Graham Crackers with Ganoderma on the side?

Why would anyone make graham crackers when you can buy them, you ask.
Well, these crackers are as bad as eating out and out pie crust for all their pseudo health innuendos, and yet they could fool the casual observer. Making them is restorative in a way similar to re-inventing the bicycle.

Update on the reishi mycelium. Here is one, very much alive and negotiating with the other piece in the dish. They are dancing the self - non-self tango that mycelia like to do.

Circles, Not Spheres

Sometimes I think I am going to do a lot of things.

Thanks to Kelly, lolo and General Mills for your inspiration (links below).

Photographing and gazing at my petri dishes makes me want to make round things. I am making round things right now - whole wheat orange blueberry cupcakes. I'm including some round things I would like to make, but I am NOT GOING TO. You can make them. Do you like hamburgers? These are not hamburgers. Do you like food? Betty Crocker has something different for you. It is called what looks like plastic but isn't and it isn't food either. The knitting cupcakes are probably going to be hard hard hard - they include a how-to video.

Muffins:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
grated zest from one orange
1 cup fresh blueberries

Heat oven to 350º f. Grease the bottoms ONLY of your muffin cups. (One regular 12 cup tin, or a 6 cup "Texas" size tin). You will need to run a butter knife gently around each muffin when they are all done, but boy do they climb the walls if the walls aren't greasy slippery slopes.
Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Mix the wet ingredients and the orange zest in a medium bowl. Save the blueberries for the end. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir that up gently.
Then add the blueberries. Fold them in as lightly as you can but don't take too long about it. You don't want to lose all that fluffy carbon dioxide hiding in the batter. Evenly divide the batter among the muffin cups.
Bake them (don't open that door to peek! Until close to the end!) 30 - 35 minutes for the regular size and about 45 minutes for the Texas size. Turn them out onto a rack to cool. You will need the butter knife. They are kind of like heavy clouds made out of food, so handle with care!
 

They leapt off

I would have entered this post yesterday, if Jacqui would have let me.

Jacqui is behind the fuzzy counter at the auto insurance appraisal center.
What is it like in the office with Jacqui?

"I’m stupid about that!" she chirps, when I ask her if she thinks I can get on the internet using their password. “I brought my laptop in to use it when I was hired here and it didn’t work. So I don’t think you can get on.”

Twig mom has just left. She had a cracked bumper too. “I was at Bumper to Bumper (what does THAT mean?), and I looked down for a minute, and CRUNCH I hit the person in front of me. She was so nice. I could have had a mean one, but she got right out of her car and said ‘Are You Alright??’ That teaches me. “

“He said it would be 900 dollars. Can you believe it? For a little crack? “

“Oh, yes” coos Jacqui. “That’s what we’re here for.”

It’s my turn. Jacqui hands me paperwork and a check for 800 dollars. Jacqui has been talking with the man behind the scenes, the man who is actually making the calls on everything in this building.  He called her to the back ten minutes ago, to "look at something" and when she came out I heard her say “That’s really weird.” Now she is as chipper as ever.

“Jacqui, what do you think about the crack?” I am wondering if it occurred because it is a stress point,  or whether someone actually bumped it in a parking lot as my rep seems to have decided. He has never seen this car, cracked or otherwise.

“Well, you COULD get it fixed. Or not. A lot of people don’t.” Jacqui is obviously barreling down a different set of tracks than I am.

“No, I mean, what do you think about the way that crack looks? I couldn’t help overhearing…”

“Lots of people just use the money for something else. It would look better if you got it fixed... You can do all kinds of things, anything you want with the check, you know. That’s what we’re here for!”

She thinks for a moment. Then, cheerfully, “Just be sure to save the paperwork. Then, if it cracks there again, you don’t have to pay another deductible!”

The Ganoderma really plunged off their little fungal islands yesterday onto the agar medium. Dish B had a contaminant, so I transferred the uncontaminated bit to two new plates with potato and spirulina in its mini-world. Now it is fearful again and "thinking about it."

Dishes A and C are slightly ticked at me for not including more in the way of protein. They will just have to sweat it out for another day or two.

Waiting for Ganoderma

Yes I am waiting. Three little pieces of Ganoderma on a specially prepared medium, with some of its favorite food, I think. While I am waiting, I am processing orange marmalade and crab apple jelly, opening dried bean pods, knitting, baking a pizza.

I have 18 varieties of beans growing and or dying in the garden. I am harvesting all the dried beans. The variety with the most (beans) wins the whole bean plot next spring.
I want it to be Petaluma Gold Rush, but it won't be that, so I may have to have a second bean plot just for a runner-up.

What was in the cold air return.