Sweet & Tangy Mushroom Rice Soup

Just a quick post today with 1 of the 4 soups I did with my 25 pounds of free mushrooms.  This one was a sweet and tangy mushroom and rice soup.  I have to admit at first it wasn't my favorite but I tweaked it a bit and it grew on me!

5 C Mushrooms

1 tea Minced Garlic

3 T Earth Balance

1 Onion

4 C Veg Broth

1 C White Wine

 1 C Cooked Rice

3 T Tomato Paste

1 C Coconut Cream

1 tea Dill

Sea Salt, Natural Sugar & Old Bay Seasoning to taste

I sauteed the Onions and Mushroom on stove top while adding the liquid ingredients, spices, and Tomato Paste in a blender.   Then combined everything into the blender and pulsed. 

I Acquired 25 Pounds of Mushrooms Over The Weekend...FREE...And Other Weekend Happenings

Over the weekend our region had one of the largest seasonal folk art craft fairs in our area and one of the vendors asked if any of the volunteers wanted free mushrooms so a friend of ours said that he knew someone who would want them.  They were already washed, sliced, etc and ready to go.  When he brought the box of mushrooms over I was SHOCKED!  There had to have been a good 25 pounds of mushrooms in there!  Here are some of them!

 After sharing with 4 other people who only grabbed about 5 pounds each I still had LOTS left.  So last night I made soup!  LOTS and LOTS of soup!  More on those soups in future posts but today I thought I would post some other random photos from the weekend.  After 4 large batches of soup - my mother and I did a few other things with them including a favorite from my childhood that we veganized.  POM (Peppers, Onions, Mushrooms).  We cooked them in Earth Balance Vegan Spread instead of the butter/margarine we used to when I was a kid!

At this same folk art fair was this lil guy...a Prairie Dog!  My father and I adore them!  There is a man who brings his fur friends each year - and we have seen him at other events - I believe he rescues a lot of the animals - you can tell he really LOVES them!  Each animal has a name and he remembers ALL of them!  He also currently has about 300 goats and mini goats, too!  He was telling a lady that he will NOT bring a goat who doesn't want to come that day.  They all want to go (he doesn't force them).  He says "ok - who wants to go" and a bunch of them will run over to the truck(s)!  He had some turtles, large rabbits, and a mini horse, too!

Oh yes!  And the goats!  They were adorable!  All so friendly and well behaved!  I really connected with a few of them!  I have wanted 2 goats for a while now but don't know the first thing about caring for them.  Regardless they are so cute!

I can't believe it's fall already!  Oye!  It bums me out because I know that snow is right around the corner!

I will cherish the non-snow weather for as long as I can, tho!

In other news...

The decorated rocks are popping up all over for various groups so we decided to do them for the radio station.  Here are a few that I started already!

I'm not the best drawer but I try and it's FUN - it gets me out walking a bit more and it helps relieve some stress!

My Blissful Camping Journey Begins

Because of all the goodies I have been sharing and contests and giveaways I have been slacking on my other posts but I have LOTS to share! Over the next couple of weeks I have LOTS going on so I will be schedule-posting a lot of things and when I get back from fair week in a few weeks I will have many more posts to share. 

Special THANKS to every who entered the NuNaturals Giveaway!  I will be choosing 4 winners today and will announce them later today in a separate post!  

As you can see above I have something new to tell you about!  Yup!  We bought a camper!  We do have an older camper that is 'planted' up in the woods near my husband's family's land but that has been there since we bought it YEARS ago and will remain there.  This recent purchase is the one we will be 'babying'.  For the most part we will be storing it at the fair grounds and doing a lot of camping there.  Maybe next year we will branch out and take it places but for now we have a plan and that plan involved being at the grounds most of this year.  Hubby's on the fair board and I've been helping when I can.  Last night I stained a wishing well and over the weekend I stained a few decks near the Entertainment Office and Radio Booth.  Saturday there was a show and I worked the food booth, too!

Friday Night and again on Sunday I took Cricket with me over to the grounds.  She really enjoyed it.  Hubby's aunt/uncle's dog Abby was there and the two of them played a while.  Before going back on Sunday I took Cricket over to my parents house and she played with their dog Lexi.  She was quite active this weekend.  I took her into the camper for the first time and as you can see she approved!

The fair is less than 3 weeks away and it seems we are living and breathing everything fair!  Not only is Dale on the fair board we are there full time there for work that week, too!  One of the things I will be posting about is my adventures in mostly vegan food that week like I did last year but this year I will be there even more than previous years so I am sure I will have more to share this time around!  That and the music!  We have 4 concerts this year!  AND new to the radio booth we will have a prize wheel!  AND we always pass out 3 or 4 thousand Whirley Mugs and this year we will pass out about 300 bags of chips for free, too!  Yes...it will be a busy one!  OH!  And I almost forget...this year I will be Dale's co-host on the air each day! 

I'm sure I will have more pictures and posts from the fair grounds before, during, and after that week.  In the meantime I thought I would also show you a neat pic of one of the mushrooms I saw last weekend!

Mellow Mushroom ~ Pigeon Forge, TN

***There is still time to enter to win Organic Chia Seeds from Garden of Life***  CLICK HERE I will choose a winner BEFORE 5pm est today!

This first photo isn't mine...it's from the Mellow Mushroom Website.  But the other photos I took while on vacation.  This is the Mellow Mushroom location in Pigeon Forge, TN, and we stopped by while on vacation last week.  I think they had 3 locations in the area...this one, one in Gatlinburg next to Ole Smoky Moonshine, and one at The Island in Pigeon Forge, too!

First...I have to talk about the decor in this place.  It's so cool!  There are lights, mushrooms, tye dye stuff, hippie stuff - pretty much everywhere. 

These are some of the lighted tree decorations they had in the middle of our section.  I took some pics of the walls but they didn't turn out that great.  There was a HUGE painted wall that went from one end of the booth seating area to the other that was hippie and groovy but still a tribute to Pigeon Forge and the Smoky Mountains. 

They had this crazy stone fireplace that had some sort of mystical cartoon character mounted on it (thank GOD it wasn't a real deer - blah!) and candles and trinkets on the shelf below and then...look at the fireplace!!!  Instead of 'fire' it's a slew of Lava Lamps!  How groovy is that!?

There was plenty of parking outside, a lot of seating inside, a bunch of eye candy to look at inside and out and we haven't even talked about the food yet!

We will get to that in a moment...but first...I just had to show you another shot of this 'fireplace' of Lava Lamps...

I'm pretty sure that The Mellow Mushroom has 3 locations in the area of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.  At least that is how many I saw while we were out and about.  This one was in Pigeon Forge - stand alone.  There is another one in Pigeon Forge within The Island that I wrote about on my Travel Blog...then there is another one over by Ole Smoky Moonshine in Gatlinburg.

 Here's a photo of some of the mushrooms that were throughout the restaurant, too!  Of course when I added this to my InstaGram I had a few funny yet crude comments about what they looked like!

But...Mellow Mushroom's InstaGram 'liked' them so that's cool.  It was actually really neat because a lot of the pics I took and put on InstaGram I had the official place 'like' my photos!

Anyways...on to the food, right?  Dale ended up getting wings that were twice baked (not fried).  For those of you who are new to my blog - my husband is NOT vegan/vegetarian.

I, however, found out that they do vegan pizzas!  YAY!  They use Daiya Cheese!  They make their own vegan and gluten free crust from ancient grains.  I'm not Gluten Free but I enjoy eating Gluten Free foods from time to time.  There were other vegan options on the menu but I didn't really want to think about it and wanted to take some of the pizza back to the Cabin for later so this is what I went with.

It was the Veggie Pizza with the Vegan AND Gluten Free Crust.  Yes..Vegan Daiya Cheese.  The sauce was pretty good...but my favorite part of the pizza was the tomatoes!  They were AWESOME! 

The pizza - overall - was quite good.  I'm glad I was able to get it.  Very happy they offer it!  I do like the Vegan Pizza at Pizza Plant in Williamsville (Buffalo, NY, area) better, tho.  If you are veg - where is your favorite vegan pizza located?  Which eating establishment outside of the home, that is!?

Monday Morning Container Garden Surprises!

One thing I have noticed since starting our Container Garden - soon to be Rooftop Garden - at work - is - on Monday Morning - we are so eager to week what happened with it over the weekend - that coming to work on a Monday isn't as bad as it used to be! 

This morning I woke up absurdly early.  At least for me it was absurdly early.  And by waking up early - I mean - waking UP-UP!  Like ready to run a marathon UP.  That's totally unlike me, too!  Usually I hit the snooze!  NOT this morning!  So...with waking up so NICELY this morning I declared THIS WEEK...RAW WEEK!  More on that in a very near post...YES...it will be a 2 post day - today - so stay tuned!

Anyhow...when I got to work EARLY today I ran upstairs to where our Garden is at the moment and found a few surprises! 

First surprise...was this flower!  Yup!  We have our FIRST Flower!  YAY!  This little gem was on one of the Dragon's Tongue Beans.  It's so beautiful!  I'm so excited!  I'm pretty sure the two buds you see are beans in the making!  We just might have some beans SOON!

Next up...SHROOMS!  Check these bad boys out!  They are growing randomly in a separate container near one of the other Dragon's Tongue Beans.  I really don't know what this means.  Maybe someone can shed some light on the subject.  We have some theories!  We could be TOTALLY WRONG.  Casey thinks we just got our soil too wet.  Karen thinks maybe it was something in the 'soil or potting mix' we used.  Another person mentioned a possible or potential 'disease'.  I am going to ask our local ag extension girl what kind of mushroom this is.  As long as it's not poisonous I won't be too concerned.

There are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Mushrooms Species and I am far from an expert!  Again...if anyone knows let me know in comments!  I also posted on Instagram and will report back with any feedback I do receive.