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Close Doesn’t Count With Mushrooms

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Ever since I went morel hunting, I have been bitten by the mushroom hunting bug. There are so many things I love about it. I love walking in the woods. I love the treasure hunt aspect of it. I love looking so carefully at nature that you notice things you never would have from a mountain bike. I love photographing the amazing variety of shapes and colors. And of course I love eating mushrooms.

The last one is a bit problematic because I am still soaking wet behind the ears. The only mushroom I am able to identify with certainty is a morel. I have a great book which concentrates on a few easily identifiable delicious mushrooms (See my reading list). Every time I go out into the woods I hope to find some of them.

This weekend I was so determined to find some of these choice edibles that I was practically willing the mushrooms I found to be the ones I wanted them to be. That is not a very smart thing to do with mushrooms. Here are some examples:

Chicken mushrooms. They are bright orange mushrooms that grow up the sides of trees like shelves. They are so bright that you wouldn’t be able to miss them. I was so excited when I found this one! You can see the top and the bottom of the same mushroom.

Turns out this is a Ling Chih (Ganoderma lucidum). Here is what a chicken mushroom looks like for comparison.
Chicken Mushroom Chicken Mushroom

I was also on the lookout for oyster mushrooms, which look like this.
Oyster mushrooms at the Mushroom Tunnel, Mittagong
What I thought were oysters at first turned out not to be. These have hexagonal shapes under the caps, not the straight gills that true oysters have.

My heart almost stopped when I saw these guys. Chanterelles!!!

Holy cow. We were having friends over for dinner the next night and I was already dreaming of the possible recipes I could make with them. Neil asked me to double check with my mushroom group (New York Mycological Society). I posted photos on their facebook page and within 30 minutes got an answer. Yes, they were chanterelles. No, they weren’t good to eat. In fact 1/4 of the people who eat them get upset stomachs. I was so disappointed. This is what the tasty kind look like.
Chanterelles

And now looking at my photos I think I’ve come to a sickening realization. I think these guys are……..

baby oyster mushrooms! Gah.

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re-fashioNYC

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If you live in NYC, you will probably know that many, many people throw away perfectly good things, such as clothes, furniture, books, etc. 200,000 tons of perfectly good clothing, blankets, shoes and handbags are dumped in landfills here each year.

NYC and Housing Works have teamed up to try and divert these perfectly good items from being tossed. The program is called re-fashioNYC. Right now they bring bins to apartment buildings with over 10 units.

To get a drop-off bin at your building, click here. Be patient, because there could be a wait of up to 3 months for a bin.

If you don’t live in a large building, you can donate your stuff through NYC Stuff Exchange. This is a searchable database that allows NYC residents to find organizations or shops in their neighborhood where you can donate, buy or sell your stuff. It also lists places where you can rent items, or get your things repaired. You can also post an event such as a stoop sale where you are getting rid of your things.

We usually hang our clothes out on the fence outside of our apartment. Everything usually disappears within a matter of minutes.

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My Gender-confused Hen

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Dear Lulu,
I know that since Edie died you are the top hen. Everyone knows you are super tough and nobody (not even myself) should dare mess with you. I just ask that you please stop crowing like a rooster at 6:30am. While I support you in whatever gender choice you are making, roosters are illegal in NYC. So far our neighbors have found humor in this situation, but I doubt that will last long.
So if you don’t want to move to the country, please stop crowing. Don’t deny it either, I recorded part of your song yesterday and this video is my proof.
Sincerely,
Your humble servant
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Our First CSA Pick Up

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This week was the first week of our CSA or farm share. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It’s also known as subscription farming.

In the winter, you buy a share of a farm and in return, you get a share of the produce. What’s great for the farmer, is that the payments come all at once (and are predictable), so they can purchase equipment, seeds and supplies for the next growing season. You and the farmer share the risk of a bad year, or the bounty of an excellent growing year.

What I like is that you get to relearn how to eat with the seasons. The beginning of the season has lots of greens. We got lettuce, oregano, leeks, sunchokes, and lots and lots of strawberries. I wish I could describe how aromatic and delicious these strawberries are. Everything is picked when it’s ripe because it doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles. Can you remember the insides of strawberries being red instead of white?

If you live in New York and are interested in participating in a CSA (for next season), click here to find one. We kind of got in through the back door with ours. It has a really long waiting list, but they offer a winter share with frozen fruits and veggies. Somehow participating in the winter share got us in and past the people lined up for just the regular summer share. Shh, don’t tell anyone.

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Endless Morels

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After getting hit hard with morel fever, I started to wonder about something. Perhaps you’ve heard of endless summer, where surfers travel around the globe chasing summer. I started to wonder if you could do that with morels. I figured that the Berkshires were a few weeks behind us here in NYC weather-wise, so the morels would probably be still coming up when ours were done.

I couldn’t go the weekend I thought they would be best, but we all went up Memorial Day weekend. I joined the Berkshire Mycological Society’s hike that Sunday and sure enough there were morels! Most of them were past their prime, but we still managed to find enough to make a delicious morel scrambled egg breakfast the next morning.

This group is much smaller than the one here, and in fact only one member went that day. My mother-in-law and I felt as though we had a personal guided tour. I am definitely going to join them again when I’m up visiting.

I’ll post photos of the mushrooms I found up there on that hike. I’m just trying to identify some of them, which I’m not great at.

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Meet our new chicks

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Today we set up lights and Neil took some photos of the chicks while I made sure they didn’t jump off our set. I guess I was the chick wrangler.

So, meet the girls…

The names are a work in progress, and we are only keeping two of these four, so bear with me while we work this out. Also, when you involve a 7 year-old in the naming process, things can get wild. Our friend now has a dog named Party Hat…

So, first off we have Razzmatazz (Lindsay was drawing with a Crayola crayon by that name). The name has some spunk, but doesn’t easily roll off the tongue. Besides, can chickens make jazz hands? Razzy is a Plymouth Barred Rock. You can look at my earlier post to see links of what all these gals will look like as adults.

Second is Stripey. This is definitely *not* going to be the final name if I have any control over this. Both of these little ones kind of resemble penguins with their white bibs. She is also a Barred Rock. So far these two are the bossiest of the bunch. Stripey is showing signs of pasty butt, which can be life-threatening. This is when the droppings aren’t soft and kind of block up and “paste over” their bottoms. You have to remove what you see on the outside and keep the plumbing moving. If it makes a plug, the chick can die. I saw a looser

Third off is Midnight. She’s a Blue Andalusian, although she’s probably going to be black and not what is considered blue. She’s the most mild-mannered little sweetheart. She’s one of the ones I’m fostering and I will have a tough time parting with her. She was the little one who I was so worried about when I first opened the box. She looks like a little wild bird and not a chicken. She’s doing very well.

And last of all is Edie jr. She’s an Easter Egger who we got to replace our beloved chicken Edie who died last summer. This one is quite a character. She seems very independent and feisty. So it will be fun to see how they develop.

And how insanely cute are those fuzzy butts??

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Our new chicks are here

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Today was the big day. Our peeps arrived in their little boxed nest in the mail. It’s so funny to have a peeping box handed to you. I was glad to hear the peeping because I was very anxious about them during their journey. It was extremely hot here yesterday, which adds stress to an already stressful journey. Fatalities can occur, which is extremely sad. Fortunately my gals seemed to be fine.

Once I opened the box, I dipped their tiny beaks into the water dish to help rehydrate them and to let them know where their water source is. One seemed a little sluggish, but I kept giving her water and she seems to have perked up nicely. Those are marbles in the water dish, which keep them from falling in the water their first week and drowning.

They all kind of look the same right now, but there are 2 Plymouth Barred Rocks, which have a white dot on their heads. There’s one with a little orange on her, who is our Easter Egger, and the little black one is the Blue Andalusian. It turns out that the blue color only happens 50% of the time. Unless something changes when she gets her true feathers (which I don’t anticipate) this little gal will stay black. But, hey, black is still a very chic color here in NYC!


I will work towards getting better photos and documenting their phenomenally quick growth.

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