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   My wife has incredible vision and the ability to observe things most people would overlook if they were able to see them. This comes in very handy in several situations. She is able to spot a morel mushroom from a moving vehicle where I can not see it standing on top of it. She can see a buck deer hiding behind a brush pile where I only see a bunch of branches.

   With a cooler and wetter than normal August, we have had an abundance of wild things to forage this year, especially mushrooms. Every trip we make into the timber, we find edible, inedible, and questionable mushrooms, mostly spotted by my wife. I am not an expert at identifying wild mushrooms but am confident enough in several varieties of to pick and eat them. Last week while riding the trails in the woods my wife spotted a cluster of small brown mushrooms in the middle of path. She stopped and I picked a small group of them just in case they were delicious. With proper identity, we could go back and harvest the whole group.

   Back at the house, I went online to check them out. I belong to several mushroom identity groups that provide mostly good information. There are always those jokers that state the obvious that a person can eat any mushroom once. This is not very helpful as I would like to survive my culinary experiences. After much research, I decided to take a pass on the little brown mushrooms. According to the experts, it was either a delicious mushroom with many uses or a very similar looking mushroom that would make a person sick for days and possibly cause liver failure. I decided not to take the risk.

   Yesterday, on another trip through the woods, my wife suddenly stopped the Ranger and said, “There is a good one!” She does not know the names of all the mushrooms but has begun to recognize several edible kinds. I glanced to the other side of the trail and saw what she meant. Even I would have seen this one if I had not been looking on the other side of the trail. On top of an old tree stump perhaps three feet off the path was a nice fresh chicken of the woods, about a foot in diameter. It is easily identifiable as the top surface is a bright, almost fluorescent orange and the underside is bright yellow. I jumped out and picked about half of it, more than enough for a meal for the two of us. It was soft and pliable and completely bug free. We immediately headed for home where I brushed off a small amount of dirt, sliced it up and fried it in butter with a little garlic salt. When cooked, it has a texture like fried chicken, hence its name, chicken of the woods. It has a mild “mushroomy” flavor, similar to a portabella. We enjoyed our freshly foraged snack.

   Knowing there are new and different things to forage in the timber, my wife’s eagle eyes have become even more acute and I am learning from her to be more observant. There are many types of mushrooms as well as other berries and fruits that we have not been utilizing to their fullest potential.

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