Chanterelle bonanza...

Sorry I haven't been posting lately but I've been busy foraging during this amazing chanterelle season we've been having here.

I'm relatively new at this game but from what I've been hearing 2013 is shaping up to be a great year for chanterelles here in upstate New York and in the northeast US in general.

Not only am I finding a lot of chanties but I'm finding a lot of large ones (see pic), about 4 lbs so far. They're so large that you might mistake them for smooth chanterelles. Smooth chanterelles usually show up later in the season in August but actually, after doing some reading, it turns out that the distinction between between them is more blurry then I realized.

The smooth chanterelle is larger, has a wavy cap, and is 'smooth' meaning no gills. But in my experience they do have gills, just not well defined ones. Meanwhile the ones I've found are quite large, have a wavy cap, but the clear gills indicate that they are golden chanties not smooth. What I've read is that the gills will run the whole spectrum from clearly defined to barely detectable.

Most importantly - from my point of view anyway - is that they are both equally delicious. That being the case I don't really spend too much time id'ing them one way or the other.

LOLNMF

...As in 'Lots Of Looking, Not Much Finding'. That pretty much sums up morel hunting here in central New York. But what the heck in the early season you need to have something to look for right? So it was with low expectations that Mike and I went to one of my 2 known morel spots today. All things considered I'm not disappointed with the 'haul'. Its been very dry lately and last year I found zero morels so I'll take it.

I sauteed them with wild ramps and broccoli and they were delicious.

I've read a lot about where to look for morels; old apple trees, dying elms, etc...But for me here in central New York the only place I've found them is by mature Ash trees by a stream.

Not Dead Yet...

This is pretty funny...An inoculated shiitake log that I gave up on fruited! I've had it 2.5 years and tried a few times to soak it and get it to fruit with no luck. The only reason it was still getting wet was because I was using it to put it on top of my other logs so they would be submerged for their winter soak. That's why there are only those mushrooms on the one side of it, the side that was in the water.

On a related note I've decided that I love shiitakes mushrooms! They have a delicious nutty, woodsy, tea flavor and a meaty texture. They also dry well, retaining a lot of their flavor. This spring I plan to increase my production of inoculated logs. 

Edit: Well this is interesting...What you see here is a log inoculated with Shaggy Mane spores that never fruited. Imagine my surprise seeing a shiitake there! So there must have been a mistake right? I put the wrong spores in one of the holes, but it was growing on the surface of the bark not in a spore hole. I'm fairly certain that what happened was that some spores from the shiitake log jumped over to this one. I often would lean them against each other. 

So score another point for those tenacious shiitakes.

Return of the blewits

I was going for an xmas blewit harvest but I didn't want to risk tonight's cold destroying them. But still I'd say an edible mushroom harvest on Dec. 23rd in upstate New York is pretty remarkable.

I'll remember 2012 as the year of the blewit harvest that wouldn't quit. It started on Oct. 22nd and just kept going and going. The photo shows some that were gathered on Nov. 25th.

In the meantime there have been several nights that were in the 20s along with some snow and sleet but somehow they stayed alive and kept growing. I had to wait for the snow to melt off the top of the one's I gathered today.  I'm guessing that the decomposing mulch helped keep the temp up, that plus the fact that the mulch is on a slope that faces south.

I'll cook those last blewits with some string beans as a side dish for xmas dinner.

Happy holidays everyone. Let's all hope for a soggy summer and early fall in 2013.

Tasty Blewits

Its pretty ironic that this year, of the mushrooms I've actually harvested and eaten, about 90% were within 100 feet of my front door. Including these Blewits growing in the mulch in my side yard. There have also been many Shaggy Manes fruiting in my yard that make up the rest of the bulk of my skimpy 'haul' in this dry summer of 2012.

These are the first blewits that I've eaten and I must admit that I was a little hesitant. The young blewits didn't look very purple at all, in fact I never would have considered them except that they were growing close by the larger specimens you see in the photo. If you look at the large caps you can see a purple rim which is a good tell for blewits. However I still recommend you do a spore print to make sure you don't get a cort, a poisonous lookalike. There is no mistaking a spore print of a cort, it will be rust red. The print I took of my blewits was very light with a hint of yellow.

I cooked them up with fennel and a light cream sauce...Very good...Not on par with my beloved maitakes or chanterelles but definitely worth the effort.

We finally had a decent soaking rain yesterday. This weekend I'll make a last ditch effort to find some late season hens (maitakes) before calling it quits. Wish me luck.

Follow the rain...

Its not the prettiest specimen perhaps but what you see there is my first maitake for 2012. (It turned out to be my first and ONLY maitake find in '12). I've already cooked it up and eaten some and it's delicious.

We've finally had some rain around here but, except for a large patch of what I believe are honey mushrooms, there hasn't been much to speak of coming up locally. I think we need a lot of rain to overcome the very dry soil conditions from earlier in summer.

So I used the precipitation map here...
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge2/RFC_Precip/
...to find out where the most rain fell. I noticed that there's a National Forest just to the west of where I live that had an extra 1-2" of rain from a recent storm...So today I hopped in my car and a short drive later I was foraging around a park where the ground was noticeably wetter and there were quite a lot of mushrooms around.

Which goes to show you...You might have the perfect spot but if that spot hasn't had rain for 3 weeks you're not going to find many mushrooms. Sometimes you have to follow the rain.

Chicken of the Woods

Well its been a hot, dry summer and consequently not much to write about. But finally we had *some* rain here in central NY (not a lot) so I took a walk in the woods to see what I could find...

This is a chicken of the woods that fruits on a log not too far from my house. Last year I had a large fruiting in early July I believe. This year it finally showed up on Sept 7th, rather late in the year for this mushroom.

I left it there for now. We're supposed to get some rain tomorrow but if we don't I'm going to try and pour water on it to get it to grow. I'll let you know how it goes.

btw...I know Chicken of the Woods isn't a choice edible but I happen to think its pretty tasty if you harvest it while its still young. If it grows much beyond the size of your hand then it gets woody and loses its flavor. If you're going to eat an older Chicken of the Woods then save the outer 2-3 inches and toss the rest.