A productive day...not!
Aug. 27th, 2001 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpUp to the time of this morning's post, I'd mostly done maintenance tasks, such as pay some bills and get my travel expenses in order. After the post, I got a little edgy because I could not put my hands on my NASA badge, which would have been a Very Bad Thing had I not found it (especially if not before leaving for Houston on Sunday).
I then was called to help at the store, which turned into basically the whole afternoon at the store. When I finally was able to get away, around 4:45 pm, I decided to drive out toward where I recall the road was lined with inky cap mushrooms about this time of year. Some people consider boletes to be the best mushrooms in the world; others look to the chanterelle. Me, I like nothing better than a skillet of sautéed inky caps with vegetables.
You have to pick these mushrooms young, just as they exit the ground looking a little like a subminiature missile. As the mushroom ages, the edges of the cap turn pink, then red, then ever darker until the cap turns black and begins to disintegrate from the outer edge inward.
Somewhere I recall reading that the black substance dripping from the cap was used as ink in olden times. I don't know how much sense that makes, as the "ink" is really a suspension of fungus spores, which would make archival storage of any document written using such ink somewhat problematical, IMHO. For sure, though, once the mushroom reaches the "inky" stage, it is too far gone to eat.
There weren't all that many inky caps along that road, but I did find a few dozen good ones. The weather has been fairly dry the past few days, which probably has had an effect on the appearance of new 'shrooms. Late this afternoon, the wind blew and the water fell hard. Another day or two of that and there'll probably be another chorus of caps springing out of the ground.
I spent some time after dinner taking care of the harvest: soaking the chanterelles in preparation for salting, cleaning and slicing the boletes and the hawk wings in preparation for drying, and then cleaning up in general. If ya wanna play... ya gotta pay.
Right now the Houston assignment looks like it's going to be one week long. Hopefully, they'll find a way to tack on another week, so as to improve the cost-effectiveness of flying me down there (no driving this time, friends!) and renting me a car. More news as it develops. In any event, I got no more of the ethnographic text done today, and I really need to get cracking on it, as I've had a couple of nibbles with regard to future work.
It's late, and we all now start to get up early around here, especially since now Drew has to be in Durango to attend classes (though I hear this rumor that some of his course work can be done online... we'll see about that).
Gotta go get some rest.
Cheers...
I then was called to help at the store, which turned into basically the whole afternoon at the store. When I finally was able to get away, around 4:45 pm, I decided to drive out toward where I recall the road was lined with inky cap mushrooms about this time of year. Some people consider boletes to be the best mushrooms in the world; others look to the chanterelle. Me, I like nothing better than a skillet of sautéed inky caps with vegetables.
You have to pick these mushrooms young, just as they exit the ground looking a little like a subminiature missile. As the mushroom ages, the edges of the cap turn pink, then red, then ever darker until the cap turns black and begins to disintegrate from the outer edge inward.
Somewhere I recall reading that the black substance dripping from the cap was used as ink in olden times. I don't know how much sense that makes, as the "ink" is really a suspension of fungus spores, which would make archival storage of any document written using such ink somewhat problematical, IMHO. For sure, though, once the mushroom reaches the "inky" stage, it is too far gone to eat.
There weren't all that many inky caps along that road, but I did find a few dozen good ones. The weather has been fairly dry the past few days, which probably has had an effect on the appearance of new 'shrooms. Late this afternoon, the wind blew and the water fell hard. Another day or two of that and there'll probably be another chorus of caps springing out of the ground.
I spent some time after dinner taking care of the harvest: soaking the chanterelles in preparation for salting, cleaning and slicing the boletes and the hawk wings in preparation for drying, and then cleaning up in general. If ya wanna play... ya gotta pay.
Right now the Houston assignment looks like it's going to be one week long. Hopefully, they'll find a way to tack on another week, so as to improve the cost-effectiveness of flying me down there (no driving this time, friends!) and renting me a car. More news as it develops. In any event, I got no more of the ethnographic text done today, and I really need to get cracking on it, as I've had a couple of nibbles with regard to future work.
It's late, and we all now start to get up early around here, especially since now Drew has to be in Durango to attend classes (though I hear this rumor that some of his course work can be done online... we'll see about that).
Gotta go get some rest.
Cheers...
