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THROUGH THE WOODS: Fall mushrooms

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By NANCY JANE KERN

Inky cap mushroom. Photo by Nancy Kern

ONE OF OUR 1950s neighbors had an Italian father-in-law who collected and ate wild mushrooms. He had done this in his homeland and continued the practice at his weekend home in Austerlitz. There were several incidences of strange after-effects from these mushroom meals including heart palpitations, dizziness, fear, and great anxiety.

The neighbor was a Columbia University Professor of optical physics, not a mycologist, so he sought suitable colleagues and field guides for information. Since this was a matter of life and possibly death, he negotiated a suspension of family mushroom eating until he became an expert on the subject. He was a good friend, shared his findings, and sometimes took us kids with him to search out different types of fungi around the woods, lawns, and fields. We decided that with very few exceptions we would not eat wild mushrooms and enjoy the perfectly delicious ones from the grocery store.

Years later, while working at a medical laboratory, there were several cases of people dying from poisonous mushrooms. One was a grandfather and grandson, and another resulted in a long and painful death. This was again a warning to use great caution when eating wild mushrooms. Sometimes symptoms do not manifest for several days. Sometimes poison can be absorbed through the skin while handling them. The best approach for collecting and possibly eating mushrooms is to join a group of experts such as the New York Mycological Society or a local mushroom club. A useful field guide is North American Mushrooms by Dr. Orson K. Miller, Jr.

A favorite edible mushroom is the Coprinus comatus, the “shaggy mane” or “inky cap.” We usually find them at this time of the year, when the weather cools and the earth is damp, popping up along roads or on lawns, growing from buried wood. When they first emerge from the ground they look somewhat like white cylindrical popsicles, and as they develop, they get larger and open up to the umbrella form we think of as a mushroom. The cap has soft scales that make it look shaggy, and fairly soon it begins to decay, turning black and liquefying to drip blue-black “ink” around the edges.

At this stage, they taste bitter and are not good to eat. The best way to eat them is to pick them young and immediately sauté them in butter. Delicious! Once, we stopped to tour a nuclear power plant. On the front lawn were dozens of large, perfect “shaggy manes” and a bagful was brought home for dinner. The beautiful white mushrooms were still intact.

My family was not happy. “Are you kidding, eat something from a nuclear power plant, no way!” It was nice not to have to share the buttery delicacy, and fortunately there was no postprandial afterglow.

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