An Invite

Got any invites lately?  Anyone invite you to dinner, a dance, a wedding?  I did get invited to a nice dinner at a fine home with an interesting host and hostess.  The food was organic.  There were exotic mushroom in the mixed vegetables and small black things that looked like little tiny pieces of cooked mushroom, but the hostess said it is fungus.
Mushrooms are flowering fungus (as are molds!), but this black product is just fungus.  Fungus are in the kingdom Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, bacteria.  Yeast, used in making wine, beer, and soy sauce, is fungi also.  Fungi have been used in the production of antibiotics and biological pesticides. Many species can be toxic to humans and other animals.  Kingdom Fungi contains approximately 1.5 million species.  Less than one-tenth of these have been formally classified.

Hostess gets the dried fungus and crumbles little pieces into the food.  I'm not sure if it needs to be re-hydrated first, or it re-hydrates itself while cooking.  The pieces were so little that I could not distinguish a specific taste.  The red (actually orange) lentils had a nice texture and a subtle hint of balsamic vinegar.  The quinoa was cooked to perfection.  Quinoa is all about texture, too.  After this meal and after-dinner conversation I slept better than I'd slept in a long time -- seven hours, maybe more.  I felt refreshed in the morning and went for a hike in the desert hills.  It was a wonderful day.

Now I'm sending you an invite.  You are invited to send your comments.  I am told I have the power to post your comments on my blog. I know that this month there have been readers from Germany, Denmark, and the USA.  Got comments?  What do you like about this blog?  What do you dislike?  How's the weather out there in Denmark?  Do you sleep well in those long summer days?  Do you folks in Germany have any cacti?  Any City Slickers in the USA out there?  NuYawkas?  Cali surfers?  [That Cali is short for California, not to be confused with Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction.]  Bible belters, corn belters, hip folk from Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan?  Anyone up there in Maine?  Anyone down there in Texas, Florida, New Mexico?  Let me know you're out there.

Shoutin' out to all of you, and you're invited to shout on back.
Waitin' for your comments,
Southwest Desert Blogger
C. (c)2011