The Barter Economy

Like a third world country, I heard on the radio that we're still relying on other countries to send us baby formula.  Someone said there is now a shortage of Idaho Potatoes?  Do we have a potato famine on the horizon?  Inflation is still at a 40 year high.  How will we combat this?  We were having this discussion.  I think it is wise that we have something on hand to barter with as the value of our dollar diminishes.

Which brings me to the brown paper bag you see sitting on the island in the kitchen.

I walked in and saw it and thought, "Now that is odd."  Tricia doesn't go to Burger King.  On the truly rare occasions that we get fast food, it'll be Popeye's Fried Chicken (spicy).  So I had to ask, "What's in the bag??"

Check it out!:

It's a half of a bag of fresh Chanterelle mushrooms.  Our beekeeping friend had found a big patch of them and picked them.  You're supposed to keep them in a paper bag.  He brought them by the house and wished to trade them for two dozen fresh eggs.  It was a good deal, so the trade was made.  In the past, we'd trade him two gallons of fresh, raw milk for two pints of his local honey.  If you can come to a deal where both parties are happy, which we are, you have a rare, win-win situation.

Tricia washed some of them up and sliced a big fat white onion.  I liked the direction this was going.

She added some butter to a black cast iron skillet and put the onions and chanterelles in the skillet.  They cooked down until the onions were translucent and then we were ready to eat.

I've been reading with much interest about the hiring of 87,000 IRS agents in the Inflation Reduction Act.  Hmmmm.  I happened to google if tax is owed on barter transactions.  Here's what I learned:

"Because "barter dollars," the fair market value of the goods and services you received, are taxed as if they are cash, you can owe income tax, self-employment tax, employment tax, or even excise tax on your bartering income – even if you don't actually receive a penny in cash."

You gotta be kidding me!  I'll be anticipating a knock at the door by one of the new 87,000 agents to collect from this transaction.  I'll see if they'll take mushrooms or eggs in payment instead of dollars. 

Chanterelle Time!

It has been humid and afternoon thunderstorms have been cropping up in the afternoons once it gets really hot.  I thought that it might be a good idea to mow the lawn before the grass gets too tall.  I had about a two hour window to get it done before the potential rainfall was to start.  We aren't the kind of folks that have a manicured lawn.  Sometimes we put the cows in the yard and let them mow the grass for us.  It would embarrass the kids when they were younger for us to have cow patties in the yard.

Before I mowed, I had to do a little reconnaissance.  I don't want to mow over and ruin a precious commodity that grows in our yard from time to time - Chanterelles!  They grow time after time in a certain part of the yard.  It's our 'honey hole' and we got back to it again and again.  It's like fishing from a stocked pond!  I walked out to the spot and lo and behold...  There they are.  Chanterelles.  Only two, but there will be more to come.

Chanterelles are wild, edible mushrooms that are delicious!  We like to go out and forage for them.  At first we were scared of eating wild mushrooms, but then we just learned about the primary wild edible mushrooms in our area and how to identify them and we leave the rest alone.  In our area, the main wild mushrooms to enjoy are oyster mushrooms and chanterelles.

Here's how you spot chanterelles.  First, they are bright orange.  They WANT you to find them.  Next, they are shaped like a funnel or a flute.  Then, they grow directly out of the ground - NOT out of wood.  Finally they don't have true gills - they have folds that run down the cap toward the base.  One other characteristic is that when cut, they smell like apricots.

I clipped these off with some clippers.  I didn't want to pull the mycelium.  Mycelium is the root-like structure (threads) of the mushroom.  The mushroom itself is the "fruit," but the mycelium spreads out and helps decompose organic matter, absorbing nutrients from the environment.  The chanterelles will continue to produce in this area and I'll come back time and time again and pick them.

You don't want to store the chanterelles in plastic.  It's best to store them in a paper bag.  All I had at the moment was a paper towel.  We'll bring these in, wash them up, and sauté them in some butter and garlic and maybe a little cream for a delicious, if not decadent snack.

I'll go ahead and mow the grass now that I've determined that there are no more chanterelles that I'd run over, but now I'll keep my head on a swivel to spot these bright orange delicacies that grow in our yard.

Harvesting Crops You Didn't Plant

Most crops involve a lot of labor.  It's been that way since the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  Man had to toil by the sweat of his brow.  The story continues to this day.  You work the ground, prepare the seed bed, you sow the seeds and water them in, you weed, and you (hopefully) harvest.  It is a painstaking process fraught with difficulty.  When it all comes together, though, it is worth it!

There are other 'crops' that plant themselves, so to speak.  God takes care of the rest.  Today we'll talk about one such crop.  Right outside our kitchen door, if you would walk thirty feet due north in the St. Augustine grass, you would find our "honey hole."  We discovered Chanterelle mushrooms!  The beautiful, delicious mushrooms come up time and again in the same vicinity.  All we have to do is keep our eyes open for them.  We walked out and picked a mess of them in the colander.  We picked even more a few days later.

Chanterelles are a bright yellow/orange color and they really stand out on the forest floor.  They have ridges which are a little different than gills and they run down the stem.  They grow in the dirt - NEVER on wood.  They are abundant after a summer rain.  People say that they have a fruity scent, like apricots, but I can never smell that.  My sense of smell was never very discriminating, and I still haven't completely recovered my ability to smell a lot of things since Covid.

The cap of the chanterelle is irregular.  The coloration is a show-stopper.  It's hard to miss this on the ground.  In the past before I knew what they were, I completely ignored them.  Or I kicked them over.  What was I doing?!  Wild foraged chanterelles go for $25 per pound at farmer's markets, I noticed.

One thing we wanted to make sure of when getting started is that we didn't want to eat any toxic mushrooms or eat any mushrooms that would send us into a hallucinogenic trip.  There is one toxic look alike called the Jack-O'Lantern mushroom.  It is an orange color, but it grows out of wood and has gills instead of ridges.  When you know what NOT to pick and you check and double check the characteristics of the desired mushroom, you can feel confident to enjoy the fruits of your forage.

Enjoy them we did!!  Weekend breakfasts are the best.  We always enjoy fresh-picked eggs, but today's eggs were going to be kicked up a notch or two.  Tricia sauteed the chanterelles with onions and peppers in butter in a cast iron skillet.

Then she added a half dozen eggs to the veggies and chanterelles and buttered some homemade toasted bread.  We ate like I would think kings and queens ate, enjoying every morsel until the plate was clean.

Rain is in the forecast and it is still hot and muggy even if it is almost mid-September.  That means more chanterelles will spring up on their own.  You can count on the fact that we'll be patroling the honey hole where the chanterelles grow.  Harvesting a crop I didn't plant almost makes me feel guilty.

We Know A Guy

We have a friend that is a bee keeper.  Lots of times we trade him fresh milk for honey.  He is a very interesting guy and we always enjoy visiting with him and his wife.  The other day Tricia got a call from the friend.  He said he had "a bag" for us.  Interesting!  We checked the refrigerator to see the contents.  Fresh Picked Chanterelles!

A couple of edible mushrooms that grow in our area are oyster mushrooms and chanterelles.  The main way that we identify chanterelle mushrooms is to look at the gills.  Chanterelles have false gills that run down underneath the cap and down the stem a little ways.  Other mushrooms have true gills.  True gills can be removed.  On chanterelles, the false gills can't be removed without damaging the mushroom.  Chanterelles are also flute-shaped, mostly.

They are a yellowish-orange color, so they really stand out growing in the green grass.  They grow from summer into fall.  After a rain, they really come out.  A neat thing is, once you find where they grow, it becomes your "honey hole."  You can go back again and again and harvest mushrooms.

But the REALLY neat thing is eating them!  We like to simply saute them with some butter in a cast iron skillet.  I tried to get a good photo a a pot full of sauteed chanterelles, but we ate almost all of them immediately!

The bottom of the pot

While mowing the other day, I discovered a new spot in the yard where they are growing.  It's good to have a friend that blesses you with mushrooms.  It's also good to find a good spot in the yard to pick your own.

An attempt in trying to grow chanterelles at home

We enjoyed the chanterelle mushrooms so much that we thought it would be so neat if we could propagate them in the woods in the back that is within walking distance. I read up on it and it appears that chanterelles make fewer spores that most other mushrooms and are very hard to domesticate, cultivate and grow them outside of 'the wild.'

Regardless, we thought we'd give it a try.  After we cleaned the chanterelles that we ate last night, there were little pieces that broke off or were dirty.  We saved those in a paper bag, thinking that there must be a few spores in there somewhere.

Bits and pieces of chanterelles - maybe some spores?

Russ and I took the bag of mushroom pieces and went into the little patch of woods in the back to see if we could replicate the same growing environment that we found them in.  Fortunately, we found the exact same growing conditions - a dark, somewhat damp environment with oak trees growing and the surrounding ground covered in decaying leaves.  It looked like a perfect spot, so Russ pulled back some of the leaves with his machete and I sprinkled the chanterelle pieces (and hopefully spores) onto the ground.

The mushroom patch

Once I shook out the bag real good, Russ gently covered the area back with decaying leaves.  

Now it just takes time

We have no idea whether or not this attempt will be successful, but it was worth a try!  We've marked the spot and we'll check the area from time to time.  Wouldn't it be great if we would be successful!

Chanterelles for Supper!

There are a couple varieties of mushrooms that grow wild in South Louisiana that are good for eating - Oyster Mushrooms and Chanterelles.  I've posted before several times about oyster mushrooms and today I'll show you chanterelles.  Chanterelles are my favorite!  They have a rich flavor and fleshy texture and nice aroma and are just outstanding.

A good friend of ours had just been out to his property and picked a paper bag full of them and graciously shared some with us.  They like to grow in thick leaves on the forest floor.  Once you find the spot that they are growing, you have a gold mine. Don't pull them.  Cut them off at the base and take precautions not to disturb the mycelium.  What we see as the mushroom is the 'fruit.'  The mycelium is the vegetative part or roots.  As long as you don't disturb the mycelium, you'll be able to harvest chanterelles year after year!

So first we wash them up to remove any dust or other debris.

A colander of chanterelles

After washing up the chanterelles, Tricia put a big dollop of butter in a heated cast iron skillet along withe some chopped onions, diced fresh garlic and the chanterelles and started that sauteing.  Benjamin doesn't even like mushrooms, but came in saying, "Mom, what are you cooking?  I could smell it from outside!  It smells great!"

Chanterelles sauted in butter

Today we're going to be serving our fresh picked chanterelles over homemade linguine made from kamut. Kamut is an ancient grain or wheat that makes good pasta.  It was brought to the United States by an airman in 1949 who brought them back from Portugal after another airman got the kamut from a trip to Egypt.  Russ ground a bunch of kamut into flour and he's rolling out the dough and then will run it through the pasta maker to make linguine.

Making Pasta

Then Tricia added some basil that we had picked and frozen from last year, some green onions, and some chopped up tomatoes right off the vine.  The colors are so nice and I wish you good smell this as it was cooking.

A skillet full of flavor!

Finally, at the very end we'll add some fresh cream:

Adding the cream

We've drained our pasta and it turned out great!

Homemade pasta!

Well, there's nothing to do but serve up a nice bowl of sauteed chanterelles and fresh garden vegetables with a side of sauteed yellow crookneck squash.  We'll shred a little Parmesan on top.

A meal made for a king!

We'll thank the Good Lord for His provisions of great, local, wholesome food and enjoy a wonderful meal and accompanying conversation.  Bon Apetit!  We tore that skillet up.  Sadly, there wasn't enough for me left over to pack for lunch the following day.