New Mexico Mycological Society

MaryLee and John Sparks will host a potluck dinner at their house this month in lieu of the regular meeting. It will be on Saturday, March 8th at 6:30 pm. Time to rehydrate those boletes, folks.
As a reminder, all subsequent meetings will be on the first Tuesday of each month, 7:30 at at the Natural History Museum.

NMMS thanks Pat Brannen for giving a delightful program on dyeing with mushrooms for the February meeting. Due to the rather abrupt change back to our traditional meeting times (first Tuesday), Pat offered to do the program with very little notice.

One of the hypogeous fungi that Steve Trudell found at Pecos during the '96 Foray was identified by Dr. James Trappe as Rhizopogon alkalivirens. He, Trappe, lists this as rare. This find was listed in the North American Truffling Society Current News issue, V.15, No. 1.

This is the letter Vicky sent last October. I printed little more than a reference to it in the November '96 news. A bit later than I had hoped, here it is in its entirety.

Hello to the club and its great members. Here I am in beautiful Cashmere, Washington. Bordered on the east by the Cascade Mountains, it's very green here due to the water from the nearby rivers. Because of all the water, there's an abundance of mushrooms popping up everywhere. I've had puffballs as big as a fist in my strawberry patch, shaggy manes in the soccer fields, jelly fungi and oyster mushrooms growing on wood surrounding our playgrounds.
I went mushroom hunting in Entiat in early October. My guides, members of the Wenatchee Valley Mushroom Club, showed me what white chanterelles look like. Beautiful! You see one and push back the pine needles and there are three or four more right next to the one you saw! Only one bolete was found that day out of the ten people who went hunting. I went back two more times -- lots of chanterelles, but again only one bolete.
Bears are in abundance out here as well. Those last two times I went, Alina, my two year old daughter, was in charge of hitting a spoon against a metal lid. She loved making the noise!
The white chanterelles are delicious -- but I have to say it -- my favorite is still the King Bolete. You just can't beat its robust flavor. The mountains are now covered in snow -- the first snowfall of the season was Oct. 17 and my family ate the one bolete I found....Which brings me to my next paragraph.
I'm out of boletes! I finished all my NM ones last month and I'm going through "boletus withdrawals." Anybody interested in a dried apple/dried boletus exchange? Especially those who picked way too many mushrooms for one year? Here's the deal. You send me a bag of dried Boletus edulis and I'll send you an equivalent amount of dried Cashmere apple chips. The apples are both golden and yellow delicious. I gleaned and orchard after they picked what they wanted -- and have been dehydrating them daily. I don't treat them with anything -- they're delicious!
Well, that's it for my endeavors. I do miss the monthly gatherings and sharing of information.

Thanks to Maggie Rogers for contributing this month's recipe. I imagine rehydrated Shiitake would work in place of fresh.