So Many Miscellaneous Mushrooms

Hi, folks! With our nice, moist spring and this coolish summer, it has been a great year for mushrooms!

As you might remember, Sue and I enjoy going "mushroom-watching." We like to take picture of them on our hikes, even though we're not very careful about getting identifications "just right." As I explained in a previous post, we usually aren't looking for mushrooms to eat.

Nope, we're not into picking them at all, really--well, except for morels (which we can't resist)--since mushrooms are the fungus's spore-bearing structures, picking them represents a dent in their ability to reproduce. If you don't pick wildflowers because you understand wildflowers create seed, then why pick mushrooms willy-nilly? And so we photograph them.

Sue, with her nice camera, takes excellent photos at various angles, while I concentrate on getting ground-level shots and photos of the undersides, which her big camera can't do (remember, my little camera swivels so I can hold it on the ground, beneath the cap, to photograph gills and pores without disturbing the mushroom).



We recently went hiking on some of the nature trails at Columbia's Cosmos Park--near the Bear Creek Trail. I haven't been hiking out there in ages, though I used to hang out at the beaver pond there a lot during college . . .

Anyway, we decided it'd be fun to check out the place again. My, how it's changed!

And yes, there were a lot of mushrooms popping out--various species--what fun!

Here's some type of bolete we saw.



Here's a more artsy picture of the cap of another type of bolete. (If I do say so myself.) I think it might be a two-colored bolete (Boletus bicolor), but again: I'm not too anal about getting them id'd "just so." I'm content to exclaim, "Wow, look at this beautiful bolete!"



Maybe, when it comes to mushrooms, I'm just easily amused.

Here's one I'm fairly confident about identifying: It's an "old man of the woods" (Strobilomyces floccopus). There was a patch of them at one place along the trail. They were kind of camouflaged against the dirt and leaf litter, but once we saw a few of them, they seemed to be all over (in that area).



This was the first time I'd ever seen this type of mushroom "in person." I've seen pictures of them and thought, "That's a cool-looking thing. Wonder if I'll ever seen one." And there they were!

Since they are usually out in July, August, September, and October, I guess it's not surprising I haven't seen them--midsummer, with the skeeters, other bugs, and humidity, isn't my favorite time for hiking in Missouri. But with the unusual cool weather, we got outside and made discoveries!

Well, these few pictures are just a small sample of what we saw, which was itself just a small sample of all that's out there right now. I mean . . . we weren't even looking for them.



If you're interested in mushrooms and want to get more regular updates on what fungi are popping out here in Central Missouri, check out Lisa K. Suits's blog, Mycologista. She takes lovely photos of mushrooms, and she goes the extra mile to identify them correctly. As she says, she's "crazy for wild mushrooms." But if you ever thought mushrooms were boring, you should scroll through her posts for an attitude adjustment.

It's funny how you can go into the woods, say, with binoculars and a bird guide, and plan on seeing a bunch of birds; or you bring old sneakers, a few nets, and containers and a magnifying lens for looking at aquatic invertebrates--but you end up having a "mushroom trip" instead. Or maybe it's the butterflies that are somehow everywhere that day, or daisies. Nature outings, "field trips," can be like that.

. . . And it's always fun!

Remembering Clair Kucera, His Grasses, His Gayfeathers

Sue and I drove to Tucker Prairie, just west of the Kingdom City exit off I-70 on Sunday, July 28, and spent the afternoon wandering around in that plot of never-broken prairie soil, examining plants, watching insects, and enjoying the abrupt, intense flights of an eastern kingbird. At one point, a covey of northern bobwhites erupted before us and flew away. Prairie cicadas droned . . .



I always find myself filled with wonder on a prairie. From a distance, it looks scruffy, and up close, you see that it’s a dizzying variety of plants that gives it that texture. The insects, birds, and other wildlife are similarly diverse.



Hardly any of it lives in forests, or subdivisions, or weedy roadsides. As you wade into the grasses, every few steps there is something to peer at, some new marvel.



I felt a different kind of wonder a few days later, when I learned that Dr. Clair Kucera, the ecologist credited for saving this spot of virgin prairie, had passed away the day before our visit. I felt sorrow of course, for I count him as a friend . . . but I felt wonder, too.



I heard Clair Kucera’s name a lot when I was growing up. Because I was young, I didn’t know who he was—someone my dad knew. He was a colleague of my dad’s at the University of Missouri, and they both were doing research on prairies; they were also both active in the Missouri Prairie Foundation. My dad, as I said in an earlier post, is a professional geographer who, using thousands of historical survey records as data points, mapped the presettlement prairie of Missouri.

Among Clair’s trailblazing contributions are his studies on the role of fire in maintaining prairie as prairie. He was an ecologist at a time when ecology was flowering as a discipline, and the ideas of biological succession and climax communities are core ecological concepts.

A vexing question about prairies was, What keeps them from being colonized by trees, and eventually turning into forest? We know that forests—oak-hickory being the predominant type around here—are the climax community, not tallgrass prairie.

As we know today, it was fire—started by random lightning strikes, or started by Native Americans—that kept the trees from taking over, maintaining the prairie as prairie.



Clair did much of his research at Tucker Prairie, using controlled burns, to figure out what frequencies of burning, in what times of year, are best for the prairie. How often, and when, should prairies burn, in order to keep out trees and shrubs, or kill off invasive plants like fescue, or invigorate the tallgrasses, or enhance the diversity of wildflowers and other forbs? As you can guess, these questions are critical for wise management of what few prairies remain in North America.

I don’t need to go into his life story or professional accomplishments. The Columbia Missourian did a nice job of describing those things in his obituary.

But I wanted to share a little about how I think about him. In 1995, I was living in Montana and looking for a new publishing job. When I learned of an opening here in my home state, at the University of Missouri Press, I applied for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t sure it would be a good “fit”—looking at their catalog, I noted that they published a lot of political philosophy and postmodern lit crit, which I didn’t think would interest me much. As an editor, I specialize in biology and natural history. During a phone interview, I asked if the press ever published much of that kind of stuff.



When the managing editor, who was speaking with me, mentioned that Clair Kucera’s manual The Grasses of Missouri would be coming out in a revised edition in the next few years, and I might get to work on it, my opinion of the job prospect improved tremendously. The first edition had been published in 1961, and this would be not only a chance to work in my preferred area, but also an opportunity to work with someone I had long admired.

And it was a pleasure and an honor to work with him. Even after the book came out, he sometimes called me just to chat. One time, he brought me some Liatris pycnostachya corms—surplus gayfeathers from his farm—to plant at the apartment where I lived then. So naturally, whenever I see blazing stars, I think of him.



And, of course, I think of him whenever I see prairie grasses, too. He wrote the book on them.



One more thing. Next time you’re on I-70 heading east out of Columbia, not long before the Kingdom City exit, turn your head and look at the scrubby-looking green grassland to the south. There’s a sign that says “Tucker Prairie,” in case you’re not sure.



The humble green building there is the Clair Kucera Research Station. Since the last time I wrote about Tucker Prairie, it’s been repainted and the windows repaired. It may not look like much, but for ecologists, for lovers of the prairie, and for friends of Clair Kucera, this research station, and this 160 acres, is cherished ground.

Leftover Veggies: From Crudités to Veggie Sandwich

Here’s a clever and delicious way to use up leftover veggies from your raw veggie tray. And it’s healthy, too! A bit of jack cheese and walnuts add deliciousness, and soy sauce and Spike seasoning mix add the je ne sais quoi.

I made some recently, when Sue’s sister sent leftover veggies home with us after we’d been on a visit to Ohio. We were supposed to eat it in the car, but there was so much we still ended up with a bag of mixed-up miscellaneous crudités.

A variety of vegetables will do here, but the standard veggie-tray types work well: carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, celery. For their texture and flavor, I’d be sure to include plenty of cauliflower, broccoli, or both.

Because this isn’t rocket science, I won’t give you rigid quantities. Just a list of ingredients with notes.


Veggie Salad Sandwich with Walnuts and Jack Cheese

First, schnittle up your veggies:

Broccoli and/or cauliflower, chopped into quarter- to half-inch pieces
Carrots, in large shreds or thin matchsticks
Celery, if you want, sliced thinly to reduce the effect of the strings

Do you want to use a food processor on the veggies? I’d use it with care—you won’t want it to become confetti, or mush. A sharp knife and a grater is what I use.

Then add the next three:

English walnuts, chopped into chunks in about the same size range as the broccoli
Monterey jack cheese, sliced and cut into little brick-shaped chunks about 1 inch long
Green onions, chopped

Then make a simple dressing from the following:

Mayonnaise (eggless is the vegan preference)
Soy sauce (or tamari), go easy on it; treat it like you would salt, because that’s its purpose here
Spike (ah, yes, our favorite spice blend/low-salt seasoning mix from way back! If yours is stale, time to get a new jar!)

Then mix it up; taste, and adjust however you want it.

This works well in a pita pocket sandwich, or as a filling for a wrap, or on a sandwich with bread stout enough to hold together. Today, I put it on ciabatta bread. You could also just put a mound of it onto a bed of lettuce, and serve with crackers.


I Give Credit for the Idea

Oh, so many years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I went with a friend to the National Women’s Music Festival, when it was held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. For lunch a few of those days, I ventured to the nearby Bloomingfoods Coop—now it’s Bloomingfoods Market and Deli—at 419 E. Kirkwood. (Those wonderful old vegetarian coops and restaurants always used to be right next to university campuses. Anyone remember Columbia Community Grocery, next to the, Catalpa Tree Café, on Hitt and Locust?)

At Bloomingfoods in 1988, I remember picking through their cold case of premade sandwiches. Most of them, as I recall, were vegetarian pita pocket sandwiches—tofu salad and such-like. One day, I tried a “Samurai sandwich,” which had a chickpea-based, hummus-like filling with a Japanese twist (miso, sautéed onions, bell peppers), and (naturally . . .) alfalfa sprouts. (Maybe I’ll get around to sharing that one with you someday.) [Addendum, July 30, 2016: I did post my version of the samurai sandwich recipe! —You're welcome!]

But on this day—June 4, 1988—I selected something they called a “Bric-a-Broc Sandwich.” It was named for brick cheese and broccoli, two of the primary ingredients. As I sat in the grass eating it under a big old tree on the IU campus, I was a little let down—I thought the various ingredients would have kept their own identities a little better, but they were all chopped up so finely it seemed too homogenous. (Now I understand the logic of that: Crisp veggies like carrots need to be cut finely so they don’t tear through the pita bread, and so you don’t spend the rest of the afternoon chewing!)

But I’m glad I jotted down the ingredients in my journal, as they were printed on the little adhesive label sealing the plastic wrapping: broccoli, carrots, brick cheese, onions, Spike, walnuts, tamari, eggless mayo (and the pita bread—some whole-wheat healthy stuff).

I’ve made this salad mixture occasionally since then, and I’ve always been surprised at how tasty it is, and easy to make. In the Bloomingfoods version, broccoli was abundant, carrots less so (in matchsticks, as I recall—or thick shreds). I think the onions were chopped white or yellow, but I prefer the green onions I suggest above. Tamari, by the way, was a mystery to me at the time. Seriously, you can use soy sauce, which is its close cousin. Spike I did know about, because I had so many friends who were concocting recipes like “Tofu and Spike”! (We can laugh at that today!)

I actually miss the days when sandwiches at the health food store were simpler and cheaper (the health food now seems overstimulating, ostentatious, by comparison), and I’m glad I took notes on some of them (I already told you about the tofu salad sandwich recipe I got from one of Columbia’s venerable health-food stores). Today, I wish I had the recipes for the famous nutburgers of Gentle Strength Cooperative in Tempe, Arizona; though I think I could “wing” the cashew-tuna salad sandwich, which was another favorite from that store.

Columbia . . . Mizz-urr-ee . . .

Hi, kids! Long time, no see! And sure, it's all my fault. Do you want to hear the excuses? How I've been busy, workin', playin' my trumpet again (hallujah!), and travelin'?

No--you don't want to hear about that. But I haven't forgotten you. Plus, you can rejoice with me! Since I've been actually doing things, I have a huge backlog of stuff to tell you about. Yet it almost feels like--constipation. So many things on my Op Op "do list," it's starting to feel like a "doo list."

Goodness.

But I can't pass this up--this is a quickie post--mercifully--so that's why I'm posting it.

It came up in my Facebook feed, shared by that Facebook page called "You Know You're From Columbia MO When. . ." And I wanted to share it with all the poor, sad people who haven't "liked" that page yet--perhaps because they aren't actually from Columbia, Mo.

It's a little, nostalgic song about Columbia, with an emphasis on Hickman High School. (Yay! Class of '84!) Pretty sweet, I think. I hope you'll enjoy it, too. Chances are, no matter where you're from, some part of it will resonate with you . . .



(Psst! Anyone else notice that this singer, despite his rural accent, is saying "Missouree" instead of "Missourah"? Typical Columbian! A blend of the down-home and the citified!)

Day . . . Whatever

No, I know; it’s Day Five. Five days I’ve had this cold-flu-whatever. There’s not a lot to say about this experience, except that I suddenly realized that I no longer shudder when I swig down my shot glass of Nyquil, the way I used to when I was a college student. I’m long past that. In fact, the other night I was thinking (in that fuzzy manner of people with head colds), Why, if it weren’t for that nasty, cloying, sticky-sweet finish, you could maybe use this in a cocktail . . .

. . . Nahhhh.


For your enjoyment, here is something from Ogden Nash’s collection Bed Riddance: A Posy for the Indisposed. We have all been here.


The Common Cold

Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall no longer sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
In never paying you for my visit.
I did not come here to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever’s hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne’er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympian laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare’s plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is rather coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!

Yet Another Squash and Curry Soup

Seriously—does the world need another curried squash soup? Well, I thought this one was really good. I’m not lying, either, because I’m not much of a “soup” person. This made me happy! It turned out spicy-hot, the kind of heat that lights up the back of your mouth a few seconds after you swallow, which I adore! (A result of the type of chilis I used, no doubt; “your results may vary.”)

And it’s so creamy you’d almost think there’s cream in it, but there’s not even milk.

Vegans take note: With a few tweaks (substituting oil for the butter, and veggie stock for chicken), this becomes a perfectly vegan recipe! Anyway you go, it’s pretty low fat, and doesn’t need much salt due to all the lovely spices.

It’s based on a recipe in the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook, by the Editors of Vegetarian Times and Lucy Moll (New York: Macmillan, 1995). The recipe I used as my guide is called “Squash–and–White Bean Soup,” on page 172 of that volume. But you know . . . who follows a soup recipe exactly? I’m not a recipe tester!

The original uses curry powder, plus cumin and allspice. I used some curry powder, but I used even more of my homemade garam masala. What is garam masala? You could conceptualize it as the “curry powder” that actual Indian cooks use! You can get g.m. at grocery stores nowadays. It’s really fun to make your own, however, and then it’s fresh and you may end up using it more (and using salt less). All the Indian cookbooks have recipes for it.

The original (soup) recipe also has you throw in the spices and stock at once—but I use an Indian cooking technique that heightens the spice flavors by incorporating them into the oil: I sauté the aromatics in butter first, then add all the spices, stirring them into the oil to make a paste (kind of like a roux). Butter and curry spices love each other! After they make love for a few moments is when I add the stock and squash.

By the way, the butternut squash can, of course, be substituted with canned pumpkin puree, though it’s not the same. The squash is sweeter, I think.

The ingredients and method are interspersed with the instructions below.

1 butternut squash
—split in half lengthwise, bake in oven with a small amount of water until soft; let cool so you can handle it; spoon pulp out of skin and puree in a food processor until smooth. Yield is about 4 cups. Set this aside.

While the squash is baking, you can prep the other stuff.

Chop up aromatic veggies and set aside in a bowl:
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup sliced celery (soup is a good way to use the leafy, pale inner parts of the celery that no one wants as crudité)
2 cloves garlic, pressed (or minced)
4 tiny hot chili peppers, with seeds, minced (I have a bag of little red cayennes in my freezer, harvested from my garden before the killing frost—but use whatever hot chilis you want—to taste)
1 or 1.5 T minced fresh ginger root (did you know you can process ginger way ahead of time and keep it frozen flat in zip bags? It’s very, very handy!)

Measure spices into a little bowl:
1 t dried thyme leaves
1/2–1 T store-bought curry powder
1–1 .5 T garam masala (I have 3 types, and for this I used mostly a kind I made that’s heavy on the cumin. If your g.m. doesn’t have a strong cumin presence, then add more cumin, about 1/2 t.; consider adding allspice, too)

Also have ready:
2 T butter
4 cups (32 oz.) chicken or vegetable stock

Finally, prep the ingredients that will go in last:
1 can white beans
2 big handfuls of chopped kale (stems discarded)
2 T fresh parsley, chopped

The soup will take about a half hour to cook; do it all in one big pot. Heat butter over medium heat, add aromatic vegetables and sauté until veggies are translucent and fairly soft. Sprinkle in a little water if it wants to stick. Add the spices and stir to make a paste. Then stir in stock and squash and bring back to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, for 15 or 20 minutes. Add beans, kale, and parsley, and cook another 5 minutes, or until the kale is cooked and still pretty green. Add salt to taste.

Ascent from Deep River: Paintings and Drawings by the Late Tim Williams

I’m sharing this with my Op Op friends because I’m pretty sure we like the same kinds of things: Home; art; nature; heritage; creativity; things that make you think. Finding the glory in imperfect things. Glorying in things that are well done. Doing things with heart and with love. Treasures of people and places.

You would have liked Tim Williams, and you will love his art.

A native Columbian, Tim Williams painted in Central Missouri for decades, but he always seems to have shied away from putting his work in shows and galleries. He was a creator, pure and simple. As a result, though he was prolific, not many people have seen his works.

But Tim was a friend of mine (“is”—? Well, I have never stopped liking and loving him, so how does someone word such a thing, anyway?)—and because of this, I’ve been lucky for the past fifteen years or so to get to see his art; sometimes as it was in progress, but mostly as samples of it hanging in his and Jane’s home, and in Jane’s office, which was a revolving mini-gallery of his work. (You see, Jane was my managing editor, and Tim’s colorful and evocative paintings in her office provided a surefire mind-thrill during every Monday morning staff meeting. I sipped coffee those mornings, but with his art on her walls, I didn’t need to!)

I could try to describe Tim’s beautiful, brilliant personality, and his intriguing, beguiling art, but it wouldn’t work. It would come out wrong; as Laurie Anderson said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Instead, I recommend you go see his art, which is currently on exhibit (free!) at Orr Street Studios in downtown Columbia (106 Orr St., north of Walnut, east of 10th St.).

For a taste treat, check out his enduring Web presence at his Flickr photostream and his StumbleUpon page. The Flickr photostream is a trove of his art, with each work often paired with a poem, each pairing guaranteed to make you feel more human and alive. There are landscapes, portraits, self-portraits, paintings on Zen subjects, architectural paintings, and more. (The Flickr site is where I have copied the images in this post from. See below for a statement on my copying of his art.) The StumbleUpon site shows the breadth and depth of his curiosity and the wide range of things that tickled him.

Tim’s Web presence gained him a large and loving international online following, and their appreciation was based only on digitized art glowing on a computer screen. Now you get to see the works up close, in real life. This is a huge opportunity!

------------------------------------

Orr Street Studios (106 Orr St., downtown Columbia, Mo.):
Ascent from Deep River: A Collection of Work by the Late Tim Williams, Boonville, Mo.
Exhibition runs through February 10.
Gallery hours 12–3, Thursday–Sunday (or by chance).
Reception is Friday, Jan. 18, 6–9 pm.
“Remembering Tim” discussion is Tuesday, Feb. 5, 6–8 pm.

Here is what Orr Street Studios is saying about Tim and his work:

In 1990, Tim married longtime friend Jane Lago. As a practicing Buddhist, Tim annually went to Japan to meditate with other Buddhists. One day a Zen master asked him to illustrate a book of poems he had written. Tim’s response was, “but I’m not an Artist!” and the Master said, “oh but you are!”

So in the early 90’s Tim decided to go back to school to pursue an art degree, which he completed in 1996 from MU. His mentor, as he was for so many others, was Frank Stack [professor of art at MU]. Tim would travel to surrounding river towns with Frank, and sometimes with other plein air painters—Jane Mudd, Byron Smith, and Chris Teeter—to name a few.

He communed with fellow artists and nature, and he quickly gained an understanding of painting from life. He had a natural, raw talent that amazed and inspired all who knew him. Tim was also influenced by MU professors Jennifer Wiggs and Jo Stealey.

He was passionate about art history and collected many art books. He and Jane eventually decided to buy a house in Boonville with a majestic river view.

In recent years, Tim’s desire for making art intensified. He investigated form and idea with an even greater urgency, setting a goal to do a portrait a day. Tim was a tireless seeker, a fearless innovator and an extremely sensitive artist. He died suddenly Dec. 19, 2011, at 58 years old.

This collection is only a part of a vast body of work by Tim’s in his last 20 years. In addition to attending the Jan. 18th opening reception, please join the discussion “Remembering Tim” at the Feb. 5th “Seeing Visions” Orr Street Studio event, 6 to 8 p.m.

A note on the images in this post: They are all under copyright, and I've admittedly copied-wrong by pinching them from Tim's Shitao Flickr photostream. My intentions are purely to help promote the exhibition at Orr Street, and to encourage you to look at Tim's work online, too. The pictures I've selected may not be in the exhibit. Finally, depending on Jane's wishes, I may be taking them off this post when the exhibition's done (or sooner). But the links to Tim's online collections will remain.