The Incredible Edible

Since my earliest childhood I have spent untold hours in the great outdoors. I've walked the beaches of Hawaii, traveled through the rugged mountains of Mexico, panned for gold in Alaska, listened to the foxhounds in Florida and bogged down while following beagles in the marshes of New Jersey. I've left more than a few footprints in the sand. I had beagles for forty nine years and while competing in field trials and hunting I've meandered through the forest and fields in 20 states.

For the first 20 years of my involvement with beagles I was mushroom illiterate. I encountered numerous varieties of mushrooms and was fascinated by them. However, due to my ignorance, I could only wonder if they were deadly poisonous or deliciously edible. On the A,B,C scale I would have scored a Z on my knowledge of wild mushrooms. I had a great curiosity by no valuable information, so I just looked and wondered. I knew that some species were dibble, but I also had head that others were deadly poisonous.

Then one day I read an article about mushrooms in an outdoor magazine. In the June, 1978 issue of Sports Afield on page 39 was an article, "Three Foolproof Edible Mushrooms." It also had a picture of a morel, a giant puffball and some shaggy mane mushrooms that dispelled the darkness. The following spring I was turkey hunting and found some thimble size mushrooms that resembled one of the pictures I had seen. I gathered a cap full and rushed home to compare them with the picture and description in the magazine. Without a doubt these were one of the choice edible species, the morel. I followed the instructions in the article and split the morels lengthwise to check for insects inside the hollow center. Then I sautéed a few in butter and after salting them I popped one into my mouth. I was hooked from the first taste. I was ecstatic for I had finally shed that curse of ignorance and shroud fear that lumps all mushrooms into one category, "toadstools". Since that day I have gradually been transformed from a mushroom illiterate into a "fungi fanatic". I have discovered that, not the eggs, but the morel mushroom is truly the "incredible edible."

With that tantalizing taste lingering in my mouth I grabbed a pen and jotted down the name and address of a recommended book "The Mushroom Hunter's Field Guide". I then went to the Kingston High School Library and with the assistance of librarian Mrs. Kennedy I soon had the book ordered. That first book by Alexander H. Smith and daughter, Nancy (Smith) Webber is still my favorite. The "National Audubon Society Field Guide to North America Mushrooms" is also a very valuable addition to my growing collection of mushroom books. This last book is available at the public library in Madill, Oklahoma.

There are numerous ways to cook mushrooms, but I discovered my favorite quite by accident. I cook flathead catfish for various functions such as family reunions, church socials, beagle clubs, football teams, etc. Once when I was cooking fish in the spring I had a grocery sack full of fresh morsels on hand. I split some open, dipped them in buttermilk, rolled them in salted cornmeal and then dropped them in the hot oil. Yum! Yum! Yum! That taste is probably what inspired Juvenal, a Roman poet, nearly 2000 years ago to pen, "Keep your grain O Libia, unyoke your oxen, provided you send us mushrooms."

Am I suggesting that you take my advice and rush out and gather some mushrooms and eat them? By no means! If you are a novice, but have an interest, you should get a reliable field guide. Be 100% sure of your identification before ever eating any wild mushroom.

Quite often I hear mushrooms referred to as "Toadstools". I say, any mushroom that you can't identify is a toadstool.

A word of caution is in order for those who do eat wild mushrooms. Just as that deadly duo (drinking & driving) doesn't mix, alcohol consumption and mushrooms are said to cause severe stomach discomfort. My guess is that the mushrooms play only a small part in this.

Some say you should always keep one uncooked mushroom for identification purposes in case of a problem. I won't argue with that logic, but I say, "NEVER EAT ANY MUSHROOM THAT YOU CAN'T IDENTIFY." There are several thousand species of mushrooms and many are edible. However, there are probably an equal number that are poisonous. Some varieties are only mildly poisonous, they won't kill you they will just make you wish you were dead. I have a good friend who lives back off the road going south from the Dark Corner Store. He will grin when he reads them. He mis-identified some mushrooms. Thinking they were chanterelles, he ate them and got deathly sick. I like the chanterelles and know a few places, including Dark Corner, where they grow, but would never eat one without positively identifying it.

The key to alert the local morel hunters in southern Oklahoma is the arrival of the dogwood blossoms each spring. If the dogwoods are bathing the drab forest with their snow white beauty, it's time to sneak off to your favorite patch of morels. If you don't go alone you may find only stubs the next time you go. In 2001 I found the "Mother Load" of morels while turkey hunting. Don't even ask!

My oldest son John, in addition to being an electrician is also an artist. I asked him to draw a picture of a morel for a mushroom article that appeared in the April, 2002 issue of Small Pack Option (Beagle) Magazine. Just looking at the illustration make me drool with anticipation. When John was in Kingston Middle School he was in the Gifted & Talented Program. He did quite a bit of extra work including writing. Once he wrote a fantasy story about some new planets in our solar system. He assigned the new discoveries with names straight out of one of my mushroom field guides, such as, Chanterelle Cibarus, Amanita Virosa, and Morchella Esculenta. His teacher couldn't imagine how he came up with all of those strange sounding names. She didn't have a clue and neither does my computer's spell check.

The Chanterelle and Morchella (Morel) are my two favorite mushrooms. That other one, Amanita Virosa is commonly known as "The Destroying Angle". It appears in many of our lawns and is death waiting to be ingested.

WHAT ARE MUSHROOMS?

Mushrooms are: the poor man's luxury; the rich man's repast; the outdoorsman's staple; the cautious man's mystery; the fearful man's shroud; the bold man's epitaph; the wise man's intrigue; the curious man's fancy; the knowledgeable man's garden.

Mushrooms are: to the hunter, a segment of the Fauna and Flora; to the ecologist, a vital part of the ecosystem; to the unsupervised tot, a possible trip to the emergency room; to the dolt, an esoteric aberration; to the connoisseur, a palatial banquet; to the superstitious, an anathema; to the old wives, a fairy tale to spin; to the gullible, the "Fairy Rings" are where "Little People" danced or was the site of a spell of "Midnight Magic"; to the ancient Greeks, a product of Zeus' lightning; to the pothead, the hallucinogenic mushrooms are "the food of gods" (or possibly fools); to the environmentalist, a segment of the balance of nature; to the uninterested, a toadstool.

What are mushrooms? Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a mass of underground microscopic mycelium; as Saprophyres, they are decomposing agents of all plant life; as Mycorrhizols, a symbiotic partner of many trees and shrubs; they are the source of enzymes used as cleaning agents in detergents; they are the big brothers of the fungi that gives us Penicillin and those that play a vital role in the making of blue cheese, salami, sausage, and yeast for bread and wine.

A large puffball is estimated to contain trillions of spores. Kick a puffball and even though each individual spore is microscopic that vast multitude will be as visible as a cloud. A meadow mushroom (Agaricus campestris) which is almost identical to the common grocery store variety (Agaricus bisporus) is reportedly capable of dispersing a half billion spores in a single day.

What are mushrooms? Mushrooms are possibly the source for chronic infectious sinusitis, and who knows, possibly the cause of some types of cancer. On the other hand, they may someday be found to hold the cure for cancer. Stay tuned.