Mad photo creds to my bro Ryan at ryansgarden.com . This photo was taken without permission. Sorry.
So the hottest thing of the new summer season has got to be oyster mushrooms. If you didn't get some I am sorry and reading this blog is going to break your heart.
I almost missed it myself... I called a friend a couple weeks ago and someone told me he was out picking oysters. It was late, so I couldn't go out right away. Had a hard time sleeping. Got up early and was in the forest skipping around with that bounce in your step that you can only get from a romance with a mushroom. They were out there, in full force.
I had been checking a bit earlier in the year, expecting them to come more like in the spring... or rather what I thought was spring... sometime around April. But this year they liked the end of May and beginning of June. What do I know, right?
I felt like I was about a week behind the ball, so I picked hard for a few days and got many pounds. Some I ate, mostly dried though.
Paul Stamets, regional mushroom guru, says that laying them out gills up in the sun allows them to soak up a bunch of vitamin D. According to many science types, this is a nutrient that is lacking in our diets, due to lowered liver intake and our angle on the sun for most of the year. It's being blamed for some of the epidemic of depression, or at least the seasonal affective disorder. So I'm stoked to have my own vitamin D source. I don't think I'm lacking in liver intake though...
This picking season was also very fun because I infected my new girlfriend (I think I can use that term...) with the passion for mushroom hunting. (That was one of those sentences that you couldn't wait to find out how it ended, right?) Moving on... Getting someone hooked on wholesome fun feels really good. It's good to share.
So yeah, good times. If you didn't get to pick oyster mushrooms... you should drop everything and go to your nearest mature alder grove. They're the white guys on the trunks of dead trees, or on logs on the ground... look them up, find someone who knows. I think they're an easy one, hard to mistake for poison, but do the research... there may still be time... or you may find some that have dried themselves for you and your preservation work is done. Just lay in sun for vit.D
Enjoy!
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