New Mexico Mycological Society - April 1, 1999
April Meeting - Meet in the Annex across the street from the Museum
Our next meeting will be on April 6th, 7:30pm, at the Natural History Museum. For our program we will watch a videotape of a lecture which Alan Bessette presented at the NAMA Conference at Asilomar. Dr. Bessette's talk, Mechanisms of Spore Liberation and Dispersal, "educates us about how groups of fungi have evolved to liberate and disperse their spores."
Regular meeting attendees will be pleased to know that I've made extensive inquiries concerning the location of the light switch for the big meeting room at the Museum. After considerable research, I found that there is, or rather was, a gentleman, Emilio, who was the only person knowing the location of the light switch. During an earlier episode of construction, someone felt the need to include a secret vault, wherein could be hidden from the curious and uninitiated such valuable artifacts as damaged coffee cups, hadrosaur hindquarters, and light switches. Emilio designed and built this vault, and he did so without blueprints and without revealing the location to another living soul.
A few years ago, Emilio disappeared quite suddenly. One woman said that she had been talking to him, turned to answer the phone, and when she turned again, Emilio was gone. But once a year, some claim they have seen him wandering the halls, or dusting dinosaur bones, or something equally ethereal. As fortune would have it, the date he re-appears is April 6th, the anniversary of his mysterious disappearance. With luck, or perhaps with the help of some really special mushrooms, we might have been able to communicate with Emilio and find out the location of the hidden light switch. Unfortunately, Emilio's annual wanderings don't begin until 9:45 PM, and we need to be out of the Museum by 9:30. Shucks.
Since it appears we still won't be able to find the switch, we will meet instead in the Annex, which is east of the Museum, just across 18th street. The plan at this point is to continue meeting in the Annex until the construction is complete enough to allow us back into a regular meeting room in the Museum.
Last Month's Meeting
Probably the biggest news from our last meeting concerns the establishment of a Foray Committee. We ended up with one of those bad news/good news situations. The bad news was that after both Larry Weingarten and Pat Brannen attempted exhaustively to impress upon the membership that we really needed a Foray Chair, there still were no volunteers. The good news is that Larry offered to chair the committee himself. Even better news is that Larry plans to have a different kind of Foray this year. Instead of going out in the field to look for mushrooms, we'll visit mushroom cultivation facilities and try to determine how many species are commercially grown in this state. Should be fun.
Preserving Mushrooms by John Rahart
At the time of last month's publication, I had typed up only the first two methods (of 7) that John had given me. I've had time since then to publish the rest. The article is on our Website. For those receiving a mailed copy of the Newsletter, I'll send out the full document next month.
Recipe
Since I mentioned Hadrosaurs above, I thought I should throw in this recipe. It's a variation of one I found on the Web.

Apple Roast Hadrosaur with Mushrooms

Trim any fat from hadrosaur meat. Cut in half, if necessary, to fit into crockpot. Put carrots and celery into bottom of crockpot. Sprinkle in tapioca and add apple juice concentrate combined with other ingredients. Top with sliced mushrooms. Cover, cook on Low for 10-12 hours or on high for 5 to 6 hours. Yield: 4 servings.