Gift Wrapped

A full inch of rain had barely woken or greened anything because it's been so dry. Dry means no mushrooms, not since late April, and no chanterelles for sure -- normally the woods is paved with big ruffly yellow ones, and my lawn, when soaked in summer, is host to as many as 17 different fascinating Missouri fungi. Today I saw for the first time that the juniper bush under which grew, annually in autumn, 20 pounds of rare Hen of the Woods 'shroom has been pulled out: sigh.

The walk led me to the former mushroom capital of my woods where there wasn't even an LBM ("little brown mushroom," as in "Never eat little brown mushrooms") to be seen; it simply hasn't been wet enough. As for any hunter, some years are plentiful and some not. I turned to retrace my steps and saw these Dreamsicle heads of Chicken of the Woods, beautifully fresh, ribboned with orange, yellow and white. I took the smaller head, about the size of a cabbage (see the glove, at the very bottom, I put in the photo, for scale) and within half an hour the fronds were roasting to a crisp in my toaster oven preparing for my Sunday guest.

Why didn't I take the big Chicken, or both? Didn't need it, and conservation means don't rip everything up out of the earth. Why not take the big Chicken and freeze it for later? Freezing fungi dehydrates the best out of it.

Pink Things You'll Find on the Ground in August

And they just left it there in the grocery's parking lot. . .

Laetiporus sulphureus (good mushroom to eat!)

"August is a September month"

Did You Ever Have a Day with a Theme?

Poland. . .never thought I'd miss it as I do. . .in a supermarket in Wielazija I bought Polish soup packets and have hoarded them since. When the day dawned dull and cloudy I opened the one for instant mushroom soup. Poles are great fans and pickers of forest mushrooms.  I cooked the soup and let it sit while I caught up on a few hours of outdoor chores put off because of heavy rains. Then, bored, unwilling to drive anywhere, I tried entertaining myself looking for fungi in the soaked lawn. All sorts and sizes, 13 varieties in all, but the most glorious and only edible was a fresh chicken mushroom at the base of a tree less than 20 feet from the door. If I hadn't made myself look I wouldn't have found it.

At once I trimmed and collected some, cleaned it, sliced it, sauteed the pieces in butter, added them to the mushroom soup, and now I had genuine Polish wild-mushroom soup. And figured I might as well boil some potatoes and turnips and bring out the sauerkraut and Krakowski sausage (rations kept for homesick-for-Poland days) and eat a Polish lunch, and for dessert had strawberries, and it is June, and I was the happiest person in the whole world.

Praying for Mushrooms

See the May 6 entry to learn all about the dump on our property and what Patrick is doing about it. This related but more cheerful story begins when, while cleaning up the dump, Patrick found next to it a fine patch of morel mushrooms. That's right, the coveted, the sought-after; the fungi I told everyone I'd scoured the property for, year after year, and never ever found, so therefore (I confidently concluded) there was none. One Divine reader commented that on 100 acres there must be some morels, but I didn't heed him. I had scoured every inch of the land -- except in the area of the dump.

Finding morels was the news of the decade around here, but I was annoyed with myself because few things are as humbling as broadcasting one's righteousness and then being proven wrong. To be fair, the previous tenants, Europeans who knew where and how to look, hadn't found any morels in their 10 years here, either. So, Patrick having shown me where he found the morels, I tromped through the woods alone, combing through trash and likely sites and ravines, and found not even one. It's late in the season. The morels grow taller at season's end, easier to see, but they have little flesh. I thought, "Finding just one would make me feel so much better." No morels.

"I guess you want to teach me a lesson," I said to God/Lord Ganesha (the elephant-headed Hindu god of the material world, my favorite). I added, "However, God/Lord Ganesha, I have learned this lesson now. Please present me with a morel so I can quit scolding myself." About to give up, I walked over an incline and suddenly saw on a tree stump the hugest, most dazzling and freshest Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) mushroom I have ever seen. Yes, edible, and how! Always positively identify such mushrooms, cook thoroughly before tasting, and take only a little first bite; a small percentage of people react badly to it.

With my knife I cut away about a pound and a half of the flesh that some say tastes like lobster. I cleaned and chopped it up, sauteed it with salt and pepper, ate some, and froze the extra for later, perhaps to top a pizza. And on a reconnaissance mission to the dump I did find morels: two. So now my harsh feelings are salved, and I know the gods (Thank Y'all!) must either like me or find me amusing. They are generous.

Chicken

My mushroom classes and forays with the mushroom society have taught me to recognize several common mushrooms, but one is always seeking the edible ones, and here I found one in a ground-level hole in a tree, a few "petals" of Chicken of the Woods or Sulfur Shelf (Laetiporus sulphureus), so called because of its bright-yellow underside. This isn't Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa), which looks like an actual hen with gray feathers and no head; years ago I found a glorious 24-ounce Hen in my woods, which I kept for a while out of sheer delight with it, and now I know that one was edible too. The Sulfur Shelf should perhaps be called "Chicken Breast of the Woods," because it has lovely dense white meat, divinely scented like canned mushroom soup.

The pieces you can break off from the shelf-like whole are fresh enough to eat, and I broke off about three ounces, leaving the remainder. Having checked it with my mushroom-identification manuals, and having seen slides and real-life samples in a course and actually obtained some recipes for Chicken of the Woods (always cook wild mushrooms), I was sure this was the choice edible, but was too chicken to take even a sliver, saute it and bite. I left it for wildlife to enjoy.

Chicken of the Woods

This is "Chicken of the Woods" or "Sulfur Shelf" (Laetiporus sulphureus) seen today on a dead oak in the Divine woods. This meaty wild mushroom according to Mushrooms of North America is "the most popular edible polypore. Fresh young specimens are delicious..." However, I enjoy wild mushrooms solely as works of art. Chicken of the Woods (not to be confused with "Hen of the Woods" (Grifola frondosa)), is parasitical, and in its early stages, attacks a tree's heartwood, and by the time the "chickens" you see here appear on the tree bark, "they are definitely coming home to roost, as far as the tree's health is concerned," says Mushroomexpert.com. You can see that the undersides of this tree fungus are sulfur yellow. Looking into joining the local mycological society, I found its homepage plastered with dozens of warnings: They are NOT RESPONSIBLE if you go hunting mushrooms with them, then eat one and croak! I didn't feel the love. For comparison, here's the spectacular 24-ounce Grifola frondosa I found in the woods in October 2008.