Here are a couple of choice edible finds for this #fungifriday
I managed to find a fresh chicken of the woods aka Laetiporus sulphureus hidden at the base of a dead tree.
I was up on a trail above a ravine and looked down the side of the hill and saw a bright spot of orange. Instantly I knew what it was. During fall always keep an eye out for this bright orange, especially on dead trees and logs. You might just end up lucky and find some chicken of the woods.
Now for hen of the woods aka Grifola frondosa. This one tastes just like the bright orange chicken of the woods but it is much more camouflage. The only key to finding this mushroom is that they always grow at the bases of hardwood trees. You really need to keep your eyes peeled to find these guys, as they match the color of the leaves and color of tree bark exactly.
If you are lucky enough to find hen of the woods you are in for a lot of work cleaning them. They grow in really weird tangled structures and often have twigs and soil in between all the tangles.
Here is another hidden gem of fall mushrooms the wood blewit aka Lepista nuda. The trick with finding these guys is to look in-between dead logs and roots with lots of wet leaves piled up in dark soil typically around hardwood trees. I often have to swish the leaves around a bit if I notice a suitable area where they might be growing to actually find them.
Sometimes you'll be able to see the medium sized tan or whitish cap from a distance. Also there is a slight grayish purple edge around the cap when viewed from above.
When you flip them over is where the true identification happens, they have blueish purple gills with a thick fibrous (though not tough) stem.
One thing to be sure of with wood blewits if you are new to picking them is to do a spore print. Just cut off the cap and set it on something dark for a few minutes and if the spores are white with a slight pink you have a wood blewit. There are poisonous lookalikes in the cortinarius family that look fairly similar to a novice, but if you do a spore print they will all have dark rusty brown spores. So be sure to do your spore prints first, also look up all the different cortinarius species mainly cortinarius iodes as that is the one that looks the most similar.
The texture of wood blewits are perfect for cooking nice and firm and when cooked they keep a good texture without getting slimy.
Once cooked they lose their purple color and their taste reminds me of something between a button mushroom and an oyster mushroom. A perfect pairing for any poultry dish.
As for timing to look for all these edible fall mushrooms, keep an eye out for these wooly bears emerging in fall. If you see wooly bears and have a decent amount of rain with the first start of colder days its time to go mushroom hunting.
Happy hunting and happy #fungifriday