This is the time of year when we begin to think of puffballs – not the little, marble-sized guys, but the big, delicious warted puffballs (Calbovista subsculpta) we find in the north Cascades in the spring, generally before the morels start to show up there. They are spectacular, often abundant and delicious, and for some reason, many people seem to drive right by them, even though they are hard to miss.
Warted Puffballs are easily recognized in the field.
One puffball story we always laugh about dates back quite a few years to when we first started gathering them. We spotted a bunch of puffballs, scattered across an open field by a fairly well-traveled road leading to a campground. No doubt hundreds of folks had driven right by them and either didn’t notice them or weren’t curious enough to stop. We gathered a basket full and started up the road looking for more. From a distance, I spotted another puffball, about the same, “fist size” we’d been gathering. Mary spotted it about the same time, I did and we both homed in on it. Only when we got up to it did our old, middle-aged eyes reveal that this was no puffball; it was a rubber doll’s head, dismembered from the body, bleached white by the elements. Weird? You bet. A little grisly, too.
We always think of that dubious “find,” though, when puffballs are on the agenda, and our forays for them are always enjoyable, though brief. They’re either there or they’re not, and they have the appealing characteristic of growing in the same places, year after year, usually in open fields. They’re also easy to clean, and when cut in half, you will know immediately that they are prime if they are solid white throughout. They are delicious when simply sauteed in butter and dehydrate very nicely.
If your timing is good, you have some delicious eating ahead of you. And who knows, if you add these fine fungi to your repertoire, you’ll experience something unusual in your travels that will make a good story of your own. If you top our doll’s head story, let us know!
Smith Rock and the
Crooked River - not many
mushrooms here, but a
jumping off point for the
east side of Oregon's
Cascades.
A whirlwind business trip to Redmond last week gave me an irresistible opportunity for a quick foray while Mary was mired in an all-day business meeting. I didn’t need to look at our mushroom diary, diligently recorded over many years by my well-organized bride, to single out my best bet: a place in the Northern Oregon Cascades, in the transition zone between Firs and Pines, where we often find puffballs in abundance this time of year. And yes, it is the infamous “doll’s head” spot in the previous story. Despite the fact that it’s been a colder-than-average winter and spring (so far), I headed out with high hopes.
Those hopes began to wane as I turned off the highway and onto the little road that would take me to our “Puffball Patch.” Within a couple hundred feet the road was blocked with snow, and although I have a lot of confidence in our Subaru Outback, I wasn’t feeling that lucky. Looking back into the woods, there was a fair amount of snow as well, but it was patchy, and I figured more than half the ground was bare. I’d driven a long ways to get there (and, at today’s gas prices, the expense is a consideration, too); was I really willing to simply turn around and go back without looking?
In a word, no. Despite the fact that the snow reduced my confidence considerably (we’ve never found puffballs when there was any snow on the ground, other than maybe a little patch or two in the deep shade), I grabbed my basket and headed out through the woods, taking a short cut. On the way in, I saw nothing, and so was not surprised when I got to “the spot” that there was a lot of snow- but no puffballs – waiting for me. “In two or three weeks,” I thought, “they’ll be here. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be.”
I started my long trudge back uphill to the car, mildly discouraged even though not entirely surprised. I often think that an empty mushroom basket is a lot heavier than one full of beautiful fresh wild mushrooms. There was a cold, stiff breeze and I was a bit chilled, despite my exertion.
Montana Helvellas don't always show
right by the snow, but it pays to look
for them there!
And then I saw it – them – and stopped dead in my tracks, a rush of adrenaline making the cold disappear. Montana Helvellas- three of them within a two foot circle – two small ones the size of my thumb, but one larger one perhaps half the size of my fist. I knelt to look them over more closely. The Montana Helvella resembles the “Brain” mushroom (Gyromytra Esculenta), but although precise, certain identification would have to wait until I returned to the car and our mushroom books, I was pretty sure I was right. I carefully picked them, and set off with fully restored enthusiasm, looking for more.
They were by no means abundant, but there were little patches of two or three encountered often enough to keep my interest up, and over the next hour, I collected enough for a nice mess. They are certainly among our very favorite edibles, tasting something like morels with an “earthy” quality that’s hard to describe. We treat them like morels; they must never be eaten raw. To be even safer, we parboil them, too. They are mushrooms I would urge caution with, since their resemblance to the reputedly toxic Gyromitra Esculenta is obvious, but we’ve gathered them on and off for many years and that, coupled with the fact that we don’t encounter the two together in the spots we visit, give us a lot of confidence in our identification. Their description in David Arora’s indispensable book, Mushrooms Demystified (page 800-801) is especially helpful. In it, he (under the essentially similar Gyromitra gigas) lists common names including Snow Mushroom and Snowbank False Morel, confirming where I found them. As a general observation, they seem to be abundant some years and scarce or non-existent in others, but when found, they almost always show before morels do, often with snow still on the ground in places. Given all this, in retrospect I should have had them in the back of my mind, and I’m not sure why I didn’t other than the fact that I was so excited about the Puffballs.
Montana Helvellas, sliced for cooking.
The whitish base is barely visible in the
wild.
There are lessons here, for us and perhaps for you. I set out on my foray with an expected outcome. Even though that expectation was reasonable based on years of experience, conditions are different year to year and from place to place. Although I erred by being so narrowly focused on Puffballs, I salvaged a foray by not throwing in the towel and continuing to pay attention, with an exciting find that in a lot of ways was more memorable than the Puffballs I expected to find. And, as a bonus, I found them in an area I’d never encountered them before, so we gained a new “spot” as well. Altogether, a happy ending, wouldn’t you agree?
April 17, 2008
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