yearofplenty

My Huckleberry Cleanse or What I Learned from a Week of Wild Foraging (Pt. 2)

 

Tulip heads are cleaned off the plants at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

As I prepared for a week of eating only wild-foraged foods there was a lot of chatter online about the recent popularity of cleanses, where people go for a period of time only drinking juice, or following some other regimen of limited foods that supposedly cleans out impurities from the body. Much of the conversation in recent weeks has been driven by an article by Judith Shulevitz at the New Republic, "Jesus and Moses Went on Cleanses, That doesn't mean you should." The more accurate description of the article is visible in the web URL that titles the piece, "The idiotic-cleanse-craze-and-modern-theology-juice-fasts." 

What caught my attention is not just the controversy about the merits of calorie-depriving cleanses, but the strong religious streak to the movement. Shulevitz notes how similar they are to religious fasts and argues that this is really what drives the movement:

...people don’t afflict themselves for their health, or not only for that. I won’t be the first to point out that cleanses look a lot like religious fasts or that people crave the transcendence that comes from self-deprivation. 

According to Shulevitz it's an existential acting out in response to a world envisioned as poisoned. In the laymans terms, the world is full of $#@$ and therefore we are a full of $%@#, and cleanses are a way to clean out the you know what. It's original sin reduced to terms that even a middle schooler could understand and some would argue that the movement has the sophistication of junior high boys when it comes to the digestive system. The books apparently spend a lot of time on the topic of defecation.

Most mainstream doctors and scientists are highly critical of the cleanse movement as Shulevitz notes. As a pastor who sat at the bedside of a dead parishioner who chose homeophathic cleanses and diets to cure her cancer instead of chemotherapy I join with those doctors and scientists in their criticism. It is dangerous and irresponsible to make unproven claims about the health benefits and curative powers of diet and herbal remedies. When I see such assertions arise in the organic/slow food/real food conversation it drives me crazy. 

But I'm more interested in the spiritual/religious aspects of the movement. Should pastors and theologians be just as skeptical of these pseudo-scientific detox regimens as the doctors and scientists? I don't think so.

Shulevitz is right to identify the movement as primarily an expression of spiritual longing and we in the church ought to take note. Just as we have abandoned fasting as a spiritual practice the void has been filled by pseudo-religious movements that take seriously the real connection between body, mind, and spirit. This is the part the cleansers get right and the church, these days, mostly gets wrong.

I just finished a week of eating wild-foraged foods. Here in the Inland Northwest that means I spent a week eating mostly huckleberries, call it my Huckleberry Cleanse. I didn't go into it with visions of dirty toxins in my intestines. It was a personal challenge and I did have in mind the experience of Israel in the wilderness foraging for manna every day for 40 years.

I have to admit I come away from the experience feeling some affinity for the "Cleaners."

It did reset my body and mind and awaken my spirit in new ways. It did clear my body of the high-salt and high-fat diet I gravitate toward. I did lose 10 pounds and here on the morning after I'm not nearly as hungry as I was a week ago before my foraging began. It's easier for me to concentrate and I feel psychologically in a better place. The first coulple days were a hassle but after that there was a strange peace and quiet that settled on me as I experienced freedom from the tyranny of hungers that clutter my mind. In a sense I feel clean.

I've had a similar awakening every time I've fasted. Last year when I followed the dietary regimen of Ramadan, going daylight hours without food or drink, I felt empowered and peaceful. When our family joined with our local Greek Orthodox congregation for their Advent and Lenten fasts last year we experienced spiritual renewal and a strengthening of family and communal bonds. When we followed the Kosher food laws for a month we experienced renewal in our family life. In my experience, intentional fasting has the potential for spiritual growth and renewal.

It's been an important practice for most of the history of God's people in the Bible and in the Christian church, but in the modern west it has fallen victim to the spirit/body divide imposed on the church by the Enlightenment and modernity. (That's my assessment that I'll flesh out more later.) Not even Catholics do fish Fridays anymore and Protestants are mostly left to our own whims when it comes to Lent. We're missing out.

Shulevitz is wrong. "Jesus and Moses Went on Cleanses," and we should to.

The church in the west would do well to listen to the spiritual longings expressed by those who are turning to colonics and cleanses for help in this crazy fragmented world we live in. They are looking to put the pieces together, body, mind, and spirit. What does the church have to offer them? We have a treasure trove of resources if we dig a little into our history, and it's not based on scatologically obsessed pseudo-science, it's based on the Bible, on the life of Jesus, and on the experience of the early church.

And contrary to the Cleanse movement these practices lead us to embrace the body as good and holy, as sacred space. 

(This post is part of an ongoing inquiry into food practices in the church supported by a grant from the Louisville Institute. Find out more about the Tables of Plenty Project here.)

What I Learned from a Week of Eating Only Wild-Foraged Food (Pt. 1)

I've long wondered what it would be like to dedicate a week to eating only wild-foraged foods and this has been my week to give it a try.

The foraging experience is vastly different depending on the season. Early spring is abundant with fiddlehead ferns, stinging nettles, and savory mushrooms. Late summer has an array of ripe fruits and tree nuts. But mid-summer, while lacking in tender greens and beefy fungus, serves up a main course of berries - strawberries, thimbleberries, blackberries, serviceberries, elder berries, and huckleberries. I timed my week-long foraging experience to coincide with this wild-berry buffet. 

I have some broader inquiries to make about the experience but here are some initial observations about the week.

1. It takes time: The first four days of the week all started with a couple hours of picking huckleberries in the mountains around the Spokane. My rule has been to pick only enough for each day, so each day has arrived with nothing in the cupboard. In this sense it's the ultimate slow food. I've enjoyed the quiet time in the mountains for reflection each morning but the time required would make it difficult to fit into my non-sabbatical rhythms.

I could imagine making one day a week a forage day, sampling what nature offers up and intentionally making time to head out into the wilderness.

2. I'm surprised I'm not more hungry: My daughters' softball tournaments later in the week led to afternoon foraging, which meant going long stretches without any food. To my great surpise my cravings have been minor during these long stretches. Early in the week I was cranky and hungry, but with six days under my belt my hunger has subsided. Last night I actually had leftovers from dinner. 

I find this to be true every time fast. The first couple of days are miserable but after getting over that hurdle there is a quiet contentment that comes over my body and mind. At first I rebel against the limitations as a small crisis, but then the crisis passes and the limitations become a path to a strange peace. I suspect that this experience is what compels religious ascetics. 

3. Berries get old after awhile: It seems like a dream come true to eat your fill of huckleberries every day but I'm kind of sick of them at this point. Thankfully I discovered purslane, a nice-tasting wild green that grows abundantly in our garden. There is a poisonous lookalike (spurge) that grows right alongside it so you have to be careful, but it is fantastic in a little stir-fry. It is also renowned for containing more omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy green vegetable.

I also discovered an old apricot tree on conservation area land in Spokane Valley. I have avoided gleaning from working farms but the apricot tree is wild at this point so it's fair game. Because the tree isn't being watered the fruits are small and the sugars are concentrated. Wow! The best apricots ever.

The purslane and apricots are good examples of the tasty but hidden abundance that surrounds us. 

I've also eaten thimbleberries, serviceberries, and tiny strawberries.

4. There is enough: The first couple of days were filled with urgency. I wondered if I could gather enough each day to sustain me. I even picked strawberries the size of sunflower seeds, thinking that they might be all I would have for the day. I now know, at least this time of year, there is enough. Huckleberries are the perfect example.

Spokane is part of what I'll call the Huckleberry Belt. You go anywhere in the mountain regions of Eastern Washington and Montana and you'll find that huckleberries are a cultural icon. Red-fingered pickers sell them at stands on every corner in tourist towns and high-end boutiques carry lines of huckleberry soaps, make-up, and gourmet candy.

Whole families in this region dedicate summer-weeks for camping and picking berries, filling coolers with them for jams, pies, and the freezer. Everyone has their "secret spot" for picking and no one is too eager to share the details of the location. It's one of those, "I'd tell you where we go for berries but then I'd have to kill you," sort of situations. 

There is a strong culture of scarcity around this legendary berry, primarily because it only grows in the wild. Despite their best efforts, hortculturists have failed to cultivate huckleberries for commercial growing. Like morel and porcini mushrooms, farmers can't grow them and package them for Costco. It's a wild plant and you have to go into the wild to harvest. Go here for more background on this. 

This wildness lends itself to the sense of scarcity that surrounds the berry. If a food doesn't grow in crop rows or through industrial practices, we can't imagine there is enough and so we sneak around to keep others out of our patch or some even pay $80/gallon plus $35 shipping to buy them online.

Well I'm here to bust the myth of scarcity that surrounds the huckleberry. My foraging week has led me to the mountains almost every day and every place I go is packed with berries. Huckleberries are everywhere. They are not scarce, they are abundant and there is enough for everyone in the Inland Northwest to harvest till it hurts - your back and your tummy. (I've learned that it is actually a little uncomfortable if you eat too many.) If you live in Spokane there is no need to drive to the Canadian border to your families secret spot. Just drive 30 minutes to Mount Spokane and hike around a little and you'll find your fill. 

In a cruel irony it is often our fear of scarcity that leads us to degrade natural places to grow crops or harvest timber which leads to actual scarcity. Haiti is an extreme example of this but the truth holds everywhere. Our fear of scarcity is too often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

An alternative posture to a fear of scarcity is to live in wonder of the abundance of what nature offers up. Foraging has helped reinforce this perspective in my life this week.

5. Be careful: For every edible in the wild there is often a poisonous lookalike. Only eat what you know and rely on more than one source of information to identification. For example, my primary ID book says that purslane doesn't have a poisonous lookalike, but all my other references point to spurge as similar to purslane. I'm grateful to the clarification provided by my these sources because in our garden the spurge grows right next to the purslane. So close that sometimes I'll grab a handful of purslane and a spurge plant is mixed up in the harvest. 

I'll follow up with more observations later in the week.

Top food trends to look for in 2012

The James Beard Foundation has up a list of trends for the coming year from a chef's perspective. They include:

New Nordic Pantry
Chefs are hopping on the Noma-inspired New-Nordic-Cuisine train and are reaching for these ingredients: sea buckthorn (a tart orange berry), wood sorrel (a plant with heart-shaped leaves), bark flour (made from real trees), and evergreens (such as Douglas fir). To wit: a recent Douglas fir eau-de-vie sighting on the menu at GT Fish & Oyster in Chicago.

Locavorism, Redefined
Taking his lead from the Cook it Raw crew, Charleston’s Sean Brock is striving to revive the cooking of the South’s antebellum period, teaming up with foragers and historians to rescue heirlooms from obscurity or extinction. We’re hopeful that his efforts will spark a similar curiosity in chefs working in other regions of this country.

Cooking with Douglas fir? Foraging? I like it.

Here are the 2012 food trends from Phil Lempert at Food and Nutrition Science that include higher costs, more male shoppers, and the ethnic food revolution. My favorite:

Trend #4: Increased emphasis on the “Farm to Fork” journey

Shoppers have become increasingly interested in knowing where their food comes from, which is why 2012 will bring an added emphasis to a different kind of food celebrity – the farmer. Last year we saw sales flourish among grocery retailers who jumped on the movement among consumers to “buy local.” In this age of transparency, interest in the farm to fork journey has grown considerably, inspired in part by food safety scares and more importantly a desire to know how the food we are serving our families is being produced.

This year, we’re seeing more farmers get in on the action. A growing number of farmers are leading the conversation by using blogs and social media sites to bring the story of the American farmer to consumers. According to the American Farm Bureau’s 2010 Young Farmers and Ranchers Survey, nearly 99% of farmers and ranchers aged 18 to 35 have access to and use the Internet, and nearly three-quarters of those surveyed have a Facebook page. Additionally, 10% use Twitter and 12% post YouTube videos. In fact, 77% of those surveyed view this type of communication as an important part of their jobs as farmers and ranchers. In September of this year, the United States Farmers and Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) launched an annual $11 million program designed to open the dialogue with consumers. Expect to see more advertising and television programs starring these real food experts (versus actors pretending to know their food).

And according the big New York J. Walter Thompson Ad Agency this will be the year of food-waste consciousness. From their 2012 things to watch for slide show here is one of their meta trends:

Food as the new Eco-issue: The environmental impact of our food choices will become a bigger concern, driving greater brand and consumer awareness and action around Curbing Food Waste.

I predict that in 2012 we'll see a growing interest in food and food traditions from people of faith.

John Muir - Paying Attention to Nature as a Spiritual Discipline

John Muir's writing and approach to life have had a big influence on the way I see the world. Muir is the iconic naturalist who helped pioneer the concept of national parks, founded the Sierra Club, and shaped the early contours of America's appreciation for pristine wilderness areas.

I recently read his classic journal/book titled, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf. The backstory is that the young Muir was injured while working in a wagon wheel factory, almost losing his vision. His eyesight returned and left him with a new resolve to live a life true to his passion for nature and plants. His thousand-mile walk from Indianapolis to the Gulf Coast of Florida in 1867 was his maiden voyage on this new alternative path. He didn't plot out his course other than to take "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find." The book is a fascinating window into the wilds of post-Civil War America.

Muir encounters all kinds of interesting characters on his journey including roving Appalachian gangs, displaced slaves, and desperate robbers, but my favorite interactions are his encounters with the respectable and reasonable folk. His commitment to wander the woods taking plant samples and rejoicing in the glory of wild places is most confusing to the people who are oriented in the economy and industry of the day.

Here is Muir's description of one such encounter with a blacksmith in the woods of North Carolina who was willing to take him in for dinner and a provide a place to sleep for the night. When Muir explained his adventure the man was baffled:

Looking across the table at me, he said, “Young man, what are you doing down here?” I replied that I was looking at plants.“Plants? What kind of plants?” I said, “Oh, all kinds; grass, weeds, flowers, trees, mosses, ferns, — almost everything that grows is interesting to me.”    

“Well, young man,” he queried, “you mean to say that you are not employed by the Government on some private business?” “No,” I said, “I am not employed by any one except just myself. I love all kinds of plants, and I came down here to these Southern States to get acquainted with as many of them as possible.” “You look like a strong-minded man,” he replied, “and surely you are able to do something better than wander over the country and look at weeds and blossoms. These are hard times, and real work is required of every man that is able. Picking up blossoms doesn’t seem to be a man’s work at all in any kind of times.”

To this I replied, “You are a believer in the Bible, are you not?” “Oh, yes.” “Well, you know Solomon was a strong-minded man, and he is generally believed to have been the very wisest man the world ever saw, and yet he considered it was worth while to study plants; not only to go and pick them up as I am doing, but to study them; and you know we are told that he wrote a book about plants, not only of the great cedars of Lebanon, but of little bits of things growing in the cracks of the walls. “Therefore, you see that Solomon differed very much more from you than from me in this matter. I’ll warrant you he had many a long ramble in the mountains of Judea, and had he been a Yankee he would likely have visited every weed in the land. And again, do you not remember that Christ told his disciples to ‘consider the lilies how they grow,’ and compared their beauty with Solomon in all his glory? Now, whose advice am I to take, yours or Christ’s? Christ says, ‘Consider the lilies.’ You say, ‘Don’t consider them. It isn’t worth while for any strong-minded man."’

This evidently satisfied him, and he acknowledged that he had never thought of blossoms in that way before. He repeated again and again that I must be a very strong-minded man, and admitted that no doubt I was fully justified in picking up blossoms. He then told me that although the war was over, walking across the Cumberland Mountains still was far from safe on account of small bands of guerrillas who were in hiding along the roads, and earnestly entreated me to turn back and not to think of walking so far as the Gulf of Mexico until the country became quiet and orderly once more.

I replied that I had no fear, that I had but very little to lose, and that nobody was likely to think it worth while to rob me; that, anyhow, I always had good luck. In the morning he repeated the warning and entreated me to turn back, which never for a moment interfered with my resolution to pursue my glorious walk.

John Muir (2010-03-28). A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (American Classics) (pp. 10-11)

This conversation happened almost 150 years ago in a world without cars, airplanes, and limited electricity, but the assumptions and social pressures that underly it are just as relevant today. The blacksmith describes a world where "picking up blossoms" and dedicating yourself to what you find "interesting" doesn't have a place "in any kind of times." He can't imagine anyone paying attention to nature and plants unless they are working for the government or some private money-making venture. Besides all that, he considers it foolhardy to take the road less traveled where unknown dangers awaited. He even hints at an economy that needs all hands on deck to make it grow and thrive.

In response, Muir refers to Jesus' command to consider the lilies, a scripture passage that we drew on for inspiritation as we planned our Year of Plenty experiment. He makes the case for a life of paying attention to nature as a discipline, something worthwhile for its own sake. His brush with blindness had filled him with a passion to open his eyes, literally and figuratively, to the wonder of Creation at every possible turn.

The longer I am a pastor (and a person), the more I am aware of this need to nurture simple and subversive disciplines of paying attention in a world that says there is no room for considering such unproductive endeavors. I am reminded of Muir's words of advice to his friend Samuel Hall Young, a Presbyterian pastor who was preparing to serve at a mission outpost in the Kondike region of northern Canada during the Klondike gold rush days. Hall tells the story in his book, Alaska Days With John Muir:

"You are going on a strange journey this time, my friend," he admonished me. "I don't envy you. You'll have a hard time keeping your heart light and simple in the midst of this crowd of madmen. Instead of the music of the wind among the spruce-tops and the tinkling of the waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these poor, deluded, self-burdened men. Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean from the earth-stains of this sordid, gold-seeking crowd in God's pure air. It will help you in your efforts to bring to these men something better than gold. Don't lose your freedom and your love of the Earth as God made it." Young, Samuel Hall, 1847-1927. Alaska days with John Muir (Kindle Locations 1667-1674). New York [etc.] Fleming H. Revell Company. 

For a previous post on the topic of paying attention go here. 

FYI - almost all of Muir's writings are available for free download as pdf or Kindle versions here.

Tis the Season to Forage for Berries: Learning to Appreciate the Lesser Varieties

One of my hobbies this year has been to learn about edible wild plants. The spring season was abundant with porcini mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns but the heat of summer slowed my outdoor foraging adventures to a halt. Most of the edible green plants are only good as tender shoots fresh out of the ground. I lost track of my Edible Wild Plants book (which I highly recommend) until some fresh red berries on the side of the road reminded me that it's berry season. I know the basics about common blackberries (which don't grow much on the east side of the state) and huckleberries, but I have been eager to learn about some of the lesser known varieties.

Last weekend our family had a chance to get away to Mount Spokane and explore. We did find an abundance of huckleberries but I'll offer a report here on what we learned about some of the other less-prized sweet little morsels of wild goodness. 

Thimbleberries: These are readily availbale along roadsides. They are in the raspberry family of plants, but are more tender and drier than some of the sweeter berries. I've heard they are considered a delicacy in the midwest where they are made into jam. My rule of the thumb is that if you take four cups of any berry and combine them with 8 cups of sugar for jam they will taste awesome and aparently that rule holds up with the thimbleberry.

Here's what the wikipedia entry says:

Thimbleberry fruits are larger, flatter, and softer than raspberries, and have many small seeds. Because the fruit is so soft, it does not pack or ship well, so thimbleberries are rarely cultivated commercially. However, wild thimbleberries make an excellent jam which is sold as a local delicacy in some parts of their range, notably in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan.

Mountain Ash Berries: I noticed that these are abundant at Mt. Spokane and you don't have to look too hard in any landscaped area to find these berry-laden deciduous trees. I had no idea they are edible until I found them listed in my book. There edibility comes with a caveat - don't eat them raw and they are best when harvested after the first frost. Here's some more info.

The fruit of European Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) can be made into a slightly bitter jelly which in Britain is traditionally eaten as an accompaniment to game, and into jams and other preserves, on their own, or with other fruit. The fruit can also be a substitute for coffee beans, and have many uses in alcoholic beverages: to flavour liqueurs and cordials, to produce country wine, and to flavour ale. In Austria a clear rowan schnapps is distilled which is called by its German name Vogelbeer. Rowan cultivars with superior fruit for human food use are available but not common; mostly the fruits are gathered from wild trees growing on public lands.

Rowan fruit contains sorbic acid, an acid that takes its name from the Latin name of the genus Sorbus. The raw fruit also contain parasorbic acid (about 0.4%-0.7% in the European rowan[7]), which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage, but heat treatment (cooking, heat-drying etc.) and, to a lesser extent, freezing, neutralises it, by changing it to the benign sorbic acid. Luckily, they are also usually too astringent to be palatable when raw. Collecting them after first frost (or putting in the freezer) cuts down on the bitter taste as well.

Elderberries: There are two varieties of elder berries that I've seen, one that has a shiny dark purple fruit, almost black, with a purple stem, and another that is a dusky light blue color with smaller berries. Here's the scoop on the shiny dark purple variety known as sambucis-nigra (pictured to the right). 

The dark blue/purple berries can be eaten when fully ripe but are mildly poisonous in their unripe state.^[6] All green parts of the plant are poisonous, containingcyanogenic glycosides (Vedel & Lange 1960). The berries are edible after cooking and can be used to make jam, jelly, chutney and Pontack sauce. Also when cooked they go well with blackberries and with apples in pies.

Here's the link to the USDA citation. Here's another helpful link.

The pale light blue variety, which are more common in the northwest, are a cerulea variety. They are sweet, but have small stone-like seeds and the leaves and stems are poisonous. Here's some information on their edibility:

Edible Uses:The fruits of blue elderberry are edible raw, cooked or used in preserves. This is the most well-tasting of the North American elders, even though it is full of small seeds. The berries are rather sweet and juicy. They can however cause nausea if eaten raw, but ripe berries are edible when cooked. Berries can be used in portlike wine, jams, and pies. They should always be cooked and are used primarily in wines and syrups. The fruit is usually dried before being used. Some caution is advised, see the notes below on toxicity. The flowers are edible raw or cooked, and are said to be pleasant and refreshing raw. A pleasant tea can be made from the dried flowers.

Caution:The leaves, green fruits and stems of members of this genus are poisonous. The stems, bark, leaves and roots contain cyanide-producing glycosides, and are therefore poisonous, especially when fresh. The fruit of this species has been known to cause stomach upsets. Any toxin the fruit might contain is considered to be of low toxicity and is destroyed when the fruit is cooked.

As you can see, even with edible berries, there are cautions that need to be taken. Only eat wild berries and plants that you have identified with the help of a proven guide book. My post here is not enough to effectively ID these berries, and it is not offered as a guide. This is just a report from the field and a friendly invite to explore the often hidden wonder and beauty of what the land offers up.

I'll continue to explore and report on what I find. Let me know if you have a lesser-known berry that is a favorite.

BTW: Did you notice that I casually offered up the precious news that huckleberries are ripe and abundant on Mt. Spokane right now. Don't say I never did anything for you. :)

Mushroom hunters "...regarded as a sort of idiot among the lower orders."

Northwest Food News has a great story on NPR about mushroom hunters. I love the quote that Guy uses to open the piece:

Many cultures, including our own, once considered hunting mushrooms aberrant behavior. They are, after all, a sometimes filthy and occasionally deadly fungus. William Delisle Hay, a 19th Century British mycologist, wrote that a mushroom hunter was often “regarded as a sort of idiot among the lower orders. No fad or hobby is esteemed so contemptible as that of the ‘fungus-hunter’ or ‘toadstool-eater.’”

It is a strange hobby that attracts an off-center band of acolytes, and mushrooms are the eccentric uncles of the food chain (dried porcini does smell like toe jam after all), but count me in as a lowly "toadstool eater" and "fungus hunter." 

Picture: A 3 pound porcini I discovered on a recent outing near Mt. Spokane.

Adventures in Foraging: Mushrooms, Fiddlehead Ferns, Snakes, and Psychedelic Surprises

I'm a couple months into my first Spring season of foraging for mushrooms and other wild edibles. I'm still alive and I'm not on a liver transplant waiting list so I figure I'm off to a good start. I've dabbled in foraging for wild mushrooms for the past two years and I've mostly been learning and observing, but this is the first year I've made a concerted effort to harvest and eat what I find. Go here for past posts about foraging. I'll offer some of what I'm learning in this post, but first please note that you should only harvest and eat wild edibles that you personally know are safe to eat. This is especially true when it comes to mushrooms. It's the responsibility of anyone who harvests wild mushrooms to use a reliable field guide to determine the variety. My rule of thumb is to always go out with people that have far more experience than I do and learn from them. As they say, when in doubt throw it out. The pictures on this blog are not intended to help you I.D. mushrooms in the field.

Here is some of what I'm learning:

Wild mushrooms have a bad rap: My go-to guide for mushrooms (All That the Rain Promises and More, which is the best all-around guide I've found) points out that Americans inherited our mushroom phobia from the Brits. The guide says that we would do well to learn from European and Asian cultures that see harvesting wild mushrooms as something akin to picking wild huckleberries, and I have to agree. Granted, huckleberries can't kill you if you pluck the wrong variety, but I've learned that the most coveted mushrooms are easy to identify once you know what to look for. For example, in my opinion so-called false morels look nothing like real morels. I think a fair comparison on the risk spectrum is with canning vegetables. If you are reckless with your canning practices and don't follow scientifically proven recipes you have the potential to kill off the whole family, but I rarely find someone who approaches a jar of homemade pickles in the fridge with the trepidation with which they approach wild mushrooms. Rhubarb leaves are poisonous and yet most of us have some growing in the back yard. We don't warn the children to not touch the rhubarb every time they wander into the garden.

One advantage European and Asian cultures have over us is that people grow up learning to distinguish the varieties so they are less likely to make mistakes in identifying. Our lack of a foraging food culture makes our mushroom phobia a self-fulfilling prophecy where our fears keep us from knowledge, therefore making our efforts to harvest more dangerous. For example, there have been a rash of poisonings in the Detroit area (10 incidences) from people eating "early morels" which are the variety more likely to be mistaken for a real morel. (Early morels, pictured to the right, have a cap that is unattached at the botton to the stem.)

The West Virginia poison control center has gone as far as to say, "The (WVPC) advises against picking and eating any wild mushrooms. If you or someone you know has consumed a wild mushroom, the ingestion should be reported immediately to the Poison Center at 1-800-222-1222." I guess you can report my recent ingestions if you want. I'm assuming that's a typo but it is informative of our fears. Instead of encouraging knowledge and wise practices in the way we engage our natural environment, we are told that nature is dangerous and we should stay away. 

Unlike the rare occurrence of mushroom poisonings, recent outbreaks of e. coli poisoning in Germany have killed dozens. Should we issue blanket warnings advising against the consumption of cucumbers which are the likely culprit? 

Mushroom hunting is fun for kids: I've gotten in the habit of taking the girls with me on outings and they love it. In case you're thinking of reporting me to Child Protective Services I make sure to tell them repeatedly that they are never to eat a mushroom without my supervision. It is a good excuse to take the kids out in the woods and hike and explore. It's a healthy way to encourage a love of nature instead of a fear of nature. I wonder if our forboding warnings about things like mushrooms are part of what contributes to our children's "nature-deficit disorder?" 

Morels and porcini are the best to eat and easiest to identify: If you want to keep mushroom hunting in the Northwest simple I would recommend focusing your efforts on looking for porcini (boletes) and morels. These are both easy to identify, once you know what you're looking for, and they are the best to eat. I recommend buttery garlicy pasta for morels and I really like the porcini in brothy soups like Tom Yum Goong (spicy Thai soup). Morels can be found in any wooded and wild area so I find they just take walking a lot of miles in the woods. Kind of like a door-to-door salesman who is told to play the percentages - if he knocks on enough doors he will get sales - the more miles you walk in the woods the more morels you will find.

Porcini on the other hand are more reliably targeted. Their mycelium have a symbiotic relationship with the roots of certain trees, actually wrapping themselves around the roots. These mycelium are long-lasting and will reliably send up mushrooms year after year in the same place with some variation in the volume of mushrooms depending on the weather. Porcini's don't have gills on the underside of the cap, but rather a sponge-like layer, so you don't need to worry about confusing a porcini with the most poisonous varieties which are gilled, although some mushrooms with sponge under the cap are poisonous. You'll have to do you're own work learning to identify, but one helpful thing to remember is that the best varieties of porcini don't have a slimy layer on the cap. The Slippery Jacks, as they are called, are seemingly everywhere, but the prized king and queen boletes are harder to find. 

Puffballs and fiddlehead ferns not so desirable: The ferns are tasty but it is a lot of work removing the brown, inedible scales. Lily and I came into a bunch of puffball mushrooms recently, but their texture, at least in the soup we prepped them in, was not desirable. Kind of like eating a puss-filled grape. 

Don't eat any wild mushrooms raw: A good rule of thumb is to always thoroughly cook your mushrooms.

Don't get so preoccupied looking for mushrooms that you miss seeing the big snake laying on the trail: A couple weeks ago at Liberty Lake I was so intent on finding mushrooms off the side of the trail that I nearly stepped on a four foot long snake that was draped across the trail right in front of me. I guess I'll have to get a guide book for snakes too. Next year you can expect a post about how snakes have a bad rap, and the vast majority are not poisonous.

Even if you don't like to eat mushrooms, learning to ID them is worthwhile and rewarding: Think of it like bird watching for fungus lovers. I now can identify the psychedelic varieties of mushrooms and I'm surprised at how prevalent they are. I would never ingest them but there is something fun about being able to ID them.

First Morel Mushroom Sightings of the Spring in Spokane

After a couple weeks of looking for morel mushrooms in Spokane wilderness areas I finally came across two blonde beauties today. I've seen an abundance of poisonous false morels so be careful if you're on the hunt. I won't reveal my new secret area but I will say that I found them near the Spokane River. They tasted delicious. They are hopefully the first of many this season. If you can't find any yourself, Mo at the Millwood Farmer's Market will hook you up. The market starts May 18.

From Forest to Table: The Rise of Wildcrafting in the Local Food Movement

When I read Michael Pollan's book Omnivore's Dilemma a few years ago, the chapter on foraging for mushrooms in the forest didn't capture my imagination like the other chapters on farming. At the time, there was a default mechanism in my mind that believed harvesting wild mushrooms was a foolhardy venture that ended with a sojourn on the list of people in the region requiring liver transplants. Since then some trusted friends have slowly chipped away at my fears and misunderstandings to the point where wildcrafting for food in the forest has now fully captured my attention. I can't wait for Spring when morels will start popping up from the soil.

Northwest Food News has a story up today about the rising interest in foraging among the local food crowd. There are some folks pulling together a network of small forest plots for harvesting. The article notes that foraging can be big business:

Hanson says the most successful forest-to-table business in the region seems to be a Seattle-based company called Foraged & Found. It gets permits to forage on public and private timberland. The company’s founder says his formula for success is a minimum parcel size of four to five thousand acres.

One of the hidden treasures of the Inland Northwest are the Inland Empire Paper lands that are open for the public to get a permit for the purposes of wildcrafting. I feel a special connection to that because IEP is located two blocks from my office. In fact I can see the plume of steam coming out of the mill from my office window and hear their loud whistles signaling morning, noon, and midday from my home.

One cultural observation I have is that foraging has a much larger role in non-American cultures. In the INW it's the Eastern Europeans and Asians that dominate the wildcrafting scene. I suspect that most cultures around the world have a much more vibrant history and tradition of foraging. For example there was this article about 18 people dying a matter of weeks in Italy from harvesting mushrooms;

According to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, mushroom seekers have been so relentless in their pursuit of their favorite fungi, they have been abandoning safety procedures -- donning camouflage and hunting in darkness in an effort to scout remote, highly-coveted troves, Reuters reported.

"There is too much carelessness," Gino Comelli, head of the Alpine rescue service in northwest Italy's Valle di Fassa, is quoted as saying. "Too many people don't give a darn about the right rules and unfortunately this is the result."

Eighteen people have died in just a 10-day period. Many of them had forgone proper footwear, clothing and equipment and died after steep falls down Alpine slopes.

Getting geared up in camo looking for mushrooms? I suppose hunting season might be the American equivalent to this Italian phenomenon, but in my mind, the lack of a foraging tradition in the US is yet another sign that the American food culture is far more disconnected from the land and the ryhthms of the seasons than most. It's a tradition that I'm glad to see making a comeback.

If you live in the Inland Northwest and are interested in learning more you might want to consider membership in the Spokane Mushroom Club.

picture: Noel and Lily holding some monster tooth mushrooms harvested from 20 feet up in trees.

Tooth Mushrooms and Other Foraging Adventures

As I mentioned in June, I am a novice wild mushroom forager, and mostly use it as an excuse to get out and enjoy the wilderness. This is my first year exploring what the cool damp Fall season has to offer and in my few ventures into the woods I've been amazed at the sheer volume of fungi occupying the forest floor. They are everywhere.I have also been surprised to find that I am not alone in wandering the woods for these strange creatures. Almost everywhere I've been I've noticed signs of others having been there cutting off the heads of mushrooms and leaving footprints on the trail. On one occasion I looked up and 15 feet away was a large man with a bucket and a 10 inch knife in his hand. It had the feel of a gruesome moment in a Coen brothers movie for a second, but then he smiled and showed me his bounty of honey mushrooms which were apparently a staple collected in his homeland in Eastern Europe.

As I said in June, my approach is to learn and study before taking a bite. As they say, you can be a bold mushroomer, or an old mushroomer, but there are no bold and old foragers of wild mushrooms. I've learned to identify some of the poisonous varieties like Death Cap and Destroying Angel and they are fairly common, so don't mess around.

Last night I discovered a bounty of comb tooth mushrooms. Here's the description from the American mushrooms site;

The great news is that these delicious fleshy fungi are among the safest, most unmistakable of all of North America's species of edible wild mushrooms: If it looks like a cluster of white fungal icicles hanging off a decaying log, stump, or dead tree trunk, and it seems very fresh, bake it (or fry it slowly in a mix of butter and oil) and enjoy!

You can see in the picture above that the variety I collected are like heads of cauliflower. One was 20 feet up in a tree and I had to use a stick and knock if free and catch it before it crashed to the ground. I'll do a small taste test today and let you know the results. Go here for more info on this variety.