Like most during the coronavirus shutdown, Indiana Sen. Mike Braun has been working from home, lately in overdrive, to get the economy going before it sinks into a long rut like the post-2008-2009 recession.
But, unlike a lot of us, he hasn’t become stir crazy. The reason: It’s mushroom-hunting season, a passion of his since he was a child.
“It is the best therapy that you can juxtapose with what we are dealing with on a nonstop basis with the coronavirus,” he said from the porch of his home. “In any given area, you’ve got like a two- or three-week window, and everything has to fall into place. And man, when it does!” he added.
Braun doesn’t dabble. In a typical season, he’ll collect some 5,000 wild and rare morels and thousands of chanterelle and oyster shelf mushrooms.
“You are everyone’s best friend when you are able to give them mushrooms,” he said when asked what he does with them. Not much of a veggie gardener, Braun also barters, especially with a friend who grows grade-A ponderosa pink tomatoes.
Mostly, though, he feasts on the ’shrooms. He’ll brown an oyster shelf in olive oil and fry an egg to have with it. “To me, that is just a little bit of heaven,” he told us from his home in Indiana last week before readying to return to Washington this week.
