Join me over at SqueezeMyLemon to listen to folksinging great Ramblin Jack Elliott. It seems that many people I talk to these days don’t even know who Mr. Elliott is, but geez Louise he’s a voice that caught my attention way back when I was a young anchovy. He’s a link to another time in America, and I’m very excited that he’s scheduled to ramble back to Toronto next month for the first time in five years. We’ll be there. Maybe we’ll see you.
Search term of the day: Vegetarian Meat Sticks
Our Newf Ellie Mae doesn’t talk much, but sometimes, when she’s excited to see us, she says, BAAAARRRROOOOOOOMMMMMMMM. It sounds like the beginning of the French horn part in the theme from the old TV series Kojak.
That was the Clarinet Polka, also known as the Dziadek Polka or Grandfather’s Polka.
I laid today’s bounty out on a table on the deck. There are some different species of boletes, two types of chanterelles, hedgehogs, and lobsters.
I gave away quite a few, I have a lot in the dehydrator, and I made some soup tonight. The soup uses three types of boletes, hedgehogs, and chanterelles, along with bbq corn, red peppers, carrots and bbq turkey sausage. I roasted up some potatoes to serve on the side, and cracked a Polish beer.
My brother Salvelinas finds these all the time up near Fontinalis World Headquarters. These were the first ones I’ve found. There were only these two and one more around, and when I found them, I scoured the area around them very carefully. There were lots of little red waxy caps around though, and from a distance, they look similar enough that I almost didn’t squat down for a closer look at these.
These are very tasty mushrooms.
I scored the bottom of the cap on this bolete with a pocket knife and it immediately turned a dark blue. You can also see blue staining at the bottom of the stalk. I don’t know what species this one is, but with reddish pores and blue staining, I’m not about it eat it. Perhaps it’s Boletus subvelutipes?
I thought this one might have been one of the Tylopilus or bitter boletes because of the top of the cap having a slightly purplish cast; however, it didn’t taste bitter so we ate it tonight and it was good.
Here’s another large bolete – white flesh, brownish pores, tan cap. No staining evident. I tasted a bit and it was not bitter (I should say I’m not all that sensitive to bitter…last year Tuffy tasted one that I thought might be a little bitter and she said it was very, very bitter. Unfortunately, when I sliced this one open, it was evident that it was quite wormy.
I think the mushrooms in the lower photo are Omphalotus olearius, known as the False Chanterelle. The gills and the colour look quite a bit like chanterelles but they are growing in a batch, growing on wood, and they are light and hollow, unlike chanterelles, which are chunky. I wonder if the group in the top photo are the same kind of mushrooms only much younger? I’m thinking this could be now that I’m reviewing my photos, but I didn’t make the association at the time, in part because I found these clusters hours apart in different tracts of forest.
Today, I found quite a bit of coral fungi in the woods. I don’t know if all the stuff I found was the same species or different. Some was quite bright white, and other specimens were distinctly yellow like in the posted photo. I haven’t taken the time to gather a number of samples and closely study it. I know that some of the coral fungi are edible, although I’ve heard that some of it has a distinctly peppery taste. One day, I’ll bring a bunch home and start to build confidence in identifying the stuff.
27th Street 