On mushroomsauce

Don’t try this at home.

It is a waste of time, energy, electricity, ingredients and willpower.

You have been warned.

I [re]started taking B12 supplements this week. They’re [supposedly] good against tiredness, grouchyness, depression, energy-deficiency and a whole load of other stuff. The catch is, you have to take then half an hour after eating. This means you not only have to eat, you have to finish eating at least half an hour before you go to bed. This means cooking it in time to eat, in turn meaning starting to cook in time to finish cooking, eat and still have half an hour before bed. I suppose the only options are get organised or cancel out the energy benefits by sleeping less. Unfortunately the second option seems most likely.

I came home from work late and tired as a tired thing. I would have gone straight to bed if it wasn’t for needing to eat and wanting to post. I took a bag of semi-posh frozen ‘forest mushrooms’ and a pack of minced beef out of the freezer on my way in (my freezer’s on the landing outside my second front door) dumped them on the counter in the kitchen and turned the computer on. I officially wanted to read my email and write a post for day-1-month-2. So much for planning. Instead I stalked the people who’d liked my posts, the people who’d liked their posts and some people who came up in a search including my post, and here I am 6 hours later wondering why I’m not asleep yet.

The seemingly only connecting factor between all these things is this saucepan of brown gloop resting on my knee.

I remembered I didn’t like the slimy texture of the forest mushrooms last time I ate them, and that I’d whizzed them into a sauce and mixed it in to… something. And there was the first hurdle. I couldn’t remember what I’d mixed it into. No problem I thought, I’ll make something different. Mushrooms are good I thought, I shall make something like bolognaise sauce but with mushrooms instead of tomatoes.

Famous last words.

Because I am lazy and it was late and I really need to go shopping, I limited myself to very few ingredients. I whizzed the mushrooms (probably waking up my neighbours – they must love me :)), fried the beef mince, added a couple of chopped onions, fried everything a bit more so I was sure the meat was done, and added the mushroom goo. So far so good.

Then I tasted it.

BLEUGH!!

That was something I hopefully won’t repeat too soon.

So anyway. There I am with half a saucepan of grey-brown sludge. I am a big believer of not throwing food away, especially if it’s got animal in it, and even more of a believer in my ability to rescuing things which go wrong. Besides. I had a B12 tablet and a ravenous stomach waiting for me to eat and not a lot more edible options. I looked around and opened drawers and the fridge and found the following things:

  • black pepper
  • 2 beef oxo cubes
  • a lump of cheese
  • a tin of kidney beans
  • 3/4 of a tube of tomato puree
  • curry powder
  • worcester sauce
  • marmite
  • cumin seeds
  • paprika

and maybe some other herbs/spices which I’ve forgotten about.

Half an hour later and with the help of these things, I’d created something slightly more edible than my initial creation. I am sitting here eating it as I write.

I don’t think I will make it again. I think by the time I’ve figured out how to trick myself into eating the rest of the saucepanfull I will be thoroughly cured of the idea that posh mushrooms must be better than normal ones, or at least as good as people say. Hopefully I’ll remember not to [ever] buy them again. I’ll stick to ‘proper’ mushrooms in future. By proper mushrooms I mean the sort you buy fresh, in blue (or black or green) plastic trays with cellaphane/clingfilm over the top 😉

Also, I shall aim to keep enough milk about the place, that I can eat muesli and go to bed without braving the weird world of unknown cuisine.

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