Meeting Monday November 5

The next meeting will be on Monday, November 5^th at the Casa Del Prado in Balboa Park.  Socializing starts at 6, and the program starts at 7.

MycoChef Patrick Hamilton will give us a cooking class and serve the results.  Tentative menu, subject to availability of mushrooms and inspiration:

v    Golden chanterelles poached in a beurre fondue then served in an herbed cream sauce--or just plain, or both.  Or not. 

v    Raw shaved porcini button salad with Parmigiano-reggiano, shallots, and a mild vinaigrette.

v    Terrine of black chanterelle rillettes.

 

Patrick has suggested some wine pairings, in case you would like to bring something to sip.  Sauvignon Blanc for the poached chanterelles, Zinfandel for the porcini salad, and a Pinot Noir for the rillettes' terrine.

As usual at our “cook and taste” events, members are welcome to bring appetizers or mushroom dishes to share. Since this will be a cook and taste, there will not be a pre-meeting dinner.

Patrick has also asked for some local help.  This is what he wants us to supply so far:

1. Several large sauté pans

2. Sharp knives

3. Two wood spoons

4. Two serving spoons

5. One person to help prep food

6. Two people to serve food

 

Volunteers may email Dave at DavidGrubb at sbcglobal dot net.  I will maintain a list of who is bringing what, and who will be helping.  Please provide your phone number, in case we need to contact you.

We also need plates, cups, and utensils.  We should have enough plates so everybody gets a fresh plate for each dish.  Whoever has the club supply should check what we have, and notify Dave if we need to augment our supplies.

 

About the Guest Chef

Patrick Hamilton finds, cooks, and writes about wild mushrooms.  He was the long-time contributing food editor for “Mushroom, the Journal of Wild Mushrooming”—an internationally distributed magazine dedicated to that pursuit. 

He has been an executive chef, catering company partner, corporate chef, consultant to chefs, guest teacher at the Culinary Institute of America, foray chef for David Arora, and the chef at many events preparing wild mushrooms for thousands of people including heading up the kitchen at SOMA’s annual Camp.

He also occasionally writes The Foragers’ Report for the Mycological Society of San Francisco’s “Mycena News” and contributes a monthly column about how and where to find mushrooms for the Sonoma County Mycological Association’s (SOMA) newsletter.

No December Meeting

Potluck party instead, note changed date and location

When: Tuesday, December 11.

Time: 6 to 9:30 PM

Where:

Nan Couts Cottage

MacArthur Park

5054 Memorial Drive

La Mesa, CA

(Corner of University Avenue & Memorial Drive)

www.ci.la-mesa.ca.us/Departments/PublicWorks/CityParks.htm

 

More details on the party will be in the next issue.

 

Program Previews

December 11:  Holiday Potluck

January 7:  Steve Farrar

February 4:  Gary Lincoff

February 17:  Mushroom Fair

March 3:  Nancy Mladenoff, artist

April 7:  Elio Schaechter

May 5:  Potluck

 

SOMA Camp 2008

January 19–21, 2007, 11th Annual SOMA Wild Mushroom Camp. Held in the beautiful hills of Western Sonoma County in the town of Occidental. The cost is $275 for the full weekend, $215 with offsite lodging, and $125 for Sunday only. Included are shared cabins, all meals, and great mushroom camaraderie. Speakers include Tom Volk and others TBA! Forays, classes, workshops, and feasting all weekend. More information and registration at www.SOMAmushrooms.org, or call (707) 773-1011.

Register before November 15 for a $60 early bird discount!

 

Fungus Fair Season

The festival season has begun, there are mushroom festivals in the news in Eugene and Yachats Oregon, and even Texas.  Since they will be over by the time you see this, I am omitting details.  If you want to read more, try a Google news search on mushroom festivals. 

See page 3 for details on two of the largest fungus fairs in California, Santa Cruz and Oakland.  Both are well worth a visit.

Beauty?
Behold the Fungi

By Mike Stahlberg

The Eugene Register-Guard

October 24, 2007

Taylor Lockwood’s coming to Oregon this week. Where else would you expect to find a man who just published a book titled “Chasing the Rain?”

Lockwood isn’t wild about getting wet. But rain is a harbinger of mushrooms and Lockwood IS wild about those.

Let the subtitle of “Chasing the Rain” tell you the rest about his quest:

“My Treasure Hunt for the World’s Most Beautiful Mushrooms.”

Beautiful? Mushrooms?

Believe it.

Seen through the eye of Lockwood’s camera, mushrooms provide a delicious display of form, texture and color. Colors unlike anything you’ve seen in the produce section of the supermarket. And shapes that defy description.

Area residents will get a chance to see for themselves Sunday at Mount Pisgah Arboretum’s 26th annual Mushroom Festival and Plant Sale, or by logging on to www.fungiphoto.com.

Lockwood sometimes finds himself crawling through the muck on hands and knees to take close-up portraits of mushrooms.

One reviewer calls him “the Jacques Cousteau of mycology,”

Lockwood says he’s simply trying to use his photography to “introduce people to the wonders of mushrooms” and to “melt the frost of fungiphobia” in the process.

“Mushrooms have a bad rap,” Lockwood said Friday in a telephone interview from his home in Mendocino, Calif. “I want to show America and the rest of the world how beautiful they are.

A rather unusual vocation for a man who was born to artist parents in the French Quarter of New Orleans, studied architecture at the University of Washington, sang and played electric violin for a trio of rock and roll bands in Southern California, and who had never really paid much attention to mushrooms.

That changed in 1984 when, at age 38, Lockwood moved to a secluded cabin in the woods near Mendocino and went into the carpentry/contracting business. He noticed mushrooms coming up all around him in the forest. And his lifelong interest in nature and art took over.

“I was so taken by their beauty I was compelled to photograph them,” he said. “I wanted to take their portraits.”

From the beginning, he said “almost all my interest was in the aesthetics of mushrooms.”

As opposed, say, to eating them — which is how most people are drawn into mushroom hunting. (Lockwood does admit to sometimes eating the subjects of his art, however.)

The first photos taken with his newly purchased camera gear were not very impressive, Lockwood said, but he kept experimenting with cameras, flash and film. He even cobbled together special flash reflectors out of old JiffyPop pans and duct tape as he worked to get the lighting just right.

Flash is a necessity to bring out a mushroom’s true colors, he said.

“Normally, the canopy of forest filters out reds and yellows so you don’t necessarily see colors that are there,” Lockwood said.

“I always use flash because it brings out the really wonderful, rich colors of reds and purples.”

On the steep hillsides where he first practiced his photography, Lockwood sometimes found himself shooting up at mushrooms

“This gave me what has become an important element, almost a signature of my style — the gill shot.” he said. The gills of a mushroom are the delicate structure on the underside.

Twenty-three years, more than 30 countries, and tens of thousands of exposures after his initial fungi photographing foray, Lockwood is essentially a one-man art department in the school of mycology.

He describes himself as an “aesthetic mycologist,” and believes “I’m the only person in the world doing this — making a living as a photographer of mushrooms.”

He has presented hundreds of slideshows set to music around the United States. and in several foreign countries, published two books (“Treasures of the Kingdom of Fungi” in 2001 was his first), gallery prints, posters, and cards.

One of his best-selling items is a “The Mushroom Identification Trilogy,” a DVD that teaches the basics of mushroom identification. It sells for $24; his books are $30.

Lockwood plans to show the DVD at the Eugene Mushroom Festival.

“Kids love it. It’s very alive,” Lockwood said of the DVD program. Samples of the show are available online at www.kingdomoffungi.com

Many of the colors of Lockwood’s mushroom portraits are so vivid that people sometimes assume they must result from computer manipulation.

“I don’t use any filters or Photoshop to get that,” Lockwood said of the colors depicted.

(He does, however, use the computer to create artistic montages featuring several varieties of mushroom on a single poster or print).

Lockwood doesn’t even use digital cameras, opting instead to continue using slide film (100 ASA for the most part).

That is a economic decision, not an artistic one, he said. He’d rather spend the money it would take to convert to all-digital equipment on traveling to new places to find and photograph new varieties of mushrooms

And he still has plenty of other places in the world where he hopes to someday “chase the rain.”

 

Editors Note: Edited to fit, you can find the original story at:

www.registerguard.com

search for “Lockwood”.

Fungi and Fiber

January 7-12, 2008, Mendocino

13th International Fungi and Fiber Symposium and Exhibition

Held every other year and the first time in the USA in many years, is being hosted in Mendocino, California by Dorothy Beebee and her cohort gang of fiber females. It coincides with the 90th birthday celebration for Miriam Rice, the pioneer of this craft and art.

Interested in fiber arts, mushroom dyes and inks and painting, polypore paper and felt hats, wildcrafting responsibilities, all these and much more mushroom lore? This is the place for you.

More info here.
http://www.mushroomsforcolor.com/

 

Santa Cruz Fungus Fair

January 12-13, 2008, Santa Cruz

Held at the Louden Nelson Community Center.  More info here.
www.fungusfed.org/body/funfair.htm

The Fungus Fair is held each year in January in Santa Cruz at the Louden Nelson Community Center. The Fair is sponsored in association with the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. The weekend-long event features hundreds of species of local fungi presented in a unique fashion, and draws 2000 plus visitors each year. The Fair showcases speakers, cooking demonstrations, a special Kids' Room, and a taxonomy panel for identification of fungi. Many books and mushroom-related items are available for sale, as are wild mushroom delicacies.

The next Fungus Fair will be held January 12-13, 2008 from 10:Am to 5 PM each day!

 

FFSC Fungus Fair

December 1 and 2, 2007, Oakland

Explore the mysteries of the mushroom at the 38th Annual Fungus Fair, presented by the Oakland Museum of California and the Mycological Society of San Francisco, Saturday and Sunday, 1-2 December. Fair hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturday and 12-5 p.m. on Sunday.

The annual celebration of wild mushrooms is produced by the museum’s Natural Sciences Department and the Mycological Society of San Francisco (MSSF), with about 90 volunteer mycophiles. The Fair includes displays, cooking demonstrations, and children’s activities. The Fair drew more than 2500 visitors in 2005.

Current information about this year’s Fungus Fair will be forthcoming. In the meantime mark your calendars so that you can enjoy this yearly event!

 

Other Coming Events

Details were in the September issue.

 

Mendocino Woodlands Foray

November 9 to 11

More information at:
www.MSSF.org/mendo

 

David Arora's Mendocino Foray

November 23 to 25, 2007

To register and for more details,

contact: maxfun at cruzio dot com

 

Point Reyes National Seashore Mycoblitz V

December 29, 2007

More information at:
www.bayareamushrooms.org

SDMS Information