in the wild

Ramps – finding, picking, cooking (and planting!)

Not in the back yard, actually. They’re in the utility area behind the back yard, about 20 feet from the compost heap. The little patch is no more than 30 inches from the path, but it hid in plain sight until a couple of years ago, when Bill the forager added ramps to his must-find collection.

Each year he spends more time tracking them down and eating them up, and now he’s written a guest post guide to them. All I can say is buckle your reading glasses – major ramp treatise ahead.

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Finding Black Morels – The Wild Mushroom Season Begins

This is the year of earliness – from the heat wave that hit us at the end of March (March!) to the apple blossoms opening at least two weeks ahead of schedule. I found the very first black morel on April 14.

Can you spot the morel in this picture?

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Thursday is the first of April

What can I say? Bill is an outdoorsy kind of guy and he’s starting to get antsy. I just opened my e-mail and there with a request to pass it on was this picture and accompanying quiz

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Coyotes! – Who Knew?

Certainly not I, not really,  even though I did know they were in the Northeast and, if it comes to that, in both of our home neighborhoods. In Maine, there’s a whole pack of ’em in the woodland right across the road. We hear them often on summer nights, yipping and laughing and howling.

Here in the Hudson Valley we don’t hear them nearly as often – or as close – but we do see them from time to time, including just a couple of weeks ago in a field near our friend Ilana the chicken queen‘s  farm.

Eastern coyote (with mangy tail), apparently hunting for voles

And then we saw what looked like coyote tracks while we were out skiing. The post on skunk tracks is a perennial favorite, so I asked Bill if he’d consider doing a guest post guide to reading tracks in the snow.

He did. It’s far more than I bargained for. And so are the quite scary coyotes.

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The Fiddlehead Lovers Guide: Finding and Preparing Ostrich Ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris), Deliciously and Safely

One thing I love about plants is the way they tie the world together, stitching continents and time in an ever-changing tapestry of free association. Eric puts up a post on Cyathea cooperi, a tropical tree fern so unfriendly its keepers need hazmat suits to move it, and next thing you know, in comes a question from Louisa about fiddleheads, the delicious baby fronds of the circumboreal ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris.

This foragers’ favorite doesn’t appear until mid-spring, roughly in synch with the morels, but it’s never too early to get ready for collecting.

Pasta with fiddleheads, morels and garlic chives

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Seasonal Alert: Honeys and Hens!

by Bill Bakaitis

It just goes to show how the collecting season varies here in the Northeast.

In Maine, where we had a poor mushroom season all year, the beginning of October brought with it a flush of Honey Mushrooms (Armillaria mellea complex) and the attendant Aborted Entoloma (Entoloma abortivum).  The Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosus) has not yet appeared on trees that I know and those that are found in Farmers Markets are pitiful fist sized, dried out specimens.  I anticipate the big flush in the next week to ten days, conditions permitting.

Meanwhile, in the Hudson Valley and Catskills of New York, which had a fabulous mushroom year, the Honeys began in Mid-September, right on cue, but most of the Hens remained in their underground coops for another fortnight.

Bill finding a fat hen, on a fat oak

Bill finding a fat hen, on a fat oak

They are out now: succulent, fragrant, and large – with what appears to be an attendant flush of young chicks following big momma. Bring your basket and go get ’em.

How To See a Moose (without really trying)

  1. Be in Maine
  2. Be in an area of open woods with water near, somewhat away from human activity but not necessarily far away.
  3. Be in such places frequently for other reasons: fishing, say, or hunting wild mushrooms.
  4. Look up when you hear a noise that sounds about like squirrels in the leaves but maybe not quite.
5. Notice dark shape in the distance.

5. Notice dark shape in the distance.

6. Pull the string around your neck to lift the camera out of your shirt pocket so you can send your wife a picture of a

Baby bull moose.

Baby bull moose.

Experience and photos by Bill Bakaitis

Multi-Cultural Shortcut Chicken (of the woods) Curry

A lot of wild mushrooms have delicate flavors that are easily overwhelmed. And a lot of them are typically found in small numbers or purchased in even smaller ones (except by the possessors of large dollars). As a result, a lot of wild  mushroom recipes have what might be called a reverential attitude about the signature ingredient.

Nothing wrong with that – except that it tends to carry over where it isn’t essential, as in the case of sulfur shelf, Laetiporus sulphureus, aka chicken of the woods. When you find that, you generally find many pounds, plenty enough to play around with.

This curry is an example. The mushroom flavor is only one among several but it's one that would be sorely missed if it were absent.

This curry is an example. The mushroom flavor is only one among several, but it's one that would be sorely missed if it were absent. The rice happens to have red peppers, gold raisins and pistachios. Just plain would be just as good or better.

I put “of the woods” in parentheses because I’m sure the curry would be good – albeit not this good –  with genuine chicken. The shortcut is prepared spice mixtures and the multi is Indian and Thai. Cooking the mushroom in coconut milk without a preliminary saute is what brings out the reds and pinks.

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Hunting Laetiporus sulphureus, The Sulfur Shelf or Chicken Mushroom

one of the (so far) few harvest delights that’s appropriately abundant, and very welcome it is. Here’s the lowdown from out resident mushroom expert:

BRIGHT HARBINGER OF FALL, Laetiporus sulphureus: AKA The Sulfur Shelf or Chicken Mushroom.

By Bill Bakaitis

What a dismal summer! Here it is Labor Day and farmers have yet to complete their first cutting of hay. Late blight destroyed many a tomato crop and those not affected have all of the taste and consistency of wet cardboard. Corn here in Maine is but knee high.

Behind the fields the fruits of the forest have also languished. Perhaps it was the long stretches of cool wet weather that put a stop to the saprophytic mushrooms, for few litter- decaying fungi of any species appeared in the coastal forests near us.  Scant too were the usual mycorrhizal species of summer: the Amanita, Russula, and Lactarius.

But in the last few days, walking along the bench of a nearby mountain, and again at the edge of a large lake, there came a sight that warmed my heart and seemed ready to fill the cusp of autumn with promise and pleasure:  Sulfur Shelfs, bright as neon, sprouting buds with flesh as tender as brie, scent fragrant as a ripe peach.

Can any mushroom better announce the approach of the equinox than the Sulfur Shelf? It heralds the end of summer with a burst of beauty and energy that stops us dead in our tracks. “Here it is. Here I am” it seems to say. “Get ready, we are about to turn that corner into a bright and bountiful fall”.

The Sulfur Shelf, bright harbinger of fall

The Sulfur Shelf, bright harbinger of fall

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The Long-lived Wild Mushroom Eater’s Golden Rules

Regular readers of this blog (and newcomers who put “mushrooms” in the search field) know we are enthusiastic wild mushroom collectors and consumers, and  that one of us –  Bill – is an expert who writes and lectures on mycology and is a consultant for the New York and New England Poison Control centers.

Calls are coming in almost daily, mostly concerning pre-verbal children exploring things before their parents can stop them, most of them, thank goodness, turning out fine. But as the recent Leccinum Warning shows, sometimes not so fine and that led Bill to ask me whether we’d ever posted the elementary rules of safe mushroom eating. Now we have.

Rules for the Eating of Mushrooms

By Bill Bakaitis

There are old mushroom eaters, and there are bold mushroom eaters, but there are no old and bold ones!

Here are 5 rules that the prudent Mycophage might employ:

1. DO NOT EAT ANY MUSHROOM UNLESS YOU ARE 100% CERTAIN OF ITS IDENTITY AS A SAFE SPECIES.  CHECK IT OUT IN RELIABLE TEXTS.

2. TEST YOUR OWN REACTION TO EACH MUSHROOM BY EATING ONLY A SMALL PORTION OF A SINGLE SPECIES AT A TIME. REPEAT A FEW DAYS LATER TO TEST FOR DEVELOPED ALLERGIC REACTIONS.

3. MAKE SURE THE MUSHROOM IS THOROUGHLY COOKED BEFORE YOU EAT IT.

4. WHEN TESTING YOUR TOLERANCE FOR A NEW SPECIES, DO NOT CONSUME ANY ALCOHOL WITH THE MEAL OR FOR A FEW DAYS AFTER.

5. KEEP A FEW UNCOOKED MYSHROOMS IN THE FRIDGE FOR IDENTIFICATION SHOULD A TOXIC REACTION DEVELOP.

Why do these rules work?

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