As the nights grow colder and the leaves change color, we know that fall has arrived. Fall marks the beginning of a new school year, football season, hunting season, the end of those pesky mosquitos, and every four years, the political chaos referred to as “The Race to the White House.” Of all the seasons, fall is my favorite.
I love the sound of crunching leaves under foot, the smell of decaying vegetation, the sight of a deer’s tail as it bounds off, and the sound of beating wings as a ruffed grouse flees to safety.
Fall is also a great time to forage for wild edible mushrooms. I have been a casual mushroom hunter for years. I started out with puffballs and then moved on to morels and sulfur shells but this year I hope to expand my knowledge base to include chanterelles, boletes, oyster, and lobster mushrooms. My neighbors tell me that the forests of Cook County are a veritable grocery store (or if you prefer, “COOP”) of wild fungi waiting to be discovered.
I read two articles on the subject recently. The first was entitled Canoe Country Cuisine, Edible Mushrooms: The Fruit of Fall Foragers by Mark Sakry. The article starts with this sage advice: “There are old mushroom hunters, and bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.”
The second was entitled Wild mushrooms: What to eat, what to avoid by Tom Order, October 30, 2013. The important caveat in this article is that proper identification can mean the difference between life and death because virtually every edible wild mushroom has a toxic lookalike.
For example: chanterelles are edible but their toxic lookalike, the jack-O-lantern, is not.
At this point, you may be thinking, why bother? The risk of misidentification seems to outweigh the benefit and you may have a point… However, life is full of risks and everything we do involves assuming some risks. My point (or if you prefer, “Morel of the story”) is that we can’t avoid or eliminate all of the risks associated with a particular endeavor, be it foraging for wild mushrooms or choosing the next president of the United States, but we can strive to understand and minimize the risk of choosing “a toxic lookalike” through education, preparation, erring on the side of caution, and exercising good judgment.
David Witte
Lutsen, MN
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