Picking Honey Mushrooms with Charlie

I’m one of a few people who have the honor of addressing Rev. Charles Layton as Charlie. Lots of people call him Chuck or Pastor Chuck, but close family members tend to call him Charlie and he likes it that way. It keeps him in touch with his roots. It’s what Mom, Dad and Nana called him. Plus it lessens the likelihood that I’ll say, “What’s up Chu–.” 

Charlie’s a kind but a bit imposing pastor. He’s a big man with a strong, clear voice that can be both comforting and intimidating, except when playing cards or dominoes with us. Then it’s just loud and raucous and we like it that way.  Sometimes things get a little ribald with Charlie, but I’m sure they never do with Pastor Chuck. He says the only time he gets to loosen up is with us, so we make the most of it.

Sally and I love playing music with Charlie singing. He was educated to be a vocal music instructor before being called to the ministry.  His talented voice makes us feel like we’re playing better too. We also love taking him to the Mississippi River swimming, canoeing and lounging on the beaches. It’s a connection to childhood joys that we had swimming in rivers and lakes with our parents.  

Another thing we enjoy with Charlie is strolling through the woods and discussing whatever needs to be discussed. The bottoms along the Cedar River in Waterloo have a series of walking trails with ancient oaks among a variety of trees you’d see in such a habitat – some with good mushroom picking.

On one walk last fall we came to an oak grove with honey mushrooms scattered throughout. I told Charlie how we identified them and which ones we liked to eat.

About honey mushrooms

Honey mushrooms (Armillaria sp.) can be found on dead wood even buried wood, sometimes making them appear terrestrial. On dead wood they serve as decomposers (saprobes). They can also be found as parasites on the base of live trees where they become deadly – to the trees that is. Both versions are quite delicious to us when still young with the best still having remnants of veil.  However some species such as A. tabescens, which always grows in clumps and doesn’t have a veil, can be bitter even when young.  Honey mushrooms have a brown to golden cap with patchy hair-like scales. Young caps still have a veil or veil remnants and gills are white to cream colored. The veil soon disappears, and then the gills turn reddish brown with age. The stem, which is light at top, darkens in streaky patches toward the base where it may mix yellows with dark browns.

Honey mushrooms are an important part of Sally’s and my diet, providing a dark rich tasting counterpart in mixed mushrooms to lighter fall mushrooms such as knothole mushrooms that are often found on the same walk. However, our favorite way to eat honey mushrooms is in Monterey fish stew where their dark umami complements the fish better than any other mushroom we’ve tried in it. We eat a lot of fish stew all year, so we harvest a lot of honey mushrooms, which freeze well after partial cooking. Fortunately there are always plenty of them to harvest, especially this day with Charlie.

We showed him the honeys’ identifying features and which ones were fresh enough to harvest, then left him to his own devices as Sally and I zoomed around looking for the largest concentrations of large fresh mushrooms. We got a chuckle as we glanced at Charlie who seemed content to stroll along with his thoughts, stooping occasionally to pick little individual mushrooms.  Some caps he picked were hardly larger than a quarter. He’d slowly walk a few steps then stoop down and pick a little honey mushroom. He’d have four or five mushrooms with coin size caps for my bag every time I came by. I was fine with that. He was getting good exercise stooping and picking the little mushrooms, and my bag was filling quickly anyway.

Not long after that walk, I got a call from Charlie. He was feeling depressed which made doing his job even harder and Covid wasn’t helping any. Additionally, he had just put down his dying cat that he’d had for nearly two decades. I wondered now if his slow movements in the woods might have been a symptom of his malaise.

I didn’t know what to say to him until I had an idea saying,

I’ve been thinking of some kind of mushroom blog that’s out of the ordinary. What if we both do a blog together that explores both nature and God. We both love to write and it would be a great way to share our faith and wonderment with our family and friends. It’d be a perfect opportunity to use our talents to increase our gifts to the Lord as we share more down to earth knowledge – even humor.”

He replied, “Yeah, I should do more. I’m really kind-of a one-talent servant – not as in skill more like as in the Parable of the Talents in Mathew 25. Maybe it would be a good idea.” I was a little familiar with the parable but I wasn’t sure I agreed with his self-assessment. So I moved on suddenly saying, “Hey I got it. We can call it Faith an Fungi!” “I love it! Let’s do it!” He replied. And so, this project began.

The other day we used a bag of frozen honey mushrooms from our walk with Charlie in fish stew. A number of Charlie’s perfect little coin size caps that I didn’t chop were interspersed with the chunked-up larger mushrooms that Sally and I harvested. The little whole caps gave the stew a different and aesthetically pleasing appearance that it would not have had if Charlie hadn’t been with us. I smiled remembering that day. I thought of the lovely little mushrooms in the stew as a metaphor for not knowing how much we’ll please God, but that we certainly will please him if we just stoop a little and make the effort.

My thoughts travelled to the joy Sally and I get hearing the wonderful singing voice that Charlie put much effort into developing. His congregation enjoys that singing every Sunday too. No talent is buried away there – far from it. I remembered a night long ago when Charlie had to leave a meal we were having in a restaurant to attend to a dying patient from his congregation. “It’s what I do,” was his excuse for suddenly leaving us. He was not demonstrating a “one talent” servant then, but rather, the servant who says, “Here I am Lord. Do your will.”

Depression skews one’s image of oneself. Charlie never was and never will be anywhere close to a “one talent servant” like he said. Now I’m anxious to end this essay by telling him, “You were wrong about that Bro!” That’s because another thing I always enjoy doing with my little brother is telling him he’s wrong.

Recipe: 

Monterey Fish Stew