We’re finally seeing mushrooms around the peninsula.
After early hope, brought on by chanterelle buttons (see Popping Buttons), the mushroom season has, as always, advanced at its own inscrutable pace.
Usually, we start looking for chicken of the woods, also called sulfur shelf, in early July. Many years we miss it, because we’re busy with Independence Day activities. This year, July came and went without much sign of the neon orange fungus.
Earlier this month, Aly began finding it, and, perhaps because it arrived when we’re more “in mushroom mode” as it were, we ate a lot of it. We began to wonder if other mushrooms would arrive late as well.
Michelle’s capful of chanterelles and Aly’s latest bolete (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
A short time later, we began to see mushrooms of several varieties, most of them either inedible, or ones that can be eaten, but we have not tried yet. Most of these are in the russula family.
We heard rumors of success elsewhere. A friend told of finding a king bolete, our favorite variety, near town, that he said weighed 5 pounds. Even if he exaggerated, that’s still a lot of mushroom!
A couple of days ago, Aly started finding them on the walk home. So far, she’s picked three, the third of which came home to a house full of chanterelles.
I’d taken my mushroom bag along to haul in some firewood rounds I’d left in the forest. I hoped for boletes, but, finding none, decided to harvest chanterelles for that evening’s dinner. I soon had more than enough, then Michelle came home with her watch cap full of even more! I cooked up half of them for dinner, setting aside the rest for another meal.
Half of Mark’s chanterelle haul, sliced for sauteing (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
We have discovered that the local deer eat mushrooms. The same day we saw deer in our yard (see Deer in the Compound!) Michelle encountered a doe near the ridge. The deer seemed so casual about humans that Michelle stopped, dug her phone out of her pack, and took a bunch of photos. She noticed that the deer ate russulas, but only the caps. Since that observation, we’ve noticed that russula stems litter the forest floor all around. Incidentally, I saw a doe in that same part of the forest on my way through one afternoon. She seems pretty happy on a slope next to the trail, and continues to be less than impressed by our presence.
Anyway, our mushroom supply seems assured for now. We’re still looking for some varieties. Michelle uses dried mushrooms to make kimchi, but Aly likes the idea of trying some mock matsutakes in the next batch (see Our Pick of Mushrooms). Usually, we see them before the boletes come out, but so far this year, we haven’t seen a single one.
Do not make the mistake of using this post, or any of this blog’s discussion of mushrooms as a guide in selecting mushrooms. Do that only with a good guidebook (we prefer David Arora’s All That the Rain Promises, and More . . . (paid link)) or an experienced guide—preferably both!