Friday, June 12, 2009

Felix finds a fat one

Local hunters find a 20 pound mushroom


By DELLA SENTILLES
Express Staff Writer

Photo: Bob Mullins (left) and Feliz Gonzales (right) show off their collection of gigantic Puffball mushrooms. Express photo by Echo Lynn Christensen

Felix Gonzales went looking for morel mushrooms. What he found was the mother of all puffballs.

Gonzales, a Ketchum resident and chef, prefers morels, a delicacy that might sell for nearly $40 per pound at grocery stores and emerges in the late spring when the weather is damp and cool.

But on a recent search near Corral Creek, Gonzales and his friend Bob Mullins found something entirely different: gargantuan puffball mushrooms. One puffball weighed 20.5 pounds. Another weighed 17.5 pounds. The smallest weighed five pounds.

"These are the biggest mushrooms I have ever found and probably some of the biggest ever found in this valley," Gonzales said.

Fortunately for the two men, they only had to carry the mushrooms about 150 yards back to the car.

Kathy Richmond, an amateur mycologist and member of the Southern Idaho Mycological Association, said such large mushrooms are not uncommon.

"Puffballs can be tiny or huge," Richmond said. "They can be as big as a marble or as big as a pasta bowl."

Richmond said the danger with small puffballs is that they can be confused with amanita mushrooms, a poisonous species that causes liver damage if eaten.

To tell the difference, Richmond advises mushroom hunters to cut the mushroom in half. Puffballs will be pure white, she said, like a marshmallow. Amanitas, she said, will have the outline of a little mushroom inside.

Gonzales cooked one of the smaller puffballs last Tuesday in olive oil, garlic, onion and thyme. It was good, he said, but nothing spectacular. He shared the larger mushrooms with friends.

While Gonzales will continue to search for morel mushrooms, he said he probably would not gather any more puffballs.

"There are about eight to ten puffballs left out Coral Creek," Gonzales said. "They're about the size of oranges. They'll get big again, but I don't think I'm going to pick them."

Della Sentilles: della@mtexpress.com




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