See ya' Hearty "hen" soup, 192-193

Oliver chasing shore birds on the Oregon Coast.

Fred here. This recipe may call for Hungarian paprika, but I guar-en-tee you won't be "hungry" after you finish a big bowl of this soup.

So that's what this blog has come to after nearly a year: bad puns that are sure to offend our readers in Central Europe.

But like all puns, mine speaks the truth. This soup really is very filling, as could be expected since it has the word "Hearty" right in the title. And it is tasty. I'm sure we'll make it again, next time we find oursevles with an abundance of hen of the woods mushrooms. OK, it might be a while. But I hope not.

In an effort to use all of her precious Portland mushrooms before they turned Ann was cooking like crazy last week. The results were delicious but exhausting. I think we'll be able to ease up a little bit now that the perishables have been consumed. This is the last recipe in Cooking Wild in Missouri, but since we're not doing them in order it is not the last recipe in our blog. We're getting close, though.




Hunting fer 'shrooms, Part Deux

"The bottomlands! All the morels are in the bottomlands right now." That's the word on the street in mushroom land. I would be skeptical that morels are up already, but someone was selling them at the Columbia Farmer's Market Saturday. I saw them with my own two covetous eyes. Zoinks.

So, where does a person get to these bottomlands? Most bottomland areas I think of are fields, not forested areas. And, the smaller patches of bottomland woods that do come to mind have silver maple, cottonwood and sycamore and not so much of the trees that are typical to find morels around: elms and ash.

But, with the spring so early, I'm determined not to get skunked on morels and to be out there early, too. So, Saturday eight of us went to a conservation area with some bottomland forest to look for mushrooms. We spent an afternoon doing the best we could at looking and came up empty-handed. What did we learn?

1. We don't have a knack for getting kids excited about finding a mushroom they've never seen before.
2. There's tons of poison ivy in bottomland areas. It would be better for your PI sensitive child to wear pants, not shorts, the next time he goes morel hunting. Duh.
3. Adjust your expectations to enjoying the process of mushroom hunting because actual finds can be few (if ever) and far between.
4. It's amazing how many skills need to be developed to hunt/fish and gather in Missouri. I really admire folks who are successful on a regular bases finding mushrooms, or for that matter land a fish or take a turkey. It's no coincidence. They know what they are doing.
5. Those mushrooms don't just jump into your basket or into your eyesight if you look for them for five minutes. You earn those puppies with lots of time looking.
6. It's a funny mental game to look hard for morels for a long time when you don't even know if there are any to be had or if you are close to the right place to find them.

Hmmm. I thought this, like many things, was going to be a bit easier. Someone remind me why I shouldn't just buy the morels at Farmer's Market, again? Oh, that's right. I'm enjoying the process of mushroom hunting. It's not about result but the process. Right.

I have to say that while I do enjoy mushroom hunting very much and am anxious to go again soon, it would so not hurt my feelings to find a mess of them just to know we have some idea about what we are doing!

Mushrooms? Where are you?

A funky fungi weekend

Oliver in his ranger hat at the mushroom program

The Missouri Mycological Society http://missourimycologicalsociety.org  is starting a group in Mid-Missouri which is great, because Fred and I know approximately squat when it comes to any wild mushrooms besides what a morel looks like. This Saturday morning the group offered a program here in Columbia on poisonous mushrooms in Missouri. It was taught by Maxine Stone who wrote Missouri's Wild Mushrooms. The boys and I got to attend the program and got quit a bit out of it.

Destroying Angels are very common, all white mushrooms with a ring around the stalk and cap at the base. They'll kill ya.

Jack-o-Lantern mushrooms glow in the dark when they are in the right stage. Make you terribly sick.

Alcholol inkies are perfectly edible. Only if you drink alchohol 1-3 days before of after ingesting them, major sick stuff happens.

We learned about 10 poisonous mushrooms in all, which I believe will help me have a bit more confidence at least as to the mushrooms to avoid when we start looking for mushrooms this spring.