Sporadic Press
Journal of The San Diego Mycological Society
November 2006 Vol. 11 # 3
No Meeting in December
Holiday Party Instead
Join members of the SDMS for our annual potluck party. Paul Maschka invites you to his house on Saturday , December 2nd at 6:00 p.m. Note that this is a Saturday, not our normal Monday meeting date.
Dig out your favorite recipes with wild or cultivated mushrooms or other good things.
Address: 1111 Sunset Cliffs Blvd, San Diego
Directions: Take I-8 West until it ends and runs into Sunset Cliffs Blvd. Go south to 1111.
Soft drinks and coffee will be provided. If you want something stronger, please bring your own.
Festivities will include a "white elephant" gift exchange. You may go home with the Harley Barnhart memorial spoonholder.
Now is your chance to get rid of that awful gift that has been gathering dust in the closet ever since someone completely unfamiliar with your taste in household objects gave it to you years ago. Wrap it up and bring it to the party for the "Most Awful" gift exchange. Trading will be allowed, or possibly encouraged, just in case your white elephant turns out to be the apple of someone's eye. De gustibus non disputandum!
No RSVP is required, and nobody is organizing the food. It always seems to work out well enough, so bring whatever you like.
More Reasons To Go Where The Mushrooms Grow
In addition to the events described last month, here are some more coming events in Northern Cal.
David Arora’s Mendocino Mushroom Foray
Friday, November 24 through Sunday November 26, 2006
David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified, invites you to join him on Thanksgiving weekend for his annual mushroom foray and class on the Mendocino coast. The three day gathering includes mushroom hunts, identification sessions, cooking demos, lectures by Arora and special guests, and delicious meals cooked by Canadian chefs Brig Weiler and Jill Milton. Cost is $160 for adults, $80 for children under 12; kids 5 and under are free. Price includes most meals and lodging in comfy, heated cabins. Your check, made out to “David Arora,” reserves your space. Mail to: Debbie Viess, 328 Marlow Drive, Oakland, CA 94605. Please include e-mail address for confirmation. For more information, see www.bayareamushrooms.org or contact Debbie Viess: 510-430-9353 or amanitarita at yahoo dot com
First Ferry Building Fungus Festival
Cooking Demos, Special Menu Offerings, Tastings, Mushroom Growing Tables at the Ferry Building Marketplace, San Francisco, CA
On Saturday November 25th and Sunday November 26th, 2006 the Ferry Building Marketplace, Far West Fungi and Ferry Plaza Farmers Market will celebrate culinary mushrooms with the first Ferry Building Fungus Festival. Festivities begin on Saturday at 10 am with a range of free events including Mushroom Growing Tables, Meet the Mushroom Farmer Talk with John Garrone of Far West Fungi, Mushroom Cooking Demo with Chef Bryan Waites of Medicine Restaurant, Music, Mushroom Displays and Children's Coloring Table. Through the weekend Marketplace merchants will be offering a delightful abundance of special fare, tastings and demonstrations. The weekend event will benefit the San Francisco Mycological Society. For more information, see:
www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/ferry_fungus_event.php
FFSC Albion I Foray
Friday-Sunday, December 8-10, 2006
We stay at the Albion Field Station, situated six miles south of the town of Mendocino and sleep in heated cabins on real mattresses. Communal cooking facilities are available, and the Saturday potluck is phenomenal! For more detail about the facility, please see:
Cost: A $30 per person deposit is required. Final cost is based upon how many attend, but is not usually more than $40 total. Unless cancellation is made well in advance, the deposit is non refundable. Reservations: Make payable to and mail to:
Nate Segraves
Minister of Long Distance Forays 1281
Crescent Terrace
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
(408) 730-2273
longdistanceforays at fungusfed dot org
SOMA Camp
Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend:
January 13-15, 2007
Occidental, CA
Featured speaker: Gary Lincoff
The Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA) is inviting mushroom hunters everywhere to beautiful Northern California for some midwinter mushrooming at the 10th annual SOMA Winter Mushroom Camp.
The camp, a benefit for the SOMA Scholarship fund, will be packed with mushroom forays, specimen tables, slide shows, and speakers. Our featured speaker this year will be Gary Lincoff.
Classes and workshops will include
And of course there will be excellent wild mushroom cuisine offered by an expert chef with the assistance of the SOMA Culinary Group. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.
Fees include lodging, meals, and all activities.
Adults: $250
Kids (under 13): $135
Sunday only: $110 (includes all activities, dinner feast, and featured speaker)
Campers staying offsite: $195
Registration
Registration for the 2007 SOMA Camp is easy, go to the web site:
www.somamushrooms.org/camp/camp.html
Download and print the registration form
Fill out the form and send it in along with your check:
SOMA Camp
201 Webster Street
Petaluma, CA 94952
Registration forms must be postmarked no later than Jan. 3, 2007 for general registration.
SDNHM Specimen Collection Project
The SDMS committee working with the San Diego Natural History Museum has had several good meetings to discuss our specimen collection project. There is still much work to do before we can begin significant collecting.
To make it easy for more of our members to stay informed about the project, and maybe get involved as well, we have added a section to our SDMS web site. There are a number of documents posted there about the project, including a list of the things that need to be done. See :
www.sdmyco.org/SDNHMCP.htm, or go to sdmyco.org, select the “What We Do” link, and look for the link for the SDNHM project.
Many hands make light work. Help! Many of the tasks can be done by one person, and brought to a meeting for approval by the group. Your participation will help us to get all of this done before another season goes by.
Welcome
To the new club on the block, the Bay Area Mycological Society (BAMS). Check out their web site:
What’s Cooking
Fungi As Food
Thanks to David Campbell, president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco for his presentation at our November meeting. David gave us a talk on collecting wild mushrooms for the table. We then moved to the kitchen for a demonstration and tasting.
While we sampled all of the goodies that members had brought, we learned about cleaning and preparing chanterelles. Some of us learned by doing, as we prepared the nice pile of chanterelles that David brought us from Oregon. Then while David demonstrated how to rehydrate dried morels and get rid of the grit in the soaking liquid, your fearless editor manned the pan to make two batches of the first recipe below, Chanterelles with Pears in a Port Sauce.
David, ably assisted by SDMS member Linda Espino, prepared the second recipe below, Morels in Brandy Cream Sauce. The tasting, snacking, sipping, and socializing proceeded apace. Meanwhile, the ice cream machine cranked away on the final dish, a Chanterelle Sorbet.
Thanks to all the members who brought food and drink, and who made short work of cleaning up the kitchen when we were ousted by the park staff at closing time.
This is the second meeting where we have done a cook and taste, and both have been very successful. We will probably schedule one more in the spring.
So, on to the recipes. You will notice that no measurements are given in the first two. You just need to use your judgment as you throw it together. In the first recipe, we used about as many chanterelles as we could pile on a paper plate, and two pears cut into bite-sized pieces for each batch. In the second, it looked like about two or three cups of rehydrated morels, about a cup of chopped shallots, and a half-pint of cream.
Chanterelles and Pears in Port Sauce
Brown generous slices of Chanterelle in butter, douse with heavy splash of ruby port, reduce liquid/alcohol, add sliced pears as heat is shut off. Polish with butter, season with salt & pepper. Recommended as appetizer.
Morels in Brandy Cream Sauce
Reconstitute dried morels, then sauté in butter. Remove mushrooms, sauté chopped shallots, (optional) deglaze pan with brandy/cognac, return mushrooms, add cream, reduce liquid as desired. Add salt & pepper. This dish is excellent as an appetizer or as a sauce for meat or pasta, etc.
Chanterelle Sorbet
4 cups waterMake simple syrup mixing water and sugar in saucepan, bring to boil, cook 5 minutes.
Let cool
Blend syrup, chanterelles, lemon juice in blender (make sure syrup is
cool or you will have a mess).
Pour into ice cream maker
Freeze until thickened to sorbet consistency.
Note that the chanterelles are not cooked for this recipe. Generally, it is not a good idea to eat them raw, but David assured us that he has not had any problems reported after serving the sorbet to a number of groups. This may be a beneficial result of the blending and freezing process, but pigging out on this one might not be good for you.
On another note, if you have a reason the be in Los Angeles on a Monday, you might want to check out this restaurant.
Mushroom mania
By Larry Lipson, Restaurant Critic, LA Daily News
A novel way to boost Monday-night business has been initiated at the NineThirty restaurant of the W Hotel, 930 Hilgard Ave., Westwood.
Dubbed Mushroom Mondays, the least-busy night of the week now has a slew of mushroom dishes ($12 to $16) available for fungi fanciers.
They can partake of such items as a pickled shimeji mushroom salad with an enoki mushroom and porcini vinaigrette, a wild mushroom soup with black truffle-foie gras emulsion, a chanterelle mushroom mac 'n' cheese recipe with boschetto al tartufo, a pan-roasted hen of the woods mushrooms offering with creme fraiche atop grilled sourdough toast with truffle oil, and a smoked lobster mushroom and duck confit spring roll with a mushroom-soy ponzu.
Information: (310) 443-8211.
Free Book
By Pat Nolan
If you are interested in oaks, I just got my hands on a new little book put out by the Forest Service. And it is free! You might want to request it, even if it has insects too! Email rschneider at fs.fed.us and request A Field Guide To Insects And Diseases Of California Oaks by T. Swiecki and E. Bernhardt. It’s got a nice discussion on conks found on oaks, their range and nomenclature.
El Niño Is Coming
See www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov for the latest climate predictions for this winter and spring. W may be in for another very good mushroom season.
Mushrooms emerge with disease-fighting benefits
Janet Helm - Chicago Tribune
Mushrooms, once relegated to the supporting cast in a salad or on pizza, have become culinary stars, from grilled portobello "steaks" to porcini-laden pastas and warm ragouts spiked with morels and chanterelles.
Supermarkets now stock a burgeoning array of prewashed, presliced fresh mushrooms and myriad packages of exotic dried mushrooms - perhaps the greatest evidence of America's love affair with mushrooms.
"Mushrooms have gone mainstream," said food writer Amy Farges, author of "The Mushroom Lover's Mushroom Cookbook and Primer" and co-owner of Marche' aux Delices, a national mushroom distributor in New York City.
"When McDonald's is doing portobellos you know mushrooms have gone up a notch," Farges said. (The chain recently tested a portobello panini on its Bistro Gourmet menus in some restaurants.)
But now mycophiles may have even more reasons to celebrate. Although mushrooms once were thought to be nutritional nothings, scientists are unearthing a variety of health benefits. Emerging research suggests they may enhance our immune system, fight infections and even offer protection against diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released new nutrient data for the seven most commonly eaten mushrooms, revealing some surprising levels of nutrients including fiber, B vitamins and the minerals selenium, potassium and copper.
Recent studies show mushrooms are packed with antioxidants - even more than many deeply hued vegetables, such as carrots and tomatoes. Antioxidants act as repellants against free radicals, damaging molecules in our body that are thought to promote cancer and other diseases.
Portobello and cremini mush-rooms were found to have the highest antioxidant capacity by Robert Beelman and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University.
When it comes to one particular antioxidant, ergothioneine, mush-rooms are the richest source, the Penn State researchers found.
Other researchers found that bringing mushrooms out of the dark packs them with the "sunshine vitamin." When growing or just-picked mushrooms are exposed to ultraviolet light, the vitamin D content soars - making them an unlikely but significant source of this bone-building nutrient.
These findings could pave the way for vitamin D-enhanced mushrooms in the future, according to Beelman, who has spent more than three decades studying mushrooms.
Asian cultures have revered mushrooms as both food and medicine for thousands of years. Only recently have scientists in this country turned their attention to these fragrant, woodsy fungi.
"There's been an irrational prejudice against mushrooms by the medical community, but that's changing," according to Paul Stamets, a mycologist (fungi expert) who is owner of Fungi Perfecti, a mushroom farm and research laboratory near Olympia, Wash.
Stamets is involved in two mushroom studies that are being funded by the prestigious National Institutes of Health.
One study is looking at the cholesterol-lowering benefits of oyster mushrooms and the other is exploring the effects of turkey tail mushrooms on strengthening the immune system of women with breast cancer.
Previous research conducted at the City of Hope's Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, Calif., found that mushrooms may help reduce the risk of breast and prostate cancer by suppressing two enzymes in the body.
Many of the medicinal qualities of mushrooms are traced to beta glucans, the same type of fiber that gives oatmeal its cholesterol-lowering abilities. Increasingly, beta glucans in mushrooms are garnering attention for stimulating immune responses and activating cells that attack cancer, according to Dr. Harry Preuss, a physiology professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, who is conducting a study exploring the anti-diabetic effects of maitake mushrooms.
Many of the recent studies have been funded by the mushroom industry, although now the government has set its sights on mushrooms. So far, most of the findings have been based on animal or test tube studies and have used extracts from mushrooms-which makes the results promising, yet still preliminary.
Often thought of as a vegetable, mushrooms are fungi - in a class of their own, somewhere mysteriously between a plant and an animal. To obtain nutrients, fungi are totally dependent on their environment - most often a dead tree or rotting log (or typically compost for cultivated mushrooms). Researchers have found that changes to the compost or soil can alter the nutrient content of mushrooms, creating opportunities to enrich mushrooms with calcium, selenium and other nutrients.
Experts believe the survival skills of fungi may be a clue to the bundle of benefits locked inside. Mushrooms contain enzymes, antimicrobial compounds and natural antibiotics to fight off potential invaders and to keep them from rotting.
This may be why mushrooms offer similar protection to us when we eat them, said Stamets, who completed another NIH study that tested the potential of mushroom extracts to protect against smallpox and other viruses.
It's a concept not too far-fetched, considering that the lifesaving antibiotic penicillin was derived from a fungus.
(Janet Helm is Chicago dietitian and nutrition consultant.)
Damp Weather a Headache for Some Growers.
Michelle Locke, Associated Press
NAPA, Calif. - Things got fuzzy in the Dolce vineyard this harvest. The mold known as botrytis sneaked in with early rains, and once-pale green semillon grapes shriveled into purple, furry blobs.
The phenomenon was a real headache for some grape growers — particularly those harvesting chardonnay. Crews picked around the clock to beat the fast-moving blight, a common plant malady that is often what's to blame for making your strawberries go funky in the fridge.
But no one cursed their rotten luck at Dolce, producer of a rare dessert wine that relies on botrytis — aka "the noble rot" — for its sweet, honeysuckle character.
"For us it's a good thing," said Dirk Hampson, who created Dolce in 1985 and is director of winemaking and a partner in its sister Napa Valley winery, Far Niente. "We're getting ideal conditions."
This was an unusual weather year for wine grapes, starting with a cool, wet spring in many regions that slowed ripening. A summer heat wave in some areas slowed things down again when vines shut down to conserve energy.
The subsequent late harvest and relatively early rains set the stage for botrytis, which in moderate quantities is far from disastrous. Grapes with thicker skins, such as cabernet sauvignon, can resist rot; some winemakers think a little botrytis in their chardonnay adds to the flavor.
A serious case of botrytis is another matter, turning harvest into a nail-biter for some growers as they waited for sugar levels to rise: Would rot race through the grapes before they were ripe enough to pick?
"Once it starts, it rots by the hour," said John Balletto of Balletto Vineyards in Santa Rosa. "It was so stressful. At one point we had 1,200 tons of chardonnay that was not harvested."
Balletto, who sells most of his grapes to other wineries, got the last of his chardonnay picked by the end of October, bringing in 160 tons of grapes on one day. He estimates he lost about 25 percent of his chardonnay crop to botrytis — but at least his pinot noir, in hot demand this year, looks good.
Now that the chardonnay's in, Balletto can relax a little. "When all this started happening, it went from a democracy to a dictatorship - 'I'm in charge. Get it all done right now!'" he said with a laugh.
Overall, Sonoma County Winegrape Commission president Nick Frey estimated 3 to 5 percent of the Sonoma County harvest may have been touched by botrytis this year. That could be a big deal for small growers, but overall it shouldn't increase prices consumers pay. There's already a grape glut from last year's big harvest, and competition from producers outside the United States has kept prices low.
Botrytis also showed up in the Central Coast growing region near Santa Barbara, where harvest was also late.
At botrytis-loving Dolce, harvesters typically have different concerns. They worry that the fruit won't get moldy enough, that the wrong kind of mold will develop, and that there won't be the precise mix of damp followed by a balmy spell to allow sugar levels to rise.
This year, things went great. As harvest progressed, you could tell botrytis was in bloom as soon as you stepped into Dolce's 20-acre vineyard and sniffed the distinctive, slightly sour smell of the fruit.
"This will kind of give you a graduate course on botrytis," Hampson said on a recent visit, pulling berries off a cluster of semillon grapes, some green, some striped purple and some sporting gray fuzz.
The job of the botrytis is to evaporate water content and concentrate the sugars, acid and flavors. Dolce is mostly made with semillon grapes with a small percentage of sauvignon blanc.
When it comes time to press the grapes, clouds of dark spores fly into the air, smoke without fire.
For the first few years after Dolce was created, conditions were dry - no botrytis, no wine.
Then came the downpours of 1989. "If we had not gotten grapes in '89 we might have lost our nerve," Hampson said.
Since then, they've tried to discover how best to propagate the mold. An interesting tactic is to see what works for strawberry growers, who try to do everything they can to stop botrytis and then do the opposite.
When the mold gets going, it can double in a day or two.
"The vineyards just light up," said Dolce winemaker Greg Allen. "Really, we take a back seat to Mother Nature."
On the Net:
http://www.ballettovineyards.com
Mushroom Events
SDMS Events
December 2, 2006
SDMS Holiday Party
Food, wine, and fun!
January, 8 2006
SDMS Meeting
One week later than normal.
Other Events
November 24 to 26, 2006
David Arora Foray
See page 1 for details.
November 25 and 26, 2006
Ferry Bldg Festival
See page 1 for details
December 2 and 3, 2006
MSSF Fungus Fair
Oakland Museum
December 8 to 10, 2006
FFSC Albion Foray
See page 4 for details, or
December 9, 2006 and
January 20, 2007
Point Reyes Mycoblitz
Point Reyes National Seashore
incredulis at yahoo dot com
January ??, 2007
FFSC Fungus Fair
Louden Nelson Center
Santa Cruz, CA
January 13 to 15, 2006
SOMA Mushroom Camp
Occidental, CA
January 26 to 28, 2007
All-California Foray
Albion Field Station
Mendocino, CA
SDMS Information
The Sporadic Press is published monthly during the mushroom season, from September to May, by the San Diego Mycological Society.
Membership in the society is open to all who are interested in mycology. Membership dues are $20.00 per year, and include a subscription to The Sporadic Press.
If the date on your mailing label is highlighted in yellow, your membership has expired. Please renew promptly.
To join or Renew, send a
check for $20.00 with your name, address, phone number and email address to:
Pat Nolan
7135 Calabria Ct. Unit B
San Diego, CA 92122-5594
We meet once a month from October to May on the first Monday of each month at 6:30 pm. Most months, we meet in Room 101 of the Casa Del Prado in Balboa Park. Meetings are free and open to the public. In December and May, we hold potluck parties instead of our regular meetings. Check newsletter for party details.
Web Site: the SDMS Web
site is:
http://SDMyco.org
Mushroom Hotline: upcoming events and spontaneous forays are announced by email. The email list is restricted to members of SDMS. If you are a member, go to this link and enter your email address.
lists.igc.org/mailman/listinfo/sdmyco
Newsletter Submissions Welcome
Send To:
Dave Grubb
2233 Manchester Ave # 1
Cardiff, CA 92007
(760) 753-0273
davegrubb at sbcglobal dot net
Officers:
President, Paul Maschka
Vice-president, Elio Schaechter
Secretary, Charlene Atkins
Treasurer, Pat Nolan