Truffles in Eastern Sierras in July???

I almost forgot to tell you about this. Hubby Mark and I went up to Tahoe in July to visit family. On the way there we stopped for the night in Mammoth Lakes to break up the drive. Yes, it is a rough life we lead...Mark knew of a nice little restaurant at nearby Convict Lake aptly named, The Restaurant at Convict Lake, so we headed there for dinner. As we perused the menu what do you think we saw?

Chicken Marsala - Penne Pasta

sauteed with roasted red bell peppers, truffles, capers, cremini mushrooms
and finished with asiago and fried basil.....$21.95

That's right - a dish with truffles in it! Truffle snob that I am, I complained that they must be frozen seeing as how the harvest season had long since passed. Mark ordered the dish anyhow and when it came you could definitely smell the pungent propanish-garlicish scent of truffle. I personally couldn't taste them in it and couldn't distinguish between the cremini mushroom slivers and truffle shavings, if any. I'm thinking it may have been truffle oil that was used. It was still pretty good, though.

Incidentally, the restaurant is nice, if a bit pricey. Then again, if the dish had real truffles I guess $21.95 is cheap. Note that they do not, however, serve chocolate milk, and could not figure out how to take the chocolate syrup that is no doubt behind the bar or in the cooler and add it to milk. Forget the truffles, I judge a restaurant by its ability to produce a glass of chocolate milk for me even when it's not on the menu.

The heir(ess) to the truffle kingdom

Those of you who know either of the truffle queens know that the younger of the two has been busy cultivating the heir(ess) to the yet-to-be realized truffle fortune.

Because I'm fat, bored and tired of waddling around chasing sheep, I decided to start a blog on behalf of the soon-to-emerge young truffle farmer (six weeks to go!!!). I added the link to the right, but if you are lazy or confused, you can also click here to learn what Lentil Bean (what we call the baby) is thinking and doing. It's called Lentil Soup and hopefully will have more entertaining fodder than this site. Enjoy!