Bolete! (or should I say болит!)?

[alexpgp]

Around 1 pm, Galina and I decided to carpe some of that diem, so we took off in search of... well... just getting out of the house. We ended up going up to Site Romeo, which is up at the top of the world on the Wolf Creek Pass. If I had any doubts as to whether mushroom season is on around these parts, they were dispelled quickly. Neither I nor Galina have ever seen so many mushrooms.


Usually, when you see the kind of big mushrooms shown in the picture above, they're old and wormy, but I was pleasantly surprised to find hardly any damage of any kind on these bad boys, the largest of which weighed in at 4.8 pounds.


Usually, mushrooming from a moving car is about as productive as painting watercolors while skydiving, but today we had no problem at all spotting mushrooms in the landscape. (This, despite the fact that we ran across huge numbers of little mushroom "stumps," attesting to the fact that we're not the only mushroom hunters in the area.)

I even managed to run across some "Hawk's Wing (Sarcodon imbricatus) in the course of the day, and it seems like forever since I've seen a specimen of mushroom. Some folks don't much care for it, but I like it fried, and I find it adds body to soup.



There were so many mushrooms out there, I really tuckered myself out to the point where everything pretty much hurts (that's where the Russian "болит" comes in, carrying water as a pun, as the pronounced word sounds a bit like "bolete" and means "it hurts" in Russian). Near the end of our time on the mountain, I had to take hold of myself so as not to try to harvest everything in sight.

After returning home, I set about drying the large boletes and the Hawk's Wings (can't find the dehydrator, so I'm using fishing line) and cleaning the small boletes, but there hasn't been enough time to process the medium-sized boletes (which are in interim storage in a paper bag in the fridge). Dinner was a couple of boletes fried with onion and chicken breast over leftover buckwheat. Heaven!

I had intended to take it relatively easy over the weekend, so I guess I just swapped today for one of those days. I'll have to go hit the translations and editing hard either tomorrow or Sunday, and then keep going at 110% through the middle of next week.

Deadlines loom, but heck, today was fun.

Cheers...

FMI: Crossposted to mycology.

Comments

[vuzh.livejournal.com]

Nice haul!

I have never seen hawk's wing this early in my area, they're usually the last thing to fruit before the snow falls. I did see them in August in Telluride, so you folks down South must have a different climate for that shroom.

Those king boletes look STUPENDOUS.

I'm going to have to try to get up in the high country this weekend!

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

In my experience (which pretty much is confined to southwest Colorado) hawk's wing shows up at about the same time as the king boletes.

I've never seen the season "on" so early in August, but I'm not complaining!

Cheers...

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

BTW, I posted a query over in mycology about a gilled mushroom I found. I was thinking it was a matsutake, until I compared it to the description in my handbooks.

Cheers...

[vuzh.livejournal.com]

Also: hawk's wing is good in stroganoff & in pepper steak. I've always found it a versatile and yummy fungus.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I'll keep your recommendations in mind. I like pepper steak.

Cheers...

P.S. Come to think of it, I like stroganoff, too! <grin>

Mushrooming Rule No. 1

[afeht.livejournal.com]

You NEVER NEVER NEVER tell everyone and his dog, where you find your fine mushrooms. Brag about it, yes. Show pictures, yes. Discuss culinary advantages of the Scaly Tooth (that's its other name, by the way), yes. Tell where and how you found them, NO!

Re: Mushrooming Rule No. 1

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of real estate up there on Wolf Creek, especially around Treasure Falls (nyah!).

Cheers...

P.S. I thought Rule No. 1 was "Don't eat yellow mushrooms." Or was that a rule about snow?