Two-Mushroom Barley Soup

This soup made our house smell delicious! Last weekend we wanted to get some work done in the yard, so put this soup together in the morning. Like the title of the recipe indicates, there are two kinds of mushrooms. We used white mushrooms and 1 oz of dried porcinis. The porcinis add a nice rich woodsy flavor. We ended up using carrots, celery and thyme from the garden and homemade vegetable stock. It was perfect after a long day outside building wooden compost bins.

Millet and Burdock Root Stew

I had a hard time finding burdock root at the grocery store. Not because they didn't have any, in fact the Berkeley Bowl had it in two spots. It was just labeled "gobo" which I learned is it's Japanese name. The produce guy I asked took me to where it was, but I guess he also didn't really know what it looked like so we had to find the head produce guy before we found it. They then discussed making sure that the signs are labeled with both names. I'll have to check if they've updated them next time I go.

This is what it looks like - burdock root or gobo.

This stew was slightly sweet & nutty. It got really thick & the edges burned a bit. I think this may be because my slowcooker is really big and the recipe calls for a smaller one. It was still tasty even though it's consistency was more like mush. It might have also just cooked too longer. Next time I might add another cup of broth or water.

It doesn't look like much, but it was really tasty & comforting. It had lots of meaty mushrooms & the millet was the perfect grain.

Mushroom and Green Bean Stroganoff

6.30.12
Patrick and I had a very busy Saturday planned to so we used the Crock-Pot to have dinner ready after our errands, including planted a fig tree which you can read about here: http://twinduplex.blogspot.com/
We have lots of green beans growing in our garden right now so we used the Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker recipe book to make stroganoff. It was very good and had very interesting flavor! Here is the recipe: