Harvest time

[luzula]

1) Work hit me like a brick wall in the first week of the semester: a fully online course, and one that I've never taught before, with about a hundred students, who are all new. So tons of questions, etc, mostly of a practical nature. Ugh. Hands hurt, shoulders stiff.

2) Nevertheless I have finished drafts of two big fannish projects lately: one is the audiobook of Flemington, by Violet Jacob, for Librivox. It'll be about eight hours. The other is the alternate ending of my latest Flight of the Heron fic; I am very pleased that it went over 30K, thus putting the whole verse over 100k! \o/

3) Am now working from the family summer place for a week. Look at all the mushrooms Mom and I picked today! They are almost all the delicious Boletus edulis. Now we just have to slice and dry them all...

Comments

[isis]

Ooh, what a haul, I'm envious! We should be seeing boletes now but our very dry summer has meant no mushrooms. B went hiking on his own to fish in the wilderness (my broken toe is not yet healed enough to hike) and he reported zero zip nada. We still have some dried B. edulis from last year but getting down to the crumbs.

[luzula]

Yeah, it really varies year to year! This year is one of the best for boletes in a while, where I am.

[jesse_the_k]

Mmmmmmmushrooms. They look so tasty!

How do you dry them?

I'm sorry the new term is taking a toll on your hands and shoulders.

[luzula]

We dry them in 50 degrees Celsius in the oven, with the oven door slightly ajar. But it's a sunny and windy day, so meanwhile a lot of the sliced mushrooms are also on screens outdoors, to start the drying...

I'm jealous

[jesse_the_k]

of your slow oven. The lowest ours does is 77C. Glad that there aren't gourmet rodents nibbling at your drying mushrooms.

[seascribble]

shrooms!

I can barely handle a zoom meeting with 6 school staff, I can't imagine doing a class of 100. Thankfully we're in person, with good results so far but we'll see.

[luzula]

Mmmm, delicious shrooms.

Actually the zoom classrooms are working better than I thought they would! But it's tiring.

[chestnut_pod]

I hope it gets easier as the term continues, and sorry it's so tough right now.

[luzula]

Thanks! It definitely will get better, since I've just finished grading the exams that I had to do at the same time...

[abbylee]

That is a tough week of work. I hope your class ends up running smoothly.

Also: wow, those mushrooms!

[luzula]

Thanks! It definitely will get better, since I've just finished grading the exams that I had to do at the same time...

[regshoe]

Oof, that does sound tough—I hope things at work calm down soon. And congratulations on the fic and the audiobook—100k is certainly an achievement :D

[luzula]

Thanks! : D Yes, I do expect things to calm down soon.

[dolorosa_12]

Wow, that in an epic mushroom harvest!

[luzula]

It is! There's something so satisfying about harvesting from nature.

[hurry_sundown]

Online is not the best. Poor Child has everything online this semester, and she's really stressed about it. I hope your class gets easier for you once the technical stuff settles down. Also? Mushrooms, yum! Although with my luck, I'd manage to poison myself ...

[luzula]

I want covid to be gone so we can have classrooms again (and other good things).

Heh, we did get loose bowels from another Boletes that we ate three days in a row--either we failed to fry it long enough, or it was just that we ate it for three days. But we're confident about what species we pick, anyway.

[dhampyresa]

So many mushrooms! Plans on how you'll eat them?

[luzula]

Well, soup is good, and sauce, and so is putting them in cream and then spreading that on bread and grilling it in the oven with cheese on top...