Mad about Mushrooms . . .

November has been another fungal delight!

Yes, it's true.  In a month that is filled with family and friends, food and fun, we've managed to spend a fair amount of time in the woods with our favorite fungi, too.

It hasn't been our most productive November ever, but it's been very interesting.  We've explored some new territory, and we've visited our traditional spots as well.  Our favorite Mt. Hood haunts have long ago bedded down with a layer snow while our go-to spots here near Port Orford have sometimes been drowned with inches and inches of rain.

Boletes can get "wormy" but this one had no undesirable guests. 

We bid farewell to October with a cauliflower and coral hydnums

Late October found us back on Mt. Hood, hunting for matsutake (Tricholoma [Armillaria] ponderosum) at 3,000-4,000 feet elevation. 

On Tuesday, we confidently headed to our most reliable matsutake area, only to be greeted by very cold temperatures and a total absence of the Japanese pine mushroom!  Even though we invested an hour or two in this location, we never found a singlematsutake and reluctantly headed back to our vehicle with only a couple of white chanterelles (Cantharellus subalbidus) and one perfect Admirable Boletus (Boletus mirabilis).

A coral hydnum is already a terrific find!

Stephen Thompson, Photographer Extrordinaire!

The area around our little town of Port Orford is home to a lot of interesting and talented people, and our friends Stephen and Eve Thompson, are certainly among them.   Steve has been a professional photographer for most of his adult life, and his skill in taking and editing remarkable pictures is second to none.  He's probably forgotten more about photography than I'll ever know, and he's been an enormous help to me in my humble efforts to learn this craft.

One of Steve's areas of special expertise is in stitching - the technique of taking multiple photographs and "stitching" them together to make a homogeneous photograph composed of all of them.  This technique has been used by others as a way of producing panoramic shots, but Steve frequently will use both vertical and horizontal rows of images, all stitched together to form a single picture with incredible sharpness and detail.   He also has a technique for combining multiple exposures of the same image, focused at different "depths."  This produces totally sharp images with an extraordinary depth of field that would never be possible by conventional means - especially useful for macro photography.

Aside from his obvious skills as a photographer, Steve specializes in the restoration and enhancement of old and/or historic photographs, and is a thoroughly nice guy.  When he gets an interesting mushroom photo, he invariably forwards it to us, and with his permission, we are printing a few of them here, and scattered through other pages in our website.  To see more of his work, visit his website, www.earthseaimagery.com.

 

Bleeding Hydnellum

October showers bring: Chanterelles, Boletes, Cauliflower, Coral Hydnum, King Boletes, and more to come!

Gosh, what a month...and it's not over yet!

We spent the first 10 days of October in the air and on the road, flying to Washington, DC to participate in the Rural Wealth Creation and Livelihoods Conference (which was supported by a grant from the USDA and by the Ford Foundation), then renting a car and driving to Atlantic City (We'd heard so much about Atlantic City that we just couldn't resist spending a day there, and even found fungi growing in a parking lot - see photograph below.), Cleveland's Rock & Roll Museum (Two days was barely enough time to see the incredible exhibits and watch the beautifully done videos!), visiting dear friends Sherry and Zhihao (Thank you for such great hospitality!), and driving thru the Allegheny and Shenandoah Mountains (The fall colors were at their absolute peak!).  What a great adventure!

Coral Hydnum: One of our October treasures. 

Truffle Festival Contest - You're invited to enter a recipe!

We recently received an e-mail containing the following information about a truffle recipe contest that is part of the Oregon Truffle Festival.

One Big Truffle Recipe Contest
Deadline Nov 30th - for amateur chefs
Win a full weekend pass to the Oregon Truffle Festival valued at $1,000
Be a part of Molly O’Neil’s ongoing One Big Table Project!
www.oregontrufflefestival.com

 

These truffles were uncovered in Curry County. 

Where is Justin today?

We had the pleasure of meeting Justin Rothboeck the other day, and thought you might also like to meet this young traveler.

It all started with Justin contacting us in early September.  He was bicycling his way down the west coast, had found our website, and wondered if we'd be willing to help with his video project.  Video project?  Yes. On his travels, he's interviewing mushroomers and listening to their mushroom stories while recording them on video... what an interesting project.

Safe travels, Justin! 

Chanterelles and Lobsters on the Oregon Coast ... and a Word of Caution

Seems like we made it back from New Orleans just in time to miss the choking smoke from a wildfire in a East New Orleans marsh combined with the rains of Tropical Storm Lee which brought 15 inches of rain in 4 days...let me tell you, we may have our share of rain here on the southern Oregon coast, but 15 inches in 4 days is just too much even for us!

Since returning home, I've been doing power walks through our refuge every day, trying to shed those 5 pounds picked up in New Orleans celebrating Creole and Cajun cuisine at every opportunity.  However, I have to admit that the culinary experience was worth the extra weight, especially for such treats as the New Orleans School of Cooking Etouffee Recipe included in our "Incredible Recipe of the Month" section.  Then, of course, there were the servings of Banana Fosters and the Bread Pudding at the Court of Two Sisters and ...  

 

 

It's always a pleasure to encounter brilliantly colored lobsters! 

June Mushrooming on the southern Oregon coast - yellow feet, black trumpets, and hedgehogs

We were surprised to see Jake's Mushroom Shack in Coos Bay open for business early in June.  The door was open, and several men were visting beside an old pickup with its hood up.  We would have expected Jake's to have been closed up tight by the early part of June.  What could Jake be buying?  Curious, we just couldn't resist stopping to say "hi" and ask "what's happening?"

 

 

Late May brings newborns to our woods. 

June Mushrooming on Mt. Hood - morels, puffballs, brains, peziza, suillus!

We were fully prepared to be disappointed.  The weather had been cool and damp on Mt. Hood.  So it was that we resisted getting our hopes up when we left our Brightwood cabin early on Saturday morning, June 4, with mushroom baskets in hand for our first spring mushroom foray.

Would there be spring mushrooms or not?  Would we find edible mushrooms on Mt. Hood?

Amazingly, what we found was a wonderful array of our favorite spring mushrooms:  blond morels (with stems up to 2 inches in length and caps measuring 4-5 inches in length) and a collection of giant puffballs (many of which were the size of baseballs) - and all at the peak of perfection!

 

 

Large blond morels greeted us at one of our favorite Mt. Hood locations.
We thought the other mushrooms might be helvellas, a particular favorite.
Instead, spore prints revealed them to be the poisonous brain mushrooms.
Always use extreme CAUTION when collecting wild mushrooms! 

Origami Mushrooms

We were fascinated when we watched the origami mushroom that was shown during Oregon Public Broadcasting's recent fund raising program on origami, Between the Folds.  How whimsical!

In the next few days we tried our hand at a couple of mushroom origami, thanks to the help of some Internet sites.  We're attaching links to several of our favorite sites below.  They're great starting points for creating your own origami mushrooms.

And, let's face it:  until spring brings us verpa and morels, perhaps this is as close as we'll get to mushrooming!

 

Look what popped up
in the "Creeping Charlie" - origami mushrooms!