Father and daughter returned to their field to assess the tumors’ growth. The father stepped forward into the sea of shimmering florets, plucked an ear of corn from its stalk and squatted to face his daughter. Look, he said. It’s ready. The lumps had multiplied, infecting the kernels. Some had taken the shape of a […]
Mushrooms
Posted inRecreation
Can I eat that? An educational outing with the Prairie States Mushroom Club
Hunters waited at the Ryerson’s Woods trailhead in Iowa City on a beautiful late April Saturday morning. Older men with walking sticks wore blaze orange caps. University students in shorts and sneakers chatted among themselves. A handful of middle-aged women and a few retired folks rounded out the group. I joined them with my notebook […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Botany: Where to find Dryad’s Saddle and how to cook them
A few days after a particularly Old Testament-like storm, I noticed what looked like the Starship Enterprise sprouting from the trunk of a maple. It was a massive disc-shaped fungus known as the Dryad’s Saddle. These parasitic polypores are some of the first mushrooms to appear in the woods during morel season in the spring, […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Forest gold: Find chanterelles while avoiding their poisonous look-alikes
I was selling mushrooms at a farmers market in Upstate New York last summer when this happened: “Forest gold!” said a self-proclaimed “old hippy” as he grabbed a few golden chanterelles off my table. “I used to do all the purchasing for a famous restaurant in San Francisco,” he said, “I won’t tell you which […]
