for the love of mushrooms

Hi, my name is Leah, and I'm a mycophile. I love mushrooms. Eating them is such a rich experience - sweet, earthy, umami. My new interest in eating mushrooms is accompanied by a new interest in foraging them as well. My whole life I've been taught not to eat anything I find, especially not mushrooms and red berries. But you know what? Now that I have all this librarian-training and these rad research skills, I feel confident that I can make informed decisions about found and foraged foods.

For Christmas I received a book called, The Complete Mushroom Hunter, by Gary Lincoff. Its size doesn't really fit the field-guide norm, but its beautiful color photographs and detailed mushroom profiles make it an invaluable resource. Written in a compulsively readable style, the book interweaves identification information, dangerous look-alikes, and seasonal mushroom-hunting guides with cultural attitudes towards mushrooms and anecdotes from around the world.

Having already combed my neighborhood for berries and fruits, foraging mushrooms seemed like the next logical step. I got interested in mushrooms last autumn after spending a semester working on a project that involved Jean Craighead George's excellent middle grade novel, My Side of the Mountain. The teenage protagonist, Sam Gribley, sets out to rough it on his family's forgotten land for a year, and giant puffballs are a staple of his diet. One afternoon I was walking the bike path near my house with Flash and noticed what looked like three white volleyballs off to the side of the path. I followed a hunch and checked them out, poked one with a stick, knocked it over to see how it connected to the ground, and stood back in awe of this crazy fungus. I was so excited that this might be the mushroom I had read so much about in Sam Gribley's adventure, so I looked it up as soon as I got home. Here's a picture of the one that caught my eye from the path you see in the background.

Now that the ground is relatively thawed and I'm equipped with this book, I'm looking forward to setting out in search of secret delicacies. When I became a birder, I started collecting books on that subject. Now that I'm a librarian, I realize I have my own personal reference collection, and The Complete Mushroom Hunter expands that collection in a direction I never expected. Happy hunting!

riverside changes

Last Saturday we took a walk down by the Charles River. Inspired by photos of snowdrops emerging in Brooklyn, I searched for signs of spring. No new green shoots yet - Brooklyn, in my experience, is usually two or three weeks ahead of Boston with snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils. Changes are happening at the banks o' the Charles, just not green ones. The public walking paths have suffered recently due to the felling of large trees by strong stormwinds. So pedestrians have carved new paths around the deadfalls and through the woods, and the warming ground and recent rain makes these unofficial muddy paths excellent bootsuckers. Entire root systems of these fallen trees are exposed, leaving craters in the earth. Dozens of robins tossed about in the leaf litter, and a few braved the chilly puddles for a refreshing bath.

Here's my list for the half-hour walk:

red-breasted merganser
mallard
black-capped chickadee
Canada goose
brown creeper
downy woodpecker
American robin
mute swan

I can't wait to see green things growing again!

January thaw and ramblings

We were meeting some friends at the park on this glorious 60-degree day. They hadn't arrived yet, so I told Flash we'd do a little nature walk and see what we could notice. We gingerly skirted 1000x goose poops and found the last patch of unmelted snow. Then he ran over to me holding a stick, saying, "Look, Mama, I found some nature!" 

Later in that park I saw a blue jay with no trace of blue. He was a dull off-white with the telltale chinstrap, crest, and strong beak, but no blue on front, sides, or wings. I didn't get to see the back. I may go back to get a better view. I kick myself every time I leave my third floor apartment without binoculars, because with a three-year-old, I am not going back up for them!

On the way home, we saw a great blue heron flying leisurely overhead. It had one primary feather missing from each wing.

the most wonderful time of the year? almost.

It's that special time of year in a college town like Boston and its environs when everybody is moving into their new dorms and apartments. A lot of stuff gets left behind in these moves as people begin to realize they just can't take it all with them. That's where I shine. I thrill at the combination of free and useful, so I'm keeping my eyes on the Freecycle boards and Craigslist free section for curb alerts in my area. As I mostly get around by bike during the week, I'm limited to what I can fit in a poorly-secured basket on the front of my bike, and it has to be light enough not to upset the delicate balance I have perfected with my toddler in the seat behind me. And of course I don't want to take things just for the thrill, either. I have plenty of stuff sitting around in my home that never gets used; I'm actively trying to Freecycle things away. But there's a certain magic in the air for me right now because not only am I getting something free (ask me about the queen-size bed I cobbled together from three different people totally free when I was pregnant in Brooklyn), but I am doing my part to recycle and reuse perfectly good items that would likely end up in the landfill long before they outlived their usefulness. I'll let you know if I find anything fantastic this time around - happy hunting!

far from the beach

I was just completely unprepared for beach plums this year. I am usually on top of the ripenings of the plants on my radar, but beach plums are new to me, just as serviceberries were earlier this year. Those sneaky town landscapers hid some beach plum plants along the bike path, and I found some bushes heavy with the dime-sized fruits dotting the parking lot near a supermarket I like. I picked a bunch, but just didn't know what to do with them. I found some recipes but they all called for much more than I had harvested. So I ate some fresh, spitting out the tiny stones.

Beach plums are a tasty sweet snack, but I find the skin to be very bitter. I imagine it's delicious sweetened and  in jam form. Now if I can just figure out a simple way to take out the pits and salvage most of the fruit...I will be prepared next year!