There's a fungus amongus...

Well, there is, and strange as that may sound - we like it a lot. As many of you who are regular readers know in addition to paddling and boat-building, one of my 'things' is food.

Just before Christmas, some family members dropped by with a few gifts that they told us we needed to open - now. One of the bags was contained dried mushrooms. Ok. I took one out and as I did, the aroma of garlic seemed to just come curling out of the bag. They were crispy and, well, yummy. They were dried mushroom 'chips' called Snack N Shrooms (tm) from a place called The Mushroom Cap in Kennett Square, PA. Tasty, crispy, low fat - what more could you want?

With Christmas rolling around, I'd purchased a butt tenderloin of beef for Christmas lunch and some lean bacon (is that an oxymoron?) to wrap the beef with. I thought is sounded a bit plain, so I had the inspiration to stick a knife through the center of the tenderloin and stuff it with the garlic Snack N Shrooms. I then cooked the beef the way I normally would and the mushrooms rehydrated as the beef cooked. It was very nice and infused the beef around the mushrooms with the garlic flavor.

After Christmas, we went to visit the family members I referred to earlier. We stopped in at the Mushroom Cap one morning we were there to discover that they offered several different versions of the Snack N Shrooms - the garlic, original, low salt and spicy. The original and low salt have some garlic, sugar, basil and a few other spices added to the dried mushrooms - the spicy adds some pepper flakes to the mix. All very, very good. We also discovered that they offer powdered seasoning made from the Snack N Shrooms that we've started to call "magic dust" and have now tried it on pasta and grilled pork with good results. I'm looking forward to trying it in a soup recipe that I like to make.

They're well worth a look for snacking on or cooking with!