If it glows, don't eat it.

The End-Times Guide to Dining Out

By Regina DeAngelo

Chicken of the Woods, from the Cornell University Mushroom Blog

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Regina's second account in Progressive Charlestown of a near-death experience. Click here to see the last time. Will the third time be the charm?

Here's how it happened: one Saturday morning I'm canoeing up the Delaware river along the idyllic Delaware Water Gap. A week later, I'm tethered to an IV in the emergency room at South County Hospital.

It was a fine autumn weekend when my friends and I went for a kayak-camping trip on the Delaware Water Gap. We kayaked, hiked, sang cartoon theme songs, ate MREs for lunch, found a peaceful clearing, and set up camp. 

The first night was cold and our Mylar wraps did not keep us warm but the second night was lovely, with stars up above and little noises coming out of the forest. 

When it was time to go home, we kayaked downstream to the civilization of New Jersey.  We loaded the kayaks atop our cars at Smithfield Beach and headed back up the country road toward Route 80.

Driving slow on the wooded road, I noticed, about three feet from the ground, a giant, bright-orange growth sticking out from a decaying but still-standing tree on the north side of the road. Scott, my husband, noticed it too. He pulled over,  U-turned back to the tree, and parked tightly against the tree side of the narrow road. He got out of the car and went over to the orange thing and pulled off two dinner-plate-sized pieces of it. 

Southern Fried Chicken of the Woods Mushrooms - from Eating Appalachia

Ahh, famed, delicious Chicken of the Woods mushroom! Last time we scored this choice shelf mushroom was two years ago in our friend's woods in Northampton. 

We brought them back to the house, fried them with olive oil and shallots, filled our bellies and fed some to our friends.

Nobody died, and everyone was impressed with our foraging skills. 

  

Scott placed the orange booty on the back seat. I could smell it from the front.  I will saute them in onions and clarified butter! But this time I'll carmelize the onions first! Mmm!

It was a few days later that I pulled the mushrooms out of the fridge. We gotta eat these,I thought. I took them out of the container and started slicing them up.

Here is where you are supposed to stop.

You're supposed to stop and do something. Something every non-dead mushroom forager does, every time, no matter what: 

You're supposed to identify the mushroom as edible.

Sounds obvious, yes? Because you could end up dead, no? Yes.

Depending on the type of mushroom harvested, there are generally five steps in proper identification:

1. Look it up in your mushroom-identification book. I use Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America. and rogersmushrooms.com.

2.Identify its source. Where did you pick it? From the ground? Off an old log? Under an evergreen or a deciduous tree? Did it grow on soil, a log, or on an old root?

3. Inspect. Does it have gills beneath the cap, or pores? Does it bruise blue? Does it have a ring of torn membrane on its stem? Does it have a pointed cap? Is it slimy?

4. Do a spore print. Lay the mushroom on a white piece of paper, cap-side up, gills-side down. Wait a few hours or something. Inspect the dust-sized spores that have deposited on the paper. What color are they?

5. Throw the mushroom away. Unless you are totally completely 100% dead-nuts-sure this mushroom is not poisonous, get it out of your kitchen. Since many non-poisonous mushrooms are scarily similar to deadly ones, you're better off passing it up for Elio's Pizza.

6. I mean it.

OK? That's six steps. Six steps that a reasonably intelligent mushroom forager must perform before considering consuming any foraged mushroom.

Total steps: 6.

Total steps performed by me, before I ate it: zero.

Total time elapsed before I started throwing up: fifty minutes.

"Hey, Scott?" I called out of the bathroom window to my husband, who was working in the yard. "Remember those mushrooms? I just threw up. Two times."

He came inside. "But we thought it was Chicken of the Woods! Chicken of the Woods!  Shit. Uhh. I'll go see if the pharmacy has activated charcoal."

Activated charcoal is supposed to sponge out toxins from your body or something.

"I don't know," I said. "Shouldn't I try to identify it first? Like in case I start to die?" I was already online at rogers mushrooms.

"I'll get the activated charcoal."

"Oh, man," I said, clicking on a picture of the mushroom I just ate. It was not Chicken of the Woods.

Scott took the laptop from me and read as I made for the bathroom a third time. 

By Jeff Benjamin from Rogers Mushrooms. DO NOT EAT THESE!

Omphalotus illudens (Schw.) Bigelow Jack O'Lantern. … Flesh firm; pale orange. Odor not distinctive. Taste not distinctive. … Deposit pale cream. Habitat often in enormous clusters at base of stumps or on buried roots … Found throughout much of North America, particularly the eastern United States. Season July-September but sometimes to November. Poisonous but usually not fatal, typically causing gastric upset for some hours or even days. When fresh the gills of this species glow a bright greenish yellow in the dark. ..

Scott appeared behind me as I washed my face. He had his car keys in his hands.

"Let's go."

"Wait, I gotta change my shirt."

"No change no shirt," he said, escorting me to the car.

After one more upchuck under an overpass on the east side of Route 1, we got to the emergency room of South County Hospital.

The receiving nurse slid the glass window to the side.

"What can I help you with?"

"I seemed to have eaten a poisonous mushroom."

She had come in and sit in the chair next to her. She asked some questions and took my blood pressure and put the squeeze-thing on my finger. She pointed me to a bed and called Poison Control. 

By the time the doctor arrived I had thrown up again. A nice nurse hooked me up to an IV with a nausea drug, and in 25 seconds I reanimated as if returning from the underworld. Wow, life-giving IV! 

I thought. The first world is a good place to live.

The doctor, a fit, middle-aged guy in little specs, wearing one of those sardonic doctor half-smiles, entered and asked some questions.

"Any other symptoms? fatigue, chills, fever?"

No.

"Exposure to suspected gastro-intestinal virus?"

"Well, sortof… my husband just got over something intestinal."

"Well," said the doctor, putting down his clipboard. "It's quite likely that that's the culprit."

"No. Doc. Like, I ate this mushroom…"

Scott turned my laptop around to face the doctor. See?

From Wikipedia - they really do glow in the dark

"Jack o lantern!" said the doctor. "I've heard of these. They glow in the dark."

He looked at me.

"Well, in a few days, if you develop any other symptoms, we'll just call it a gastrointestinal virus."

"Um. Doc. You don't understand. My stomach doesn't throw up. Whatever goes down doesn't come back up. I got enzymes like chemical weapons. Downstream, maybe, it's a different story… but a stomach bug... I don't think so."

The doctor gave me a patient "whatever" smile.

"Well, let's keep you here 'til the bloodwork comes back just to be sure your organs don't fail."

I sat in the bed reading rogers mushrooms while Scott took my picture with his iPhone and posted it on facebook.

How could I have been so stupid? It's not like I didn't notice, while slicing it, that this was different from Chicken of the Woods. Chicken of the Woods is a polypore, which means that it has a spongey, rather than gilled, underside. 

This one had extended gills like a chanterelle. 

Chicken of the Woods is a shelf mushroom, seeming to grow horizontally off its decaying host. The omphalotus illudens has a stem, which is sometimes dwarfed by its cap. But we neither saw nor harvested the stem, which means incomplete identification, which stops you at Step 3 of the checklist.

There was a lot I didn't notice. How could I be so dumb? 

The nice nurse came in.

"I drank all my Gatorade," I said, pointing to my drained IV bag. "Can I go home now?"

That day, and the days that followed, no other symptoms came.  Since then my only encounter with mushrooms was from a bag of dried porcini I bought for $2.99 at Job Lot. Which was a lot cheaper than the price of adventure, which I received a week later in the mail: an emergency-room copay of $150.