Ceci n’est pas une chanterelle

I went for a hike with a fellow foraging enthusiast earlier today, hoping to find the last of the wineberries (alas, all gone), and also on the lookout for chanterelle mushrooms.  According to local mushroom enthusiasts, chanterelle season has begun around here.  Back home in the Pacific Northwest chanterelles come on later in the fall, but I guess things are on a different schedule here.

Anyway, we came across a little stand of mushrooms that were the right color and the right general shape.  I had just finished saying how nothing looks like a chanterelle except a chanterelle, but these mushrooms kinda blew that theory.  They were sort of like chanterelles, but with thinner stems, and the gills were true, as opposed to the false gills chanterelles have.  So I sent this picture to the experts at MAWDC, and it turns out these are probably gerronema strombodes.  The internet tells me these are not edible!  Maybe not super poisonous, but definitely not chanterelles.  Alas.

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It’s Wineberry Time

Herban Lifestyle’s recent post reminded me that this is the time of year when you can forage for wild wineberries in our area.  Wineberries, I learned last year, are of the genus Rubus, the same group as raspberries and blackberries and all manner of delicious little cross-breeds.  If I can’t go home to Washington State and pick rubus ursinus this year, then I may as well go foraging for our local equivalent.  Wineberries are tart and floral (yay) and rather seedy (boo).  I’m also guessing they’re high in natural pectin, as wild blackberries are, because they’re downright sticky to the touch.

I saw some ripe berries last Friday when I was walking through Cleveland Park the other day, and in the spring I saw plenty of wineberry vines all over Rock Creek Park and Glover Park.  It’s an invasive species, though it doesn’t seem to make the dense brambles that those awful Himalayan blackberries make.  Still, I think a nice hike sometime this holiday weekend should produce enough berries to make some jam or syrup or pie.  Yum.

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It’s Almost Morel Season

The Natural Capital, a really excellent blog, posted a reminder that it’s almost morel season in the DC area.  I’ve never gone foraging for morels, but given how expensive they are to buy, I’d really like to become a expert morel hunter.  I might have to go on one of the planned forays, though.  Spotting these delicious little fungi takes some practice.  As Natural Capital writes:

For years, we looked during the last two weeks of April in all the places people said to look: in old apple orchards, by dead elm stumps, and under tuliptrees. Nothing. Until we went out with experienced mushroomers who were willing to share their morel spots. Suddenly, the forest floor was dotted with these gourmet delicacies.

My main problem is that I lack transportation to get out to the parks and nature reserves where morels supposedly lurk, and renting a car to get there kind of defeats the purpose of foraging free goodies.  Has anyone ever seen morels in Rock Creek Park?

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Oregon Black Truffles

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that my mother was training her year-old chocolate lab, Sam, to hunt for truffles.  My family lives out in the Pacific Northwest, where there are a few varieties of edible truffles that grow wild in the forests.  More specifically, it turned out that there is an abundance of Oregon Black truffles around Olympia (though some spring whites may come soon).

Despite being an extremely unruly dog in general, Sam has been a very successful truffle hunter.  Mom says they have found about 10 pounds of truffles over the course of the season.  Even though Oregon truffles don’t fetch the prices of European truffles (which cost hundreds or even thousands per pound), it’s still a high-value item.  Mom’s been trading them to local restaurants in exchange for meals.

I got to taste a couple of them (pictured above) when my dad happened to be in DC (this is his second time acting as a truffle courier).  I shaved one on top of a mushroom and cheese omelet, and to be honest I didn’t think the truffle added all that much.  But I really liked the compound butter I made, by mixing equal parts minced truffle and good butter.  Spread on a pepper cracker, it was funky and fatty and delicious.

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The Handsome Truffle Hunter

I’m off on business to Minnesota for a couple of days.  It’s going to be a high of 9 degrees there on Thursday.  OMG.  I don’t know how people survive there.

In the meantime, here’s a nice picture of the chocolate lab my mom has trained to hunt for truffles back in the temperate Northwest.  This is Sam, who used to be a completely adorable puppy and is now quite a handsome lad.  Good luck with the truffle hunt, mom!

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Winter Chanterelle Hunting

When I was back in Washington State last week for Thanksgiving, my mother and I took the dog out in the same woodsy spot where we picked blackberries last summer.  The dog loves romping around.  And we love foraging!

This time of year, we were on the hunt for truffles and mushrooms.  Mom has trained the dog to sniff out truffles, although right now he’s only finding the non-edible varieties.  Hopefully he’ll find the real deal when the season peaks.  But we didn’t need the dog’s help to find a huge numbers of beautiful chanterelle mushrooms!

They were big and beatiful and plentiful.  We got almost four pounds.  The nice thing about chanterelles is that they are very distinctive.  There aren’t really any poisonous mushrooms that look like them, so even novice mushroom hunters like us can feel safe picking and eating them.

Our loot! After a good scrub with a mushroom brush, these were some tasty foraged treats.

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