Tag Archives: foraging

The Way of the Mushroom

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Found 'em!Here are two truths that I have come to realize. 1) There are people out there with a natural affinity for finding mushrooms. You will know these people when you happen upon them, because at some point in the conversation, they will not be able to control themselves, and they will tell you about the massive morel supply they scored the previous day. When they go hiking, they practically trip over puffballs and hen-of-the-woods. If physics allowed for the sparkle in their eye to be mushroom-shaped, it would be. 2) I am not one of these people.

this is not going to work.To explain how I learned this, we need to back up a step, to my birthday last month. My friend Mignon gave me a mushroom box from Back to the Roots, out of which you can grow your own delicious fungi. It was a lovely gift, and one that filled me with trepidation, since Jason and I had bungled a similar gift a couple years ago. Twice. But this one did feature smiling children, oohing and aahing over their mushrooms, on the back of the box, which boosted my confidence. I can do most, if not all, of the things a four-year-old can do. And yet, when I found myself balancing cat food cans in order to anchor a wobbly and submerged bag of peat, I had little hope that this experiment would actually work.

Enter my brush with some mushroom folk at Bonnaroo. Continue reading →

I Stank I Can, I Stank I Can: All Aboard the Forager Express

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You know Ginko trees, those numbers with the stanky yellowish berries that I, and perhaps you, called “stinky trees” as a wee lad?  Well, I ate some of that stank.

This came about because Shannon is awesome and for an anniversary present took me deep into Queens to spend an afternoon with Wildman Steve Brill.  A name like Wildman primarily conjures in me images of either a crazed and burly mountain man type or a happily-hard-livin drummer in a band opening for Dokken in 1987, but Steve Brill fits neither of these molds.  In fact, this is the picture he has of himself on his website, which more perfectly sums him up than anything I could write this morning.

Our afternoon with Steve, billed by Shannon as “New York’s top wild food foraging expert,” was spent walking Forest Park learning about and filling up a bag with wild roots, berries, and greens (or weeds, if you want to be classist) that we could incorporate with dinner.  It was nothing less than unflaggingly awesome. Continue reading →