Wild Mushroom Camp

At this time of year, up here in the Catskills, people are always dropping by with wild mushrooms. They naturally want to know if the mushrooms are edible, and if so, how to cook them. There are friends and neighbors who come across the mushroom patch of their dreams, and want to sell to us (the answer is, regrettably, no). Some friends want to go foraging with us - this requires a little hemming and hawing, empty promises on our part, or excuses about the patches not producing just now due to the weather.

Ah, the patches. Our largest haul this summer has been a 5-lb. collection of chanterelles. Chanties stay in families, so where there's one, there are usually more. The stunning, 12-hour+ deluge of last Friday yielded another smallish haul, enough to eat plenty and send the rest to a morel-hunting mom in Michigan. We worried about them being soggy and thus unappealing given the beating we all took from the storm. But they somehow get the moisture without the contact, hiding under logs and leaves.

A few good meals included roasted potatoes with chanties, garlic, and sage (the grill was useless in that weather); watercress from our "pond", which encouraged both the frog and the cress to grow, tossed with chanties and wild onions; and little wonton ravioli stuffed with chanties and the remainder of a roasted red pepper and tons of parsley.

If you're tempted by the "hunt" and want to get away to the northern Catskills region in October, check this out. It's a wild mushroom workshop in Grand Gorge, NY. This is gorgeous farmland, a little town with businesses in the old wood houses along main street, and hills (not sure if that far north is still Catskill land) with llamas and other grazers. I'm not endorsing the class - just happened to run across it. But the region is gorgeous in October and probably ripe with wild mushrooms. http://www.herbalbear.com