Mushrooms On a Log

So, now that I've talked up wild mushrooms as the best things ever to hit a soup pot,  I must admit

that I am trying to grow some mushrooms myself.

A couple of years ago I purchased a kit for Sonoma Brown Oyster mushrooms and Lion's Mane mushrooms. Why those? Just because they would grow in Maple logs and I knew I would always have a ready supply of them. The Big Leaf Maple is practically a weed here in the Willamette Valley.
You may have noticed I said "a couple of years ago".

I actually never got around to using them because the envelope with the mycelium plugs in it had fallen to the back of our very unpredictable refrigerator and froze. They were all brown and slimy so I assumed they were dead and left the envelope in the back of the fridge for TWO YEARS. Can anyone out there beat that for procrastinating?

In my defense we are talking about a spare fridge which does not get used for much except canning overflow and summer produce.

Anyway I cleaned that fridge out last week and lo and behold, the mycelium plugs were white and fluffy!

As luck would have it, or sad to say, depending on how you look at it, we had fresh cut Maple logs on hand.
Our beloved Maple which was somewhere around 200 years old, had given out in the heavy rain we had this fall. We are very sad and miss her every day.

But then I had these limbs for my mushroom project.

A 5/8" hole is drilled, the mycelium plug pounded in and then hot bees wax is poured over the hole to keep out competing fungi.

Every 4" all around the log.

This project took about an hour per log, which adds up to 4 hours. Oh, my aching back!

Mr. J kept climbing on the logs and letting me know that he was bored and that he thinks that log mushrooms are absolutely no fun and he feels I would benefit much more from crawling around in the woods looking for mushrooms with him. He may be right.

Now we will see if it all worked right... in... about a year. I'm not getting my hopes up, but I will be excited when, and IF, I get some Lion's Mane mushrooms next Fall.

Foraging For Fungi

I have been crawling around in the underbrush, following deer and rabbit trails since I was a little girl in search of, among other things, the elusive Chanterelle mushroom.

Chanterelles are among the easiest mushroom for beginners to ID and that is why my family trusted me, as a small child, to bring them home for dinner every Fall.

Since everyone has heard horror stories about eating the "wrong" mushrooms,  I don't really think I need to stress how careful you need to be when gathering mushrooms. We all know that you need to be very careful when identifying mushrooms in the wild.

With that said, I spend a lot of time convincing people to eat wild mushrooms. I have found that friends and family tend to be a little nervous about the mushrooms on the table, and they must be assured beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were wild crafted by someone who knew what they were doing.

It's a shame that wild mushrooms are so hard for people to enjoy. Their taste is beyond compare! No farmed mushroom can even come close to the flavor of a wild mushroom. So, it is really worth learning to ID a few kinds of mushrooms if you like to hike or ramble in the woods and eat good food.

These are Common Puffballs which are delicious and just as their name indicates - common. They are everywhere this Fall.

Just because I have been picking a few types of mushroom since I was little, it does not make me an expert. I have been slowly learning to identify more and more kinds of fungi over the years from books and other more senior mushroom hunters.

My favorite book on the subject is one that June got me for Christmas a few years ago. It is the simplest reference book for wild mushrooms I have ever found. And it is because of this book that I have happily discovered the Red Cracked Bolete.

 

When I was little, I was convinced this mushroom was poisonous and no adult told me otherwise. It is a crazy looking mushroom with "tubes" instead of gills and if that isn't weird enough it "bruises" blue!

It is delicious and it turns out to be one of the few edible mushrooms that is safer for a beginner to ID. No look-a-likes (except other edible mushrooms in the Bolete family, some don't taste good and a few will make you sick, but none of them will kill you) and it seems to grow everywhere. It is not elusive like other wild mushrooms. It is literally growing in our front yard here on the homestead.

What  am doing for this mushroom season, other than eating and eating mushrooms, is drying them to use in stews, sauces and soups for the rest of the year. The flavor is indescribable, it's effect is almost like MSG, the soup tastes delicious but you can't really tell what makes it so amazing. The secret? Just a couple of diced up, dried wild mushrooms.

Chanterelles do not dry well, so I sauté them in lots of olive oil and put them in the freezer to spoon into my scrambled eggs this winter. YUM!

Gifts From Friends: Chanterelle Mushroom and Butternut Soup

I did not find a hat full of Chanterelle mushrooms this fall but a very good friend of ours had the good fortune to do much more than that. He found a grocery sack full and through an act of incredible generosity gave us half!
I also had a Butternut squash given to me by another good friend, sitting on the counter.
Hmmm, I thought, what would they taste like together?
I peeled the Butternut and cubed it. Then I cleaned the fir needles from the Chanterelles and roughly chopped  them.

 

I diced some carrots and celery and sauteed the whole thing in 4 tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil.
For seasoning I did not want to do too much since Chanterelles are very delicate in flavor. I added only salt and pepper and a 1/2 teaspoon of Tarragon. I sauteed the ingredients until the squash was tender and the Chanterelles were juicy. Then I added 2 cups of chicken stock from the freezer and a cup of soy milk (half and half would be more traditional, but soy is what I had) to make it slightly creamy.
Although I completely made up this recipe on the spot, I think it was the best soup I have ever made. Owing entirely to the incredible ingredients of course. 
I had baked a loaf of bread the day before and the soup and bread made a perfect meal.
We were very thankful that night for the gift and gifting of good friends.

Hangin' Out With the Fun Guy

Why do I have a Picture of a hole? This is where I have found Oregon White Truffles, but not today.

While I trudged up and down the hill in the rain putting things away for the winter and checking out the fall colors I started noticing the shocking variety of fungi sprouting up everywhere. In huge rings, in spongy lumps, bright slimy reds and faint, almost ghostly lavenders.

I decided to start taking pictures so I could identify them later but it's hard to get a good, inclusive shot of them because they are mostly in low light and low to the ground. I haven't been able to ID very many of them yet, but I thought I would share them so you could see some of the crazy shapes and colors of these mysterious beings.

Oh, and Buck, sorry about the pun. I couldn't help myself.

Fungal bits

It has been almost 100 degrees the last couple of days, and I have not been doing anything blog-worthy, so here is something from a cooler time of year.

In my seemingly endless effort to get the pasture fenced and usable, I had some rotting logs to contend with. They had lain in the pasture zone for several years, and were not something we wanted to leave in there for the horses. And they were soggy and rotten, so they would not make good firewood. Thus they were my least favorite log chore; all the effort of firewood with no neat stack to show for it.They were mossy and damp from the unusually wet spring. Looking closer at the moss, I saw these interesting little spikes or stalks. (Click on the photos to see them larger.)

They were small, delicate and, well, very specific looking. Odds were they were created for a specific task.

A little risky web surfing indicated that they are the reproductive organs of fungus, preparing to release their spores to the wind.

So I did the best I could to keep the chunks of moss they were living in intact, and set them to the side of the pile. Hopefully, they were able to complete their mission, and next spring there will be another crop of these tiny wild ones.