What We Foraged on our Summer Vacation

Every now and then when we are at the lake doing the thing we most love to do of a summer day, we do occasionally get up out of our deck chair. Usually it is just to refill a drink or make room for the next one, and then right back down we plunk into our spot. On one occasion however, we noticed, out of the corner of our eye, something brilliant orange in the woods just below our perch.

The warm, damp weather had made so many unusual fungi appear could these be chanterelle mushrooms? We knew they grow in Wisconsin.

We took some into the local museum naturalist who also thought they were chanterelle. But to be on the safe side she offered to send a photo to her Mushroom Guy.

He gave this reply: "Beauties! That's the "rainbow chanterelle," Cantharellus roseocanus. I can

even tell you where the visitor picked them, roughly, as they grow with

conifers only. Definitely safe and choice edible!" Bingo!

Well who can you believe if not the editor of Fungi Magazine? So we picked some more.

Fried them up in butter and ate them!

And did so four or five more times before the end of August. And no one asked to share them. We did offer. 

Not really surprising as some family members have been know to remove with surgical precision an errant mushroom on the pepperoni side of a pizza and treat it as if it were biohazard. 

So sad. 

More for us!