I chose today’s photo by blindly scrolling through a folder of images. This photo was taken on August 3, 2008. I remember purchasing these chanterelle mushrooms from my weekly trip to the farmers market but I don’t recall what I made with them. No matter, this picture is a good reminder that I need to get on signing up for some kind of wild mushroom foraging class this spring. I started off the year crossing off a couple of items from my life to-do list. Might as well keep going for the gold while I’m on a roll. Let’s get this done!
When I didn’t have time to sign up for a course in the fall I went ahead and bought myself a new guide to edible mushroom foraging called, “The Edible Mushroom Book.” The book is a very good beginner’s guide with lots of detailed photographs and instructions to help prevent terrible, unfortunate accidents, but I’ll admit that while it is nice to look at the pictures and daydream I don’t plan to go out and give it a whirl without a professional guide. I ate mushrooms off the front lawn when I was five; lots and lots of forced puking followed by an overnight hospital stay turned out to be a hands-on lesson that I’ve never been able to forget.
Wow, I can see why you’d be a little hesitant to go out on your own mushroom hunting. Of course, I’ve never had such a bad experience as that and I’m still a little scared of mushroom hunting. I like how Michal Pollan equates that all with a continent-wide fear of mushrooms.
I wish we had the cool, moist areas down here required for neato mushrooms. Unfortunately all the cool moist areas down here are swamps and those are too salty for much in the way of mushrooms. Nothing here is cool or fertile long enough for the really interesting mushrooms. Plenty of stinkhorns, though. Lots and lots of those in spring and fall.
I saw people coming out of High Park with paper bags full of mushrooms last year towards the end of the gardening season … they obviously knew what they were doing (I hope)!