Mushroom Show

Last weekend we went to the annual wild mushroom show, hosted by the Northwest Mushroomers Association (click the link https://www.facebook.com/pages/Northwest-Mushroomers-Association/189323751142082 for their Facebook page). The last time I went to this show was back in 2008 ( Mud and Mushrooms). It's really a wonderful event. In addition to beautiful displays set up on long tables around the room, they also have areas for more in depth investigation. There is a "touch and smell" table:

Paloma at the touch and smell table

And a table with microscopes and slides for looking at microscopic structures. There is a kids table with coloring and crafts and instructions on making spore-prints. There are artist's tables with beautiful and intriguing works of art made out of or on the subject of fungus. One lady, who is a professional scientific illustrator (a career choice I sometimes regret not having pursued) was selling a lovely little booklet full of illustrations of slime molds, with accompanying haiku. In the kitchen, they were offering tastings. And of course there was a table offering books, posters, T-shirts, and what-not. 

And memberships.  Rowan and Paloma and I were so enchanted, I decided to ask about membership in the society. I have been interested in mushrooms, in a general way as part of my larger interest in herbs, plant medicine, and foraging, for many years. I can identify some three or four varieties of edible (and otherwise interesting) mushrooms, but I am very far from being knowledgeable. I would love the chance to learn more, especially if it is something I can do with my kids. 

Family memberships are only $15, regardless of the number of people in your family. That gets you a newsletter, attendance at lectures and identification clinics all year long, and the right to go along on mushroom hunting forays led by experts. And a nice discount on merchandise, which we promptly put to use at the merch table. 

Mushroom season is probably about over this year. I picked and ate all the field mushrooms in my yard three weeks ago. I didn't go out to the back of the pasture to look for shaggy manes, but I'm sure they are done already. I have a meeting set up with a local forager to buy a few pounds of chanterelles tomorrow... and then that's it until next fall... unless there's a morel-picking foray this spring, that is!

Mushroom Mistake (Win Some, Lose Some)

Verpa Bohemica, also known as the early morel, split to show how the cap is unattached to the stem except at the top: a true morel is attached all the way down. Also, true morels are hollow, and the verpa is full of cottony wisps. True morels are the most delicious of mushrooms; V. Bohemica is only "edible with caution.".




The whole potful of utterly useless verpas that I traded two dozen eggs, a pound of goatcheese, and some grass fed beef for.

As always at this time of year, I am trying desperately to get the trade network up and running. Just about now I am beginning to be overrun with eggs and experiencing a serious surplus of milk and milk products (Iris' twins were picked up today - starting tonight I will be milking twice a day). No-one, however, yet has any garden produce to trade, and won't for at least another month. Trolling Craigslist looking for things I might want to trade for, I found morels advertised!

I adore morels, as does anyone with half a brain, and was delighted to find them so early in the year. The man wanted $12 a pound for them - cheap for morels, but we are pretty broke and don't have money to be throwing around on mushrooms. So I asked him if he'd be into a trade and he said he would. Yippee!

When he arrived, however, he told me about how he'd been having trouble on Craigslist with people who kept flagging his post, saying that the mushrooms he was selling weren't safe.

"Why not," I asked him, "Morels are awesome!"

"Well," he said, "these aren't the same species as the morels you buy in the store. These are early morels, but they are great and just as yummy."

I was, of course, skeptical of this, but since I was born without a spine, I didn't send him packing but merely asked him if he knew the genus and species names. He did, and he told me, and he assured me that he's been eating these for years and feeds them to his kids and that the people flagging his account were simply mistaken. Dubiously, I went ahead with the trade, and when he was gone, started doing some research.

He was right about what the mushrooms were, anyway. They were indeed, as he had said, Verpa Bohemica. With good resources they are pretty easy to identify. However, not one resource I checked (and I checked about eight) said that V. Bohemica should be eaten without reservation. Most sites said something along the lines of "be careful with these, as reports of vomiting, GI distress, and loss of muscular co-ordination exist. However, personally I've never had an issue." Only one person I found reported actual effects, and he also said that the mushrooms just didn't taste very good. Many more people said they liked the mushrooms and that they suffered no ill effects, but that's not really good enough for me.

I decided to give them a try in a small quantity but not feed them to anyone else in the family. I have a fairly cast-iron stomach and I'm not afraid of a little muscular discoordination in a good cause. Heck, I've been known to bring muscular discoordination on myself, on purpose, of a saturday night. However, after soaking the shrooms in saltwater and then drying them in a low oven, I just didn't like the smell of them. They didn't smell woodsy and enticing, as wild mushrooms ought to smell, but rather gloomy and bloated and a little bit rotten, like the bottom of a compost pile.

I threw them out. You win some, you lose some.

Taking a Break from Home Improvement (Farmer's Market)

Unable to do anything more immediately on the house, and really really tired of thinking and writing about it, the kids and I took a personal day yesterday. We went to the YMCA and went swimming. We perused downtown thrift shops for christmas tins and craft supplies (yup, just about that time of year!). And we went to the Bellingham Saturday Farmer's Market, which goes on through December.

Probably due to the mild temperatures we've been enjoying, there is still plenty of produce. Summer goods like the tomatoes above are gone, of course, but there are still all kinds of lovely greens, carrots and root vegetables, garlic, hard squash in all it's crazy variety, apples and nuts, and of course, mushrooms.

Again due to the long mild fall with a steady supply of rain, it's been a great year for mushrooms. There were chanterelles and lobster mushrooms everywhere. In the case of mushrooms and other foraged goods, it really pays to look around. Inside the market proper at the booths chanterelles were going for $10 or $12 a pound. On the sidewalk outside I got them for $6. A couple of years ago I remember I was able to trade for chanterelles - bacon and eggs, if I recall. This year I just forked over some cash. Oh well, there's always next year.

I decided to make mushroom gravy and serve it over baked potatoes for dinner. Mushroom gravy is great even if you don't have wild mushrooms to work with - and any excess can be stored in the fridge and used as the base for mushroom soup.

Mushroom Gravy

1 pound fresh wild mushrooms - or whatcha got - chopped

1/2 stick butter

1/4 cup flour

1 small onion, finely diced

1 clove garlic, minced

little bit rosemary

white wine

milk

salt and pepper

melt butter and add mushrooms and vegetables over medium heat. Stir with a wooden spoon occasionally. Mushrooms will throw off a lot of liquid which must be evaporated before you can add the flour, but you don't want to burn the butter. So keep the heat moderate and just wait. When pan is fairly dry, sprinkle flour over in small amount, stirring until incorporated. This will make a weird, unappetizing paste. Don't worry. Keep stirring and when pan begins to look quite dry, add the wine (about a cup). Stir well. At this point you need to stir pretty much constantly. Any time the mixture starts to look dry, add milk by the half-cup. All in all I imagine you will add something less than a quart of milk. Let simmer slowly over medium low heat for a few minutes. Salt and pepper to taste (I like a lot of pepper). Pour over toast or baked potatoes or noodles and shower with minced parsley.

Shaggy Manes!

The recent hard rains have brought up my shaggy manes! Last year I discovered these mushrooms out on the hard-packed area of the pasture that used to have the old dairy barn on it. I brought some of them to the wild mushroom show and had them identified by an expert as the Shaggy Mane, classified and "edible and delectable" in mushroom guides.

But I never got to eat any of them last year because very very soon after they pop up, they begin to deliquesce into an oozy black mess. You have to get them quick.

I just picked those you see above - maybe a pound or or a pound and a half. There are hundreds of them out there. I'm not sure how to cook them: I'll have to look up some recipes. Just out of an abundance of caution, I will eat some first, and wait several hours before I let anyone else try them.

Can't wait.

Hooray for Mushrooms!

The mushrooms in the picture in the last post are, according to the experts at the mushroom festival, Shaggy Mane mushrooms, part of the Inky Cap group, rated as "edible and choice." That means yummy, but you have to gather them while they are still closed and cylindrical, and that phase lasts only a day or two. After that, they deliquesce. That means turn into horrible black, stinky runny toadstools. Which, unfortunately, has already happened to most of mine this year. Oh well, now I know. I'll be out there with a paring knife after the first rains next year. 

Mud and Mushrooms

What to do about mud? The recent rains have turned the barnyard into the most disgusting mire. Calling it mud is just a euphemism; it's really more like liquid zoo-doo. There is apparently no drainage at all out in front of the barns. It just puddles up and stays there. I have admittedly made things worse by spreading around the dirty straw. I thought it would soak it up and compact, but it just makes everything deeper. Homero spread two pick-up truckloads of gravel, which was just enough to make slender paths from the gate to each of the two barn doors. I think I'm going to have a big pile of gravel delivered. I know it's expensive, but holy sh.....

The rain has also brought forth the mushrooms. This cute little clump is actually part of a much larger patch of huge, shaggy, rapidly decomposing toadstools, which aren't cute at all. There is a mushroom festival this weekend somewhere in town, this just reminded me. I think I'll go take pictures of all the different mushrooms I can find on the property and try to identify them at the shroom show.

Local Food Trade Network Success Story!

All year long, I've been trying to source as much food as possible from within the county. I go to farmer's markets, and search for "locally grown" labels on produce at the supermarket, and of course our farm produces all the eggs and milk products we need. More, in fact. So much more that I instituted the trade system! Since about May, I've been trading our excess eggs for organic produce from local gardeners, and occasionally for such treats as homemade marshmallows (Thanks, Phil!).  I think this has been a good deal for everyone involved, even if there was occasionally more kale in the fridge than any one family could reasonably eat. 

But not until yesterday did the trade system really score a big bonanza. A friend who pressed cider with us last year called to say she had 13 pounds of fresh chantrelles, which she picked herself just the day before. Well much as I love mushrooms, and I do, 13 pounds is a bit much. But we got one brown paper bag full to the top, maybe three pounds, in exchange for a pound of chevre, a dozen eggs, and a package of bacon from our hog. As you can see, they are beautiful! Just setting them on the counter perfumes the whole kitchen with a lovely light, spicy, woodsy scent. I couldn't wait, and had a mushroom breakfast this morning.

Chantrelle Breakfast Burrito:

Heat up a large cast iron skillet with just a tiny smear of olive oil, almost dry. Roughly chop a big handful of fresh, clean chantrelles and dry-fry over pretty high heat. They will give off a lot of moisture. Just keep turning them while this moisture boils off. When they are starting to look a little dryer, maybe ten minutes, add a tablespoon or so of finely minced onion, salt and pepper. In a separate pan, melt a tablespoon of butter over medium low heat. Add two lightly beaten eggs. If you have some you gathered the same morning, so much the better. When eggs begin to set around the edges, add mushrooms and a tablespoon or so of grated asiago or pecorino romano cheese and some finely chopped parsley. There is a high mushroom to egg ratio here; the eggs and cheese are sort of a binder to hold a bunch of chantrelles together.Do not overcook! Eggs should be soft. Right on the burner or in a dry skillet, heat a flour tortilla until browned in spots, about 15 seconds each side. Put tortilla on plate and eggs on tortilla!

Swoon.