Foraging for fungi

[Lighthawk]

How many of you wanderers harvest the occasional mushroom? Edible fungi are everywhere, seasonally. We live in the Sierra foothills and there is a fall season depending upon the rains, and a spring season after snowmelt. A few years ago we took in a workshop called the Fungus Foray. Since then, we bought a few books and have been harvesting here and there for the last three years.

Springtime brings morels and also the "spring king" bolete. Tonight we had both sauteed over a bed of rice. It was quite tasty with nutty and earthy flavors.



What about all the coastal guys and the PNW folk? You guys getting some fungi?

 

[PaulT]

Just chanterelles for us.

We're a firm believer in that old adage:

There are old mushroom hunters and foolish mushroom hunters. There are no old, foolish mushroom hunters.

Chanterelles are rather easy to identify and appear in some abundance in the PNW.

Paul

 

[Lighthawk]

Thanks, PaulT.

This year we got our first morels (an easy ID), but have yet to discover chanterelles.
We've had good success with Lions Mane, Coccoras (fall & spring), and a variety of oyster mushrooms.
We've got several good books and have a local FB group that helps ID mushrooms. Without those resources, I would not have been able to learn what's safe to eat.

 

[Wandering Sagebrush]

Morels are my favorites, but we haven't been out for them yet. Washed, tossed in flour and sautéd in unsalted butter (even cardboard is good sautéd in butter), and it's out of this world. I like shaggy manes in a salad, too. The best mushroom hunting I've ever seen was in NE Iowa, where The Bride grew up. Years ago, we visited Decorah around Memorial Day, and spent a few hours hunting. The family apologized that it was poor hunting, we only got two large grocery bags full. They were most plentiful around dead beech trees.

When should we be down for dinner?

 

[Cayuse]

Morels are the only one that I feel comfortable identifying and definitely seek them out this time of year. A couple years ago we had a load of bark delivered at work in the fall and come spring there were morels in all the flower beds and a couple of us harvested several paper grocery bags full and left a bunch more, we were careful to cut them rather than pull them but they never returned

 

[Lighthawk]

That's pretty cool, Cayuse. From my very limited understanding of morels, there are 'landscape morels' and natural morels. I would guess what you found were the landscape versions. Some of the naturals are also called 'fire morels' found at burn sites. We had two show up in our garden two years ago, which floored me. But they did not return either. Two grocery bags full! Those are worth $30 / pound.

Right now in the Sierra foothills we are seeing morels at 4500' up to 6000', but it's such a weird year without much snow. It's our first year harvesting the morels, and they are so distinctive it's quite safe for us. We've done our homework and have a handfull of other 'shrooms that we can collect: lions mane, cocorra (fall & spring versions), oyster mushrooms, boletes, blewits, sierra puffball to name a few. At first you are afraid to try anything, but after you nail down one or two species it becomes easier.

We use several books to help us ID the mushrooms and a number of websites. David Arora is a northern California expert with two excellent guides. I also follow several groups on Facebook where I can post photos and get feedback from experts including Mr. Arora. I watch those sites and have been able to get a feel for what's happening locally. Good hunting!

 

[highz]

I'm comfortable collecting some of the boletes that appear in my neck of the woods. I had neighbor who had hunted mushrooms all her long life. She tried to teach me, but I only feel confident about the boletes here. I like to slice and dry them for storage, then add them to omelets.

 

[Basin Deranged]

What a fine combination, Boletes and Morels!

Boletes and Oysters are a fall crop here on the coast. Chantarelles, Hedgehogs, and Coccoli in the winter, Black Chantrelles (darn hard to see, they blend in so well!) and puffballs in the spring. Morels only very occassionally in disturbed soil. Candy Caps and Bluits also in winter/early spring but I'm not fond of either.

I agree with highz, the Boletes are fantastic dried. We dry a bunch every fall to last us through the year.

 

[Lighthawk]

Haven't done the dried mushrooms yet. I would like to learn how. Do you slice them thin and use a dehydrator?
So far we've had good results partially cooking them in olive oil, then putting into a ziplock in the freezer with ID and date. I've got a choice of three or four varieties in the freezer I can add to pasta, home made pizza or what have you.

 

[Cayuse]

I've dried morels by just leaving them out on the counter on a paper towel whole. After they are tried put them in a ziploc and freeze them, they reconstitute fairly well for cooking by just placing them in a bowl of water.

 

[billharr]

I picked mushrooms when I was a kid. My dad knew one mushroom that was safe and it was the only one we could touch. My brother took a class at our local JC and got good at picking mushrooms. If I lived where I could get them without a long drive I would get educated on what to pick. I am glad to see everyone on WTW is being careful picking. Not knowing what you are picking is Russian roulette. There was a whole family in Stockton, where I live who had liver failure eating the wrong mushrooms. They had picked the death cap mushroom.

 

[highz]

Andy, I just slice the boletes medium thin and lay them on parchment paper in my oven. You don't want to slice them too thin or they end up the thickness of paper. I have an old propane oven with a pilot light that keeps it just warm enough to dry the mushrooms quickly. If I ever replace that oven, I may want to get a dehydrator. I won't see any boletes here until the monsoons are underway. One of our common boletes is the "slippery jack". I peel off the mucus like layer before I dry that one. Drying really enhances the flavor.

 

[Basin Deranged]

I dry them with one of those round food dehydrator, also works great for preparing backpacking food. Somewhere around 130 degrees f. is about right for Boletes.

The mushroom that is called "Slippery Jack" here in coastal California is actually a Suillus, not a Boletus. But it does have the pores like the Boletes.

We have a heavy crop each year of Amanita phalloides (Death Cap) in my area and every few years someone dies eating them. I am told that it is very similar to a highly-prized mushroom in Southeast Asia for which it is sometimes mistaken by immigrants from that part of the world.

 

[Lighthawk]

Found a few slippery jacks or suillus, but haven't been very encouraged. We had a good fall with amanita coccoras and spring with amanita vernicoccora. The first amanita caused us a great deal of research before we felt completely sure it was okay. Thankfully, we have some local experts to rely upon.

 

[100acrehuphalump]

Thanks, PaulT.

This year we got our first morels (an easy ID), but have yet to discover chanterelles.
We've had good success with Lions Mane, Coccoras (fall & spring), and a variety of oyster mushrooms.
We've got several good books and have a local FB group that helps ID mushrooms. Without those resources, I would not have been able to learn what's safe to eat.

Can you recommend any good ID books? Thanks

 

[4llamas]

I do a bit of foraging myself and the book I prefer is by David Arora, All That the Rain Promises, and More... A Hip Pocket Guide To Western Mushrooms. It is a fantastic book with many color photographs and a note section on each mushroom with helpful information in layman's terms for identification. It is written for the non scientific beginner but honors the nomenclature enough to be valuable to advanced fungoholics. I bought mine at the forest service office I frequent.
Enjoy

 

[Lighthawk]

x 2 for David Arora hip pocket guide.

BTW, I worked this weekend at our local Home Show, while SR got out with her daughter and brought back more than a dozen morels and a Sierra puffball. They were at a local valley at 4500' and met another collector who had fire morels in quantity. We're planning on having the morels over pasta tomorrow night.

 

[ski3pin]

,.............and met another collector who had fire morels in quantity.

We did a trip through the King Fire burn area today. There were many collectors out foraging.

 

[MarkBC]

I don't know anything about wild edible mushrooms...and yet, I picked and ate some lobster mushrooms on the recommendation of a stranger.
I KNOW!! ............ DON'T FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE, FOLKS!

THE STORY:
In September 2013 I was camped in Cape Blanco State Park (on the southern Oregon coast, the furthest-west point in Oregon...and further-west than any point in CA, for that matter). Walking along the paved path to the restrooms I noticed some orange-red growth pushing up out of the duff, so I crouched down to take a picture with my phone.

An older woman (i.e., older than me) came along and said something like "Those are lobster mushrooms -- they're edible!" She went on to tell me that she didn't know anything about mushrooms, but she met another camper who's an expert, and last night the expert cooked and served these to her and her husband.

I was a little skeptical...and I said something like "Really -- are you sure? And you're not a psycho or anything, are you?" She laughed. I'm not sure if a psycho would laugh or not.

I picked a couple of the better-looking specimens and took them into my camper and cleaned them off.

I had a decent cell-Internet connection on my phone, so I looked up lobster mushrooms. Expert websites all agreed that there's no mistaking them. Also, very interesting is that it's not actually a specific species of mushroom, but rather is a fungus that has parasitized a mushroom and caused it to distort into the weird shape. And experts claimed that it's never been known to parasitize a poisonous mushroom.

So I sliced them up and sauteed them.

And I ate them.
They were fine...not sure if they were in prime condition or not...and I don't have a very refined palate anyway.

Despite my confidence in the Web-endorsed safety and non-recklessness of eating wild mushrooms recommended by an old-lady stranger... I decided to do this "just in case": I left a note in case anyone came upon my comatose body in my camper:

And all was well.

 

[Ted]

That's a great story Mark. I really like the just in case note.

You are either more brave, trusting, or foolish than I, or maybe all three.