Shaggy mania

Mushroom saga, part deux: I went just a tad crazy last weekend. I found a field of shaggy mane mushrooms and the owners kindly allowed me to go pick them. I left with two brown shopping bags full and could have filled a couple more. This grassy lawn was just littered with the things. It was amazing. ‘Course, when I got home, I had to clean and process all of them, right away. See, there’s a bit of fine print with these mushrooms. They look all pretty and white in the field, but if you leave them uncooked overnight you will have a stinky black mess. (Shaggy manes belong to a group of mushrooms known as “inky caps.”)

So, the result was four hours of washing, chopping, cooking and freezing. It was, I must say, exhausting work. Still, I’ll have enough for soups and sauces for the winter, which is a good thing. Now if I can only get some ducks to go with it. Mmmm. Duck.

Anyway, as a bonus to this little excursion to someone else’s lawn, I ran across huge bunches of what I believe to be fried chicken mushrooms, shown below, which are also supposed to be a good edible.


The deal with these is you have to be careful because they supposedly resemble some other poisonous varieties. One test, which goes along with a few other things, is to take a spore print. Pink spores=bad. White spores=good. My mother also notes that she has never heard of a poisonous mushroom that actually tastes good. Of course, that’s a little bit more risky.

At any rate, I was elated to find a white spore print and so now will try a tiny bit and see whether I keel over or not. *grin* So if I’m not back within a couple of weeks, I probably offed myself with a mushroom. Kidding. Kidding.

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