Lycoperdon Perlatum, Puffballs

Day 360: It's been a long time since I found enough puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum) for a bowl of soup, and that status remains unchanged. However, I did find a nice little cluster, all but one of which are shown in the photo above, and I was sorely tempted to gather them to add to the few chanterelles I had in my bag but did not. With puffballs, timing is everything and usually when I find them, they are too far gone to collect. Once the interior begins to turn brown (even faintly), they take on a bitter taste. There are a number of different edible puffballs, but Lycoperdon perlatum is the most common here in the Pacific Northwest. You can find them almost anywhere: deep in the forest, in your lawn, even poking up through hard-packed gravel along road edges or in your driveway. Lycoperdon perlatum is relatively easy to identify by the small warts on its surface, but with any puffball, it is always advisable to section one vertically and examine it for any evidence of gill formation. If it is marshmallow-like throughout, it's not an Amanita. That said, Lycoperdon is bothersome to prepare. Each puffball must be peeled like a hard-boiled egg, a process which often means sacrificing some of the flesh. A handful as small as this one might have yielded a whole tablespoon, so I left them to make more puffballs and made a mental note of the location for future reference.