In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic most people, until recently, have opted to stay at home and indoors bingeing on Netflix and learning to make sourdough. At Temple Sinai essential workers like me have continued to work though, doing building maintenance and a lot of cleaning and building ways to socially distance people for whenever everyone else returns to the temple for services and religious school. We've cleaned and polished everything to a blinding gloss. After awhile though we sort of ran out of work to do inside and have moved outdoors to tackle the sorely neglected landscaping. With the school being closed so there aren't any kids running about Mother Nature has taken over the grounds in some pretty interesting ways.
We have been using several types of wood chips and mulch to cover large parts of the playground and other areas and, with all the rain we had early in the summer, there has been an amazing array of fungi popping up all over the place like never before. Pictured above are examples of one such mushroom which, after some Googling, I found out is called "Chicken of the Woods" so named because it's said to "taste like chicken". Apparently it tastes enough like chicken that it's touted as a vegan substitute for America's favorite meat. However, my reluctance to actually eat one stems from years of warnings about wild mushrooms and their poisonous lookalikes but, the more I have investigated my fungi finds, I may try cooking a bit of the next ones I find. Of course, I will post my results, along with recipes, on my foodie blog Midnight in the Kitchen of Good and Eatin' .
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