365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Monday, September 20, 2021
Hunting Up Dinner
Day 342: It looked pretty grim when first I stepped into the forest. There at my feet was a slice of lobster. No, I don't mean the seafood. I mean the stoplight-red fungus which emerges concurrently with chanterelles and is almost as popular with many collectors. I don't eat them, but that's the subject of tomorrow's post. In any event, I looked down on that neatly cut slice of lobster and said aloud, "Oh, this does not bode well." I had put two small perhaps-bags in my pocket as I went out the door on what I call "a mushroom walk," hoping that I'd find at least enough chanterelles for a lunchtime bowl of soup. I nearly despaired. On a different part of the trail, however, I began finding lobsters untouched, huge lobsters. Then the magic happened: my eye fell on two chanterelles less than a foot off the path. In a few more minutes, I had half a dozen in the bag. Ten minutes later, I encountered another patch, off trail and deeper into the heart of the woods. A wider sweep brought up even more, although they occurred largely in isolation. I took a different route back to the footpath, and in so doing, found the largest group of the day from which I harvested roughly a dozen. Yep, there's enough here for a nice fry-up and a bowl of soup. Chanterelles are on tonight's dinner menu.
Labels:
chanterelles,
mushrooming
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