Mmmmmmm Mushrooms!

On Saturday, Monsieur Titi and I went out to hunt champignons (mushrooms). This is a year for cêpes and we found a ton, even though there were other people in the forest hunting too. We found more than we could carry. So on Sunday, Monsieur Titi went back out for a little while and found even more cêpes.

Working hard cleaning the cêpes.

A small amount of the bounty.

Cêpes or Boletus Edulis, are wonderful, tasty mushrooms especially found in south-west French cooking. They are easy to clean, just cut off any dirt or rotten spots, then brush them clean. If you find that the mousse underneath the caps is too thick, you can cut this off.  Don't ever wash fresh mushrooms as they'll give alot of liquid when cooked. Once cleaned, these darlings can be sautéed up with garlic or frozen as they are in a plastic freezer bag.

Up close with triplets.

This weekend, I also made a delicious apple cake with some windfall apples.

Amazing apple cake

Here's the recipe:
Amazing Apple Cake

 250 grams brown sugar
250 grams flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
125 grams of melted butter
1-1/2 tsp. vanilla
125 grams of walnuts -- chopped
650-700 grams chopped apples

Preheat the oven to 165°C or 325° F.
Prepare a 8x11" baking pan, grease and flour.
Cream together the sugar and the eggs, then add in melted butter and vanilla.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon. Add this to the egg/sugar mixture. Mix well then add the apples and walnuts. This will be hard to mix in and you might think that there's not enough batter. But once you get the apples well covered, you'll see that they give off enough juice to make the cake. Spread into the prepared pan and cook 45-50 minutes. Eat warm or cold.

Notre resident praying mantis

We've had a praying mantis around the patio the last week. This is called une Mante Religieuse in French or a religious mantis. I'm not sure what she was doing hanging around, but with the rain and the colder temperautres, she's disappeared. I'd never seen one so close before.