Mush

“ Make a quart of mush, put into it a lump of butter or lard, the size of two eggs, and a little salt, previously to making the mush, have ready a pint of light rising, stir into it a pint of new milk, and the mush, with as much wheat flour as will make it a very thick batter, let it rise four or five hours, and when light, set it in a cold place, till you are ready to bake, dip a spoon in water each time, and put the batter on the griddle in small cakes, or bake in rings. You may make it a little stiffer, and roll it out to bake in large cakes. ”

“ Pour well-boiled cornmeal mush (page 228) into a bread-tin or dish with straight sides, so it will cut in even slices. Make the mush the day before it is to be used, so it will have time to harden. Cut it in pieces one half inch thick, and into any shape desired, but have the pieces uniform. Roll each one in egg and flour, and fry in hot fat; or they may be rolled in milk, then in flour, and sautéd in butter. They should have a crust on both sides. It is good served as a vegetable with game, or as a breakfast dish with or without syrup.
MACARONI ”

“ Mush will keep for several days in cool weather; the best way of making it is to have a pot of boiling water, and stir in corn meal, mixed with water, and salt enough to season the whole; let it boil, and if it is not thick enough you can add more meal; keep stirring all the time to prevent it from being lumpy. It should boil an hour.
To make the cakes, take a quart of cold mush, mix in it half a pint of wheat flour, and a little butter or lard, make it out in little cakes with your hands, flour them and bake them on a griddle or in a dripping pan. ”

“ A heavy aluminum kettle or an iron pot is a good utensil in which to cook mush, as it does not burn easily in either, although almost constant stirring is required. When the mush becomes very thick, the heated air, in forcing its way through the mush in the process of boiling, makes the mush pop and very often splash on the hands and burn them. ”

“ If he feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is clear; he can plunge into [32] the river or the pond, without the ceremony of undressing, or the fear of wetting his clothes; his little tow-linen shirt—for that is all he has on—is easily dried; and it needed ablution as much as did his skin. His food is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most part of cornmeal mush, which often finds it way from the wooden tray to his mouth in an oyster shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are spent in the pure, open air, and in the bright sunshine. He always sleeps in airy apartments ”

“ Mush′rooms, edible fungi. They grow in fields and pastures, occasionally in open, grassy woods, abound in the early autumn, may be found throughout the summer. They are cultivated for the market both outdoors and in caves, cellars and other dark, cool places. ”

“ At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads of purple.
We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching stomach with it.
We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.
A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran across to us. ”

“ A few hours, and the under part of the ball breaks from the stock and the mushroom gradually spreads like an umbrella being opened and shows a line of pale pink, or flesh-coloured, gills, which become darker every hour until almost black, at which stage the mushroom becomes thin and rapidly decays. ”

“ It is to this class, called fungi, which includes all mushrooms and moulds, mildews, smuts, and ferments, that the mushroom belongs which we found yesterday making the fairy rings. And, in truth, we were not so far wrong when we called them pixies or imps, for many of them are indeed imps of mischief, which play sorry pranks in our stores at home and in the fields and forest abroad. They grow on our damp bread, or cheese, or pickles; they destroy fruit and corn, hop and vine, and even take the life of insects and other animals. ”

“ As all acrid plants become less so, if exposed to a boiling heat, it is probable the common mushroom may sometimes disagree from being not sufficiently stewed. The Oftiacks blister their skin by a fungus found on Birch-trees ”

“ No sooner does a public cook get at a mushroom than it begins to deteriorate. When the chef comes in at the door the savour flies out of the window. It is a point of honour with him. When therefore I said that one can never have enough mushrooms I meant at home. ”

“ She just said, “Well, of course, if you admit that your appetites have failed you, and if you really want the Girl Scouts to tell you what is in your own handbooks, I’ll remind you of the value of mushrooms.”
“Oh, is that so?” I said. “I know all about mushrooms and I can tell a mushroom from a toadstool or a footstool or a piano-stool or any other kind of a stool. But that’s not going to keep this blamed wagon here, is it?” ”

“ The mushrooms are prepared by boiling, by which the water acquires an intoxicating quality, and is a sort of drink which the Tartars prize beyond all other. When the nobility and ladies are assembled, and the ceremonies usual between people of distinction over, the mushroom broth goes freely round, and they laugh, talk double-entendres, grow fuddled, and become excellent company. ”

“ A spurious fruit, a criminal, habitual vice itself, but preening in splendor and brilliance, a very cardinal of fungi. I break off a morsel to chew; it is good and soft on the tongue, but I am a coward and spit it out again. Was it not the poisonous mushroom that drove men berserker? But in the dawn of our own day, we die of a hair in the throat.
The sun is already setting. Far up the mountainside are the cattle, but they are moving homeward now ”

“ It was like a little man no bigger than a big forked raddish, an’ as green as a cabbidge. Me a’nt had one in her house down in Connaught in the ould days. O musha! musha! the ould days, the ould days! ”

“ Growing in woods, this deleterious species is extremely common, and without doubt very dangerous. The dirty pale-umber gills, and its habitat and time of growth—viz. the autumn—at once distinguish it from the delicious A. gambosus, fig. 19, Edible Sheet. It has a powerful and highly disagreeable odour, and brown spores, and we believe it is often mistaken by the ignorant for the true mushroom. ”

“ But the appearance and peculiarities of a mushroom may be safely learned by the eye or the nose, and reasoning upon this information and the fact already well known, that mushrooms are good to eat, we arrive without any danger or trouble at the conclusion that the particular fungus before us is good to eat. ”

“ Look at our feet; and here, likewise, are objects as good as new. There are two little round, white fungi, which probably sprung from the ground in the course of last night,—curious productions, of the mushroom tribe, and which by and by will be those small things with smoke in them which children call puff-balls. Is there nothing else? ”

“ The Russians retain the stems and dry their Bolets whole, stringing them up the stem and through the center of the cap.
Hay. TO COOK CANTHARELLUS CIBARIUS. Cut the mushrooms across and remove the stems; put them into a closely-covered saucepan with a little fresh butter, and sweat them until tender, at the lowest possible temperature. A great heat always destroys the flavor. ”

“ He carefully covers these with some pieces of dead bark and desiccated dung, so that none of ‘them lurching fellows as comes round shan’t see ’em’—with a wink at his own cunning—so as to preserve them till they have grown larger. He advises me never to partake of mushrooms unless certain that they have not grown under oak trees: he will have it that even the true edible mushroom is hurtful if it springs beneath the shadow of the oak. ”

“ Those that have a white or yellow fur should be carefully avoided, though many of them have a similar smell, but not so strong and fragrant, as the genuine mushroom. Great numbers of these may be produced, by strewing on an old hotbed the broken pieces of mushrooms ”

“ Unequal, short imperfect gills interspersed among the others. Universal, used in relation to the veil or volva which entirely envelops the mushroom when young. Variety, an individual of a species differing from the rest in external form, size, color, and other secondary features, without perpetuating these differences only under exceptional circumstances. Veil, in mushrooms a partial covering of the stem or margin of the pileus. ”

“ But time is only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there’ll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms, in the grass, sweetest of all fungi. ”

“ Then comes your believer in charms: dropping salt on the mushroom to see if it turns black or yellow, or stirring them with a coin spoon to watch for evidences of discoloration. Another rejects all which grow from wood. But no test of any kind, in form, color, or basis of growth, will distinguish healthful from harmful fungi. ”

“ I can assure him mushrooms grow faster than pigs, and the mushrooms do not eat anything; they only want a little attention. Addressing myself to the working classes, I advise them, in the first place, to employ their children or others collecting horse-droppings along the highway, and if mixed with a little road-sand, so much the better. ”

“ In a minute or two, the Caterpillar got down off the mushroom and crawled away into the grass, merely remarking, as it went, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter." ”

“ The last four years it has been the mushroom shape. For most faces there is nothing more becoming and girlish than the latter (Figure 150) .
Fig. 150. A lingerie hat
Sometimes the mushroom shape is covered with hand-embroidered ruffles, while again a circular piece having the crown cut out is used. ”

“ Varenka, who had just crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. ”

“ She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else. ”

“ The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it. ”

“ ‘Of the mushroom,’ said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
‘And now which is which?’ she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: ”

“ On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. ”

“ The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns,—a sort of fucus or lichen in bone,—to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this! ”

“ Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. ”

“ We shall sleep on this moss for many nights, till the beasts of the forest come to tear our body. We have no bed now, save the moss, and no future, save the beasts. ”

“ The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled. ”

“ When a worm is suddenly illuminated and dashes like a rabbit into its burrow—to use the expression employed by a friend—we are at first led to look at the action as a reflex one. The irritation of the cerebral ganglia appears to cause certain muscles to contract in an inevitable manner, independently of the will or consciousness of the animal, as if it were an automaton. ”

“ The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in motionless rivers of light. ”

“ The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? ”

“ In the evening of that day, after completing my preparations, I supped on the remaining portions of the sloth, not suitable for preservation, roasting bits of fat on the coals and boiling the head and bones into a broth; and after swallowing the liquid I crunched the bones and sucked the marrow, feeding like some hungry carnivorous animal. ”