pasithea

Stacey and I set off for Portland at ~2AM Wednesday morning. Made for a nice drive light on traffic and gave us time to make a few stops and let me do some mushroom hunting.

My findings this year were quite a bit different from last year. Saw hardly any waxy caps, fewer boletus, and far fewer russalas. Seemed that both fruited a little earlier this year.

Found a few boletus zelleri that were in good enough shape to collect. More sullius than I could care to shake a stick at. (I picked up one for no real reason. I've been meaning to toss it)

But I also got lucky and stumbled upon several clumps of honey mushrooms. One cluster had not yet opened any of the caps and were young and tender so I picked them up.

I also found several small patches of giant blewits. They were like 5 to 6 inches in diameter. But most of them were old. I found enough buttons to make a few meals but nothing really exciting. These were all growing under fir so their color was a lot less pronounced. Not nearly as pretty.

When we got to Portland, we stopped at Powells for a little bit and picked up a couple of books, then headed to Stacey's mom's house.

Most of Thursday was spent at Stacey's aunt's house. Stacey made squash pie and I made rice pilaf using some of the chicken of the woods mushrooms I'd dried a few weeks ago. I had wanted to use the honey mushrooms but Stacey was feeling cautious and I agreed that it probably was wiser. The chicken of the woods were okay. Not quite as flavorful or nicely textured as fresh but still pretty good. I think on the whole, freezing them works better than drying them. Though I did dry the drier parts so perhaps they were just less flavored to start with. More experimentation will be required.

Friday I worked about half the day and then went and ran errands with Stacey and her mom and finished off the evening with The Fantastic Mr. Fox ... I think I enjoyed this film. It was rather bizarre and disjointed (more so than I recall Roland Dahl stories being when I read them as a child) On the whole, it was definitely interesting to see it done as stop-motion particularly with furry models (Because as you might expect, the fur moved a lot from pose to pose) Felt more like an experimental student film more than a feature production. Definitely not very polished but kind of nice because it wasn't. I get tired of homogenized perfection.

Saturday, Stacey and I went to the Saturday market where I found a bamboo flute of the sort I've been wanting for a while and an ocarina to replace my old one which is getting worn out after 20-odd years of playing. I still like the sound and overall shape and style of my old one better but the new one has a nice enough sound and plays well.

Afterwards, we went back to Stacey's mom's house where Stacey helped her set up Christmas lights and I went off for a hike and (naturally) took a few wrong turns and ended up walking several miles further than I'd originally intended. Doh. Ohwell. I got some good photos and, I found some Lactarius Deliciousus (Which sounds like a spell in a Harry Potter slashfic I never want to see)

Lactarius Deliciousus is one of those things that just seems entirely improbable. It's a large BRIGHT ORANGE mushroom that oozes milky red liquid when cut and then it has the nerve to turn bright blue-green and to top it off it's EDIBLE! You can just pop that weird alien puppy right in your mouth. o_O Speaking of which, I think I'll eat some tonight. Mmmmm.

I dehydrated the honey mushrooms and a few of the blewits (not sure blewits will rehydrate well but they're common enough that I don't mind risking it), and all the boletus because zelleri are better rehydrated than fresh. :)

Sunday we packed up and headed back to San Jose. All in all, given the driving and work time, it wasn't nearly as long a weekend as I'd have liked, but I did find some good mushrooms and I got a fair bit of reading in. Not bad. :)