August 26, 2010
comments 2

Year to Year Changes

I only started foraging for mushrooms last summer, with the help of my brother Salvelinas, a load of books and a night course at the university. Last year, Salvelinas kept telling me about all the various boletes we were going to find, but we never found them. Last year was mostly bolete-less. This season, I’ve been picking boletes regularly. I have lots more study to do on these, so I can better identify them to species, but all in good time.

We stumbled upon a spot where hedgehog mushrooms grew last season. It was a really small area, near a fallen log. Aside from that one spot, I only found a single hedgehog anywhere else. This year, I’ve learned that hedgehogs are actually common to a much bigger chunk of the forest where I first found them, and that they’re common in another forest I thought I knew pretty well.

The lesson here seems to be that mushrooms aren’t quite predictable. I’ve already experienced big differences in what happens in the woods and when over a two year period. I’ve been keeping notes this year, and posting on this blog, so that I have some record of what I find, when and where, so I can track the changes from year to year. Maybe I’ll even come to understand what factors make for a good year or a bad year for particular mushrooms.

Meanwhile, it was a treat to find a load of hedgehogs last weekend, because they’re very tasty!

August 24, 2010
comments 4

Blogging – how it looks

Over the years I’ve been fairly restless about the look of my blog. I refresh the theme from time to time and I try to keep a constantly changing array of banner images happening. I guess I just have a restless imagination and I like to consider some details about my blog over time. My thoughts about how my blog ought to look have changed over the years too. Thanks for sticking with me, for those who have been around a while.

Below I just tested an “aside” post. This facility came with the Coraline theme, as did gallery posts. I designate a category for my aside posts, just as I do for galleries, and when I assign that category, it uses the aside template. It looks from the test post that asides are just like regular posts except they are stripped of header information. I don’t know how much I’ll use this, but it may come in handy.

Once in a while, I see a blogger I follow change themes, but most people seem to find one they are comfortable with and stick with it for a long time. That’s a reasonable thing to do. In fact, it’s unreasonable to keep shifting things about as much as I do. In the words of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I get carried away…” I suppose the fact that it keeps changing will eventually become a hallmark of this little island in the sun, and I’m OK with that.

Of course the biggest change occurred when I abandoned Blogger and the old Mister Anchovy’s blog and moved over to 27th Street. I think that was a good change and certainly one that opened things up some in my little brain, and provided a sense of freedom and the feeling of starting a new project – even if the new blog was to be a close cousin to the first.

Related Articles
August 23, 2010
comments 7

The Problem

Mayoral candidates at the "Better Ballots...

Image via Wikipedia

A new poll suggests that blowhard, tight-fisted right -wing Councillor Rob Ford is well ahead in the mayoral race here in Toronto. This poll was done after it was revealed that Ford “forgot” he had been charged a decade ago in a DUI-related incident. It seems that Torontonians are looking to Ford as an antidote to a couple terms of David Miller as Mayor.

Yikes. I think Ford would make a disasterous Mayor. Unfortunately, with three candidates crowding the middle – Smitherman, Rossi and Thomson, Mr. Ford may well have a good chance of winning. Smitherman has been positioning the race as about two candidates, himself and Ford. I think he is doing this to marginalize his other opponents, thinking that if it were just he and Ford in the race, he would prevail.

In my view, a couple candidates have to drop out to ensure that Mr. Ford is not elected. It’s up to the three in the middle to get together and thrash it out. Will they? I’m not optimistic, but we’ll see. Of course there remains a little time for another candidate to emerge, but who knows if that’s going to happen.

Related Articles
August 22, 2010
comment 1

Dinner at the Anchovy’s

Fresh Swiss chard

Image via Wikipedia

Consider the situation. This morning, I found an abundance of tasty edible wild mushrooms. Recently, my brother Salvelinas gave me some shallots and garlic from his garden and they are most fantastic (if you think you grow even better shallots and garlic and you would like me to test them just to see if they are as good as this batch, I’d be happy to do so). Our neighbour across the street gave us some great Swiss Chard. And today, Tuffy P came home with some Ontario sweet corn.

I started with a cast iron pan and some good olive oil. When the oil was hot, I added in shallots and garlic and mushrooms and started them cooking. It happens I also have some awesome villager sausage in the fridge so I sliced some up and added it to the pan. Then corn and swiss chard and I cooked it all together. I added salt and pepper and finally a splash of Malaysian garlic hot sauce. Wow, what a tasty dinner!

August 22, 2010
comments 2

Today in the Enchanted Mushroom Forest

I had planned to take the dogs out for our usual Sunday in the woods, but it was a grim and rainy morning, so I decided to do leave the dogs at home and do an abbreviated trip.

I know a forest that often gives up hedgehog mushrooms so I stopped there first. I very quickly found more hedgehogs than I ever have before, and moreover found them in a variety of spots. Last year I only found these delicious mushrooms in one very localized spot. While I was gathering them, I also picked quite a number of lobster mushrooms, and a few chanterelles. I considered staying in this forest for the morning, given that I was finding a lot of mushrooms, but I wanted to have a look at another forest further north. By the way, on the road into this particular forest, I saw a number of wild turkeys entering the forest from the side of the road.

It poured all the way up to the next forest but stopped again as I arrived. This forest was full of coral fungi, really a fantastic amount of it. First I checked for chanterelles in the usual spots but didn’t find any. I did end up finding a few here and there. The surprise of the morning was that I started finding hedgehog mushrooms, quite  a few of them, including a few very large ones. There were also a lot of boletes in the woods. I picked quite a number, mostly ornate stalked boletes, or Boletus ornatipes. I’ve read reports that these can be bitter but that hasn’t been my experience. The ones I’ve picked have been quite tasty.

The rain started again I walked back to the car and headed home. It poured and poured until I got to the outskirts of the city.

I’ve got the dehydrator set up and have some boletes, lobster mushrooms and hedgehogs drying. We’re going to eat the chanterelles and a pile of hedgehogs fresh and I have a nice bowl of hedgehogs for some friends. For tonight, I’m going to cook up some mushrooms with some shallots and garlic (courtesy of Salvelinas) and some Villager sausage and some Swiss Chard.