thoughtful consumption

Sunday’s supper was no fun at all.

I’d planned pasta with mushrooms and fresh herbs. (How to Cook Everything, p. 518 for those following at home.)

I chopped up some parcel, lovage, savory, and tarragon.

Then I chopped up some garlic and two tiny little green onions from our garden.

Then I chopped up the mushrooms.

However, when I started to cook the mushrooms, the kitchen began to smell distinctly like Pine-Sol. A few minutes later, it smelled like the zoo.

Not ZooAtlanta with its happier enviornments, but the old Atlanta Zoo with the indoor cages.

At that point, I took the pan outside and turned to Google.

It seems that when fresh mushrooms spoil they smell like ammonia and that lots of moisture speeds up the spoiling process. Lots of moisture, eh?

So I continued on with the recipe without the mushrooms. I sautéed the garlic and onion in olive oil, deglazed the pan with some beef stock (well, bouillon, actually), and added the herbs and pasta.

But the bouillon overwhelmed the herbs and the whole thing just tasted like Lipton Cup-A-Noodles.

At least it didn’t smell like elephant pee.

The squash tian next to the noodles wasn’t pretty, but I really liked it. Wish there’d been more.