This Week's Woodland Grocery Specials

 Honey mushroom are popping up all over. Often you will find more than you can eat at once, and (if they aren't too buggy) you will want to preserve some of them. They are best preserved by cooking and freezing or by drying. Although they look like they should make nice little canned mushrooms, they don't... when immersed in brine, they absorb all of the salt and produce a gelatinous substance. So you will end up with little slimy balls of salt.    Wild carrot and yarrow are both in season right now. Carrot (top) has maybe a dozen or so pairs of thicker leaflets that are smallest at the tip and get longer all the way down the midrib. Yarrow (bottom) has 20 or more pairs of wispy leaflets that are longest near the middle and shorter at both the top and bottom end of the leaf.  Also, carrot smells like a carrot when you crush it.      Autumn olive is fruiting. This is something you will be able to harvest for at least another month, and the berries will be sweeter after the first frost. Try collecting some now and some later to experience the variety of flavor. Autumn olive berries make a delicious fruit leather. And they are extremely high in lycopene, a potent anti-oxidant.    If you haven't done so already, make note of good chicory locations. It is best to harvest the roots in late fall, from areas that have lots of plants and sandy soil. And it is much easier to find these spots when the plants are showing off their distinctive blue flowers. Roasting chicory roots have a delicious, rich vanilla-chocolate odor that you can't help but enjoy.    Speaking of smells to enjoy, the smell of goldenrod is the smell of the late summer transition into early fall. Harvest and dry whole flower heads, then use the flowers to make a tea this winter when you are feeling cold, tired, or SAD. Sipping the tea will bring you right back to August and September.     Wild grape is producing large and abundant fruits in lower Michigan this year. The fruits are not the best eating, but they make wonderful juice, kefir, wine, and vinegar. Grapes have a symbiotic yeast. The white powder that covers the fruit is actually a dense colony of microbes that are ideal for wild fermentations.