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Fall perfect time to hunt mushrooms
    #6003798 - 08/28/06 02:46 AM (17 years, 7 months ago)

http://www.mlive.com/travel/stories/index.ssf?/base/features-0/1155849012172610.xml&coll=1

Fall perfect time to hunt mushrooms
Sunday, August 27, 2006
By Jane Ammeson

WALLOON LAKE -- When the weather starts to cool and the leaves begin to change, dedicated mushroom-hunters take to the woods. For it is in the fall that a cornucopia of wild mushrooms is ready for picking.

"Fall mushrooms are a whole new world for most people," says Joe Breidenstein, who organizes mushroom forages on fall weekends near his home on Walloon Lake. "Even people who hunt for morels in the spring don't know much about fall mushrooms and how many varieties and how good they are to eat and how easy they are to find.

"With morels, you can go out for hours and if Mother Nature isn't cooperating, you can come back with just a handful. But there are so many different fall mushrooms that if you know what to look for, you always can find something."

With the help of two mushroom experts, both past presidents of the Michigan Mushroom Society who have more than 70 years of gathering experience between them, weekend foragers quickly learn what's safe to pick.

For those used to mushroom names like button and moonlight, the names Breidenstein lists are unfamiliar and not like anything you'll find in the supermarket. There's shaggy mane, chanterelles, sulfur shelf, puffballs and chicken-of-the-woods (not to be confused with hen-of-the-woods) -- and yes, it does taste like chicken.

Their looks can range from beautiful (the orange sherbet-colored, ruffled-edged sulfur shelf) to weird (the scaly, gray shaggy mane). They also differ in size. One year, Breidenstein found a puffball that weighed 20 pounds and looked like a large beach ball and one of his guides found a similar-sized hen-of-the-woods.

Breidenstein's Mushroom Mania weekends include a two-night stay at his privately owned vacation homes in Walloon Lake, several hunts, a sampling of local wines and all meals, including mushroom lunches and dinners.

"They told us to pick whatever we could find," says Karen Van Fleet of Fife Lake, who attended a Mushroom Mania weekend last fall. "We found over 100 varieties, though Joe and the experts ended up throwing a lot of them away. Then, they cooked the ones that were good to eat."

Mushroom meals include roast pork with wild mushrooms, sauteed puffballs, mushroom souffle and wild mushroom soup.

Van Fleet says that she now feels comfortable hunting and cooking four varieties.

"I always wanted to do this," she says. "I'm a morel hunter but wanted to try fall mushrooms, and it really helped. Not too long after that weekend, I found a shaggy mane growing at the edge of the road by my house. It's amazing how they're all around."

David Larwa, of Brighton, who spent a mushroom weekend with his 21-year-old daughter, had a similar experience.

"I was out running after that weekend and saw a chicken mushroom that weighed over a pound," he says.

Speaking of chicken-of-the-woods, Breidenstein says he often uses it in place of chicken in casserole dishes. "You really can't tell the difference," he says.

Besides the abundance, there are other advantages to fall fungus foraging versus spring morel hunts.

"In the fall, there aren't that many people out looking for mushrooms, so you don't have to worry about getting to a spot before someone else," Breidenstein says. "Which is not the case in morel hunting."

Spending the day in the woods foraging for mushrooms can be fun, but safety needs to be taken seriously. Even those who have spent the weekend with mushroom experts still need to take care.

On its Web site, the Illinois Mycology Association (www.ilmyco.gen.chicago.il.us/) offers techniques for mushroom hunting and answers questions about what's safe and what isn't. Color photos make identifying mushrooms easier. And some people even send in photos of mushrooms they've found, asking whether they're safe to eat.

According to the site, there several folk "tests" that purport to tell foragers whether a mushroom is poisonous. Unfortunately, none of these is true.

As for Breidenstein, he believes the weekend can be fun and the knowledge learned something to use.

"We try to key on three to four good edible mushrooms that grow in the Midwest, that are easy to identify and don't have a dangerous look alike," says Breidenstein, who also supplies recipes. "Then people can go home and find them."

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