Folks,
I’m on vacation this week without computer and too busy/no downtime.
This is the same mushroom as yesterday and in my hand, for scale. It weighs about 2 pounds! I of course cleaned it. I shall share much info soon!
Success – huzzah! Found at about 11,200 feet in Southern Colorado.
This was the first and largest I found today, about 2 pounds of delicious Boletus Edulis, the king bolete, once harvested and cleaned. I’ll share info on all that soon. Also known as bolete, cepe, porcini, and many others.
When I’m back home, I’ll be slicing and frying that beauty with garlic and shallots, salt and pepper. Food doesn’t get much better, tbh. It tastes so good, really, a fresh mushroom of this type is the equal or better of any meat, veggie, or fruit. There’s a reason some of us get seized with mushroom madness.
My words of wisdom have always been“there are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but no old, bold mushroom hunters”
While I may examine and deduce, etc a wild mushroom, I rarely consider my judgement good enough for consumption. I must be positive before I’ll eat something I harvest, and I always cook my mushrooms. For many species, this isn’t required, but cooking transforms many key proteins and flavor compounds so that it is tastier and easier/better to digest.
In the case of these king boletes, I know them and their quasi doppelgänger never ends up in my bag, though I do sometimes cut them, only to find gills which the edulis does not have.
Have a great weekend, I’m buying some produce in Pueblo and then driving back East.
I have enough mushrooms to feel good, but not what I’d hoped for. I was late, more late, and early, for the areas I hunted. Rains cause them to burst from the ground and some years, the same rain does nothing, and they never pop, other years they pop at the first rain, some years they pop only after a few rains, and some years are like a flood and they explode in growth, not just sticking up, but also sideways out of the ground on hills and other “edges” for weeks on end.
Apparently, last year, while wet in much of Colorado, was very dry on my prize mountains, so this year’s moisture made for limited growth. If I still lived here, I could go again next week and the week after, but I’m not so blessed.