Oh, Shiitake.

Shiitake Mushrooms

I've never been a Summer person. I can tolerate Spring, because growing up it could still snow while entering it, and softball season was in effect. I was never a great player, but I still enjoyed it. Now that I've been living in Portland, the sunnier weather is way more tolerable, thanks to the heck of a lot less humidity than New York, and my sanity, the farmers' markets with their amazing, Oregon and Washington grown produce. Click here for a US farmer's market guide.

Seriously, I never knew vegetables could be so beautiful, and taste it, too, until I moved here. It really motivated me to cook more!

People's Coop actually has a year-round market that I go to every couple weeks, but naturally the produce there picks up with the warmer weather as well. The People's market is on Wednesday afternoons, and so is the downtown market within a block of my office - making for one happy day if I go to one, if not both! It has happened. If you're visiting Portland in the spring, you simply must stop by the downtown Saturday market at PSU. Must, must, must.

This past week I stopped by the People's market on a coop run, and to my delight found large, local, organic shiitake mushrooms for $5/lb. I picked up $3 worth, as you can see above.


I used some of the mushrooms on pizza - I picked a bag of dough expiring the same day for 1/2 off at the coop, had homemade marinara at home and couldn't resist. It didn't seem possible to not buy it. I used more of the mushrooms in a another round of the Crack of Noon Test Kitchen Shiitake Dill Frittata. Shiitakes are something else.

Pizza with sundried tomato and roasted garlic marinara, kalamata olives, broccoli, spinach and shiitake mushrooms.

Crack of Noon Test Kitchen Shiitake Dill Frittata
That's a little dollop of hot sauce in the back.

Another pizza. This one with the same as above, minus kalama olives, plus Tofutti Mozzerella. I've had some slices hanging in my fridge for ages, and was thinking about the Teese shipment on its way! Tofutti is buttery yes, oozes, yes, but I don't think I've enjoyed it since I was in college. The pizza was still good, don't worry~

And look what came to work today! No, not Teese. But another box of fun that went into the fridge ASAP that I'll blog about shortly, with help from Veganshizzle.