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| Triaging the haul. Milk cap and Hedgehog mushrooms. |
Year 3 at the cottage on Muskoka Lake, and year 3 of mushrooming. I brought a log book this time, hoping to continue to document the species I find around the property. We've driven up around Labor Day each time so it was interesting and very exciting to see all the new mushrooms I encountered this year. To my delight: many yellowfoot, hedgehogs and a few chanterelles. The previous two times I was only able to familiarize myself with boletes, which were mostly wormy and inedible.
I like walking around while listening to an audiobook, enjoying the shade of the trees and keeping my eyes peeled to the leafy brown floor of the forest for that occasional pop of color. It must have been a wetter season than usual, or rather something must be different: The mushrooms I've been used to seeing were few and far between. I won't complain, the new ones were mostly all edible and highly sought after. I will say there was an abundance of Destroying Angels and Death Caps around, definitely twice as much as last year. I crushed the ones I did find fruiting, but I guess it hardly matters when the mycelium is underground.
The hedgehogs were easy to ID, they have teeth instead of gills and have no poisonous look-a-likes. Above, on the left they are fresh, and on the right they are a few days dried. I cut them up with the few chanterelles I'd found to accompany some soft scrambled eggs. G also ate some. Neither of us died.
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| Cleaned, chopped, ready for the butter and pan. |
In a pan of bubbling butter, I threw in the remaining supermarket creminis we'd brought from NYC along with the foraged chanterelles, hedgehogs and yellowfoot. I sauteed them with some chopped scallion and minced garlic. Salt and pepper. When things start to stick, deglaze with white wine. The eggs are beaten and then lazily nudged around the pan until a luscious golden ribbons form, and removed from the heat before fully cooked. Nature provides, easy peasy.
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| Happy Hunting! |