Soup

I didn't find a honey mushroom soup recipe that suited me and I was too busy to dig thru web sites and our cookbooks so I decided to wing it. My goal was to come up with something that used what I had on hand in the pantry and the garden with the honey mushrooms.

What you need (substitute that's what makes it fun)

• Honey Mushrooms
• 1/4 cup brown rice
• Celery stems and leaves
• Onion
• Garlic
• Carrot
• Medium tomato
• Fennel leaves
• Swiss chard
• Beef broth 3 cans
• 1 cup water
• Salt & pepper

 

If you're really creative you can do all of this in one pot and only dirty two soup dishes for the set asides.

Parboil the mushrooms. Discard the water and set aside. Slimy buggers aren't they? Let them cool and chop them into pieces.

Remove the skin from the tomato. Chop and set aside.

Cube the carrot and set aside.

Sauté the onion and garlic in butter. When it softens a bit add the chopped celery for another minute or two. Remove and set aside the mixture. Add more butter to the pot. Add the rice and sauté until it browns up a bit. Add the mix back to the pot along with the carrots, mushrooms and tomato.

Stir it up and adjust the quantities to suit your taste. Add salt and pepper now it you'd like.

Add the beef broth and water. Bring it to a boil. Add the fennel leaves (I used only a small amount) and let this simmer for about twenty minutes.

Clean the Swiss chard chard remove the stems, chop up the leaves. Add the Swiss chard to the pot, stir, reduce the heat to low. Go out and stack firewood, cut the grass or look for more mushrooms. It'll be done when you get back.

Goes good with fresh hot biscuits.

by Joe  Contact Me

The Circle of Life

Today I was searching the web for a recipe for soup made with honey mushrooms and the first page of results pointed me back here. Is that cool or what?

by Joe  Contact Me

Miles in my shoes

Sometimes after you walk many miles you discover that all of the mushrooms are within sight of the car.

by Joe  Contact Me

Hens or sheep

Yesterday we went out and found three hens. Funny thing is when we talk amongst ourselves we call them sheep heads. When I talk to folks at the mushroom club I call them hens. We must have checked out a hundred fair sized oak trees. I was hoping for some boletes but we found none. We did come up with a few nice horse mushrooms.

by Joe  Contact Me

Spots

Yesterday a new critter showed up at our house, a bunny named Spots. That soon became Sputs. No good reason that's just the name that stuck.

Yesterday I went out to check out two of my mushroom spots. One where I had found chanterelles and boletes and the other that I just had high hopes for. I found two chanterelles but no boletes. Going to the "promising" area I found one small bunch of honey mushrooms, a large, past it's prime, puffball and several mushrooms that I'm trying to identify. One of them looked like a sharp scaled pholiota. The other had a whitish/tan cap and purple gills. With purple gills you would think it would be easy to find in the book but I haven't come up with an id that satisfies me. What I need is a hand held device that can take the abuse of field use where I can look them up on the spot.

Success at mushroom hunting comes from knowing a lot of good spots. Over time you accumulate a list of spots where you found mushrooms and the bigger the list the better your chances of success. One of the keys to mushroom hunting success is time. The more time you can spend and the more ground you can cover, the bigger that list will become.

by Joe  Contact Me

Mushrooms everywhere.

After MM everyone has the bug to hunt mushrooms. Yesterday afternoon my wife and I went out in search of bolete and sheep's head (hen of the woods) mushrooms. We had a really exciting day. We found a handful of boletes, three small hens, a couple of horse mushrooms, a few chanterelles and bunches of honey mushrooms and aborted entoloma. We spent the evening cleaning, cooking and drying mushrooms. One more trip to the honey mushroom patch and I should have enough for Christmas Eve. Now if I could just find a whole bunch of boletes. The truth is I shouldn't complain. We never had much luck finding boletes so any number greater than zero is an improvement.

One thing that I did realize yesterday is the progress that I have made in mushroom identification over the past few years. When I joined the club the only mushrooms that I was comfortable in collecting were meadow mushrooms. Though I am a cautious and conservative collector I have had the opportunity to safely gather and savor mushrooms in each season of the year. And I've had a lot of fun. I could be the poster child for joining a mushroom club.

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by Joe  Contact Me

MM - A huge success

Congratulations to Dick Dougall for winning the North American
Mycological Association's Knighton Award. The Knighton Award is named
for Harry and Elsie Knighton who founded NAMA. It is given to
recognize and encourage persons who have distinguished themselves in
service to their local clubs. Gary Lincoff presented Dick with his award at Mushroom Mania.

We had a blast at Mushroom Mania on Saturday. The weather was perfect. We had nine tables full of mycologist identified mushrooms. The presentations by Gary, Rod and Jon were very interesting and as always the food was excellent.

Rod went with us on our walk on the Braille Trail. I was truly impressed by his knowledge. Although Rod's focus in on amanita mushrooms he seemed really comfortable identifying almost all of the mushrooms that we presented to him.

Thank you all of you who put so much effort into making this Mushroom Mania a success.

 

by Joe  Contact Me

Wow

My neighbor just came up with a bucket of mushrooms for the "mushroom expert" to identify. Being president of the club does not automatically make one an expert. However if you know a handful of mushrooms your neighbors will consider you an expert. These were amanita and rusulla types and that's as specific as I get.

I had seen the mushrooms growing in his yard as drove past this morning. As a matter of fact I saw mushrooms coming up in several places on my way home and I had stopped to investigate two places even though it was raining. I managed to grab about a half a dozen horse mushrooms. What are they selling portabella mushrooms for in the store?

It appears to me that the ingredients for a perfect mushroom mania are coming together. The rain is bound to encourage fruiting and the weather forecast for Saturday is for a beautiful Fall day. This is going to be an event to be remembered.

Here at home it's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas. Mrs. L received her allotment of mushrooms and was baking mushrooms logs for Mushroom Mania. A splendid aroma filled the house just like when we cook mushrooms for Christmas Eve.

 

 

 

by Joe  Contact Me

White mushrooms

It appears the the past week's rain has had a stimulating effect on our mushroom friends. LBMs are popping up all of my lawn. I've also seen a fair amount of white mushrooms around pine trees. The other day I stopped to investigate and hopefully pick a bunch only to discover that they were not horse mushrooms but Amanitas.

I suspect that they will have a very productive day tomorrow at South Park's mushroom walk.

by Joe  Contact Me

Governor Rendell Proclaims September ‘Mushroom Month’

Governor Edward G. Rendell has proclaimed September "Mushroom Month" throughout the commonwealth.

Pennsylvania ranks first nationally in the production of agaricus mushrooms, the popular button variety most common to consumers.  The state is responsible for producing more than 59 percent of the nation's total crop.

The state grows a variety of other specialty mushrooms for fresh market and processing use, including shiitake, enoki and oyster.  The state's mushroom growers provide 55 percent of the nation's fresh market sales and 78 percent of the mushrooms used in processing.

by Joe  Contact Me

More rain on the way.

Mercifully we didn't get caught up in a hurricane Ivan situation. The amount of rain received depended on location. But we did get enough rain to jump start the Fall mushroom season. There's still time to register for Mushroom Mania but you'd better hurry.

I had mentioned the blue staining bolete at my in-laws. When I went down there to cut the grass they were huge, horse mushroom size, and there were a bunch of them. They stained dark blue as soon as I touched them. I suspect that just looking at them started the process. When I headed up the hill with the riding mower they looked like grilled pancakes and after I passed over them, those that managed to survive the mulching blade, looked like dark blue disks or blueberry pancakes.

by Joe  Contact Me