Mad about Mushrooms . . .

What can you do when the rains don't come?

Well, you hope.  You can look thru your mushroom diary and hope you find a strategy that's worked in the past.  You can explore new forestland in hopes of finding the elusive mushroom or two.  And, you wait.

That's what we're doing here in the refuge.  For it's been another dry summer with an accumulated rain total of a smidgen over 2 inches since the beginning of June. 

Nearby Sunset Bay is a gorgeous backdrop for a photograph,
come rain or drought.

Marooned in Newfoundland and Labrador?

Yes, our extended 3,700 mile driving trip though Newfoundland and Labrador was amazing, although you, dear reader, must be thinking that we may have been marooned in northeastern Canada and couldn’t find our way back home to update the website!

Now that we’ve unpacked our bags, caught up on our e-mails and snail mail, we're turning our attention to more entertaining activities, such as mushrooming and mushrooming related pursuits.  And we'd like to start off by adding this post to our website, and thereby share a couple of things about our trip with you.

Initially, as we drove around the island, we were delighted to see many vehicles parked along the Trans-Canada Highway.  Were the occupants gathering mushrooms?  No, as it turned out, this was prime berry picking time. We were informed that people were filling 5 gallon buckets with blueberries, partridge berries (internationally known as lingonberries), and bakeapples (known as cloudberries in Norway and other areas), the latter of which we personally found blanketing the boggy grounds around the World Heritage Site of L'Anse aux Meadows (where Eric the Red established his - and Europeans' - first settlement on North American soil).  Thankfully, some of these berries ended up on the breakfast tables of lodges and B&Bs where we overnighted.

The amber-colored bakeapples (cloudberries)
are similar in appearance to raspberries.

But, we weren’t looking for berries. It’s always the elusive mushroom that's the object of our greatest interest. Sadly, our timing was off.  We were there in August, seeking a trophy Brook Trout.  We were a month too early for noteworthy fungi (and, it turned out, for trophy Brookies as well!), and, frankly we never found anyone who had much interest in gathering wild mushrooms.  Perhaps there isn't a tradition of wild mushrooming here, or maybe the season is just too short for people who are too busy preparing for the hardships of the upcoming winter.  Whatever the reason, there's nothing like the level of interest in wild mushrooming that there is where we come from!

Gros Morne National Park, a World Heritage Site, revealed
jaw-dropping scenery - but no mushrooms.

September 2016's Recipe of the Month: Crimini Mushrooms and Walnut Samosas

The first time we prepare a recipe, we believe it is important to follow the instructions carefully in order to ensure that it gets a fair trial.  The second time, we feel licensed to experiment, to substitute and to embellish as our mood takes us. 

The first time that we prepared Crimini Mushrooms and Walnut Samosas, a recipe sent to us by a very adventurous cook in Portland who wrote that the recipe was developed by Meera Sodha , we proclaimed that the samosas were extraordinarily good for several reasons:  they were as cute as they could be, they were delicious, they were convenient because they could be frozen and baked when we wanted to serve them, and they were surprisingly quick and easy to prepare. 

And, for Steven and me, there is one more important aspect of this recipe.  We realized that these pastry bundles could hold a filling of wild mushrooms that we would forage in our retreat,  along with hazelnuts which are grown in the valleys up north.  Wouldn't that combination be delightful, we thought!

One last comment:  we found that we had more filling than phyllo dough.  What a gift this turned out to be.  We used some of the leftover filling to stuff chicken breasts and we tucked what remained into salmon steaks.  We marveled at how this mushroom and walnut filling complimented both fowl and fish!

 

We're looking forward to making samosas with 
a wild mushroom filling in the months to come.