushroom Day", well it is. This works out great because I had just made stuffed mushrooms to use up some left over prosciutto (Italian ham) and I took a few pictures, yum.

There seems to be two type of people in this world, those who like mushrooms and those who don't. Within the group of people that like mushrooms there are two more groups. Those who wash their mushrooms and those who dust them off or blow on them gently to remove the dirt that clings to them. I have gotten into some rather heated discussions with the people who say, "oh no we must not get them wet, heaven forbid". They reason that mushrooms are like little sponges and if you wash them, they soak up to 100 times their weight in liquid, much like a ShamWow. Well I'm here to prove them wrong. This time, I weighed my mushrooms before cleaning. Then I held them under running water, right side up of course and I washed them. I got off all the black and brown bits and then weighed them again. Guess what, the needle on my kitchen scale moved such a tiny bit that it didn't even register. So there, you dusters and blowers, you know who you are!

Of course when you cook any mushrooms whether washed or not lots of juice comes out of them. I don't know where this comes from, they don't seem juicy but they are. So to my nonwashing friends, go ahead blow on your mushrooms and eat the "sterilized" horse and cow manure which they are grown in. Manure is manure in my book and MY mushrooms are nice and clean. So the cookbook for today is #23 Mmm...mushrooms by Victoria Lloyd-Davies. Victoria is a very smart lady, under preparation, she instructs us to rinse them under cold running water and dry them on absorbent towel, yes!