Foraging for fungi

[Freebird]

Make sure you are identifying mushrooms for the area you are harvesting in. Just an example of one, but.....
Back in the '60 a good friend's mother put her whole family in the hospital for the weekend.
The (somewhat) poisonous ones in Ariz looked exactly (to her anyway) like the ones she had grown up picking wild all the time for meals back in upper Midwest.
No lingering long term damage, but it certainly ruined the weekend and ran up a big bill.

All I'm saying is, don't just THINK you know the mushroom is ok. KNOW IT IS OK. Be vigilant.

One of the best dishes I have ever eaten was made by a Blue Mountain OR lifetime logger, old timer, picking 'shrooms on the job site.
I wouldn't have eaten them, but his family said this was one of his specialty mushroom dishes, and he had been picking locally since he was young, and had learned identification and dish prep from an old time logger decades before. Talked me into it, and I was amazed how good it was.
Myself, I have only been brave enough to pick and use morels. I'm going to expand knowledge and my pickings thanks to this thread.

 

[Lighthawk]

Great write up, Mark. The note on the paper plate was the kicker! SR approves.

 

[MarkBC]

Great write up, Mark. The note on the paper plate was the kicker! SR approves.

Thanks. I don't think I was taking any real risk. After all, if you can't trust old ladies and the Internet, who can you trust?

 

[MarkBC]

Toxic fungus news in Central Oregon yesterday:

App misidentifies mushrooms, family poisoned

I haven't been able to find any version of the story that says which phone app the people used to misidentify the mushrooms.

 

[Lighthawk]

Yikes! That is terrible. It's awful that they apparently lost their lives by eating the wrong mushroom.

It's stories like this that bring back all the Grimms fairy tales that says all mushrooms are poisonous and not to be trusted.

There are poisonous mushrooms (Destroying Angel, Death Cap, for example), which can look similar to edibles. If you even think of trying anything that has a similar poisonous mushroom, use extreme caution, do diligence with research and/or direct local knowledge is essential. On the other hand, there are numerous fungi that can be reliably ID'd and eaten.

 

[MarkBC]

There was another recent local story of warnings from local veterinarians to keep dogs away from mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms had been seen sprouting from lawns with the damper weather we'd been having, and vets have been seeing cases of mushroom-poisoned dogs.

Toxicity mushrooming problem for dogs

I guess most dogs can't tell the difference between good and bad fungus (except truffle hounds, of course).


But hey, despite the two stories I posted tonight, my lobster mushroom story shows that I'm definitely no fungal phobic nor mushroom maligner.

 

[Lighthawk]

Quick note. We were kayaking a favorite lake at 6000' and taking a break on a grassy shore next to an aspen grove. I went looking for mushrooms and found quite a number of aspen boletes. Many were old, but half a dozen were on good shape. After due diligence, we cooked them up. Delish!

1 item

 

[Basin Deranged]

Boletes in August!
That's something we only dream about here...

 

[Lighthawk]

I follow Mushroomtalk as well as Sierra Nevada Mushroom Identification pages on FaceBook.
There are plenty of bolete harvests in Arizona this time of year, from monsoons I assume.
The mid-west is incredibly prolific too, from what I understand.
But, we are just northern sierra fungophiles, still figuring it out.

 

[wspohn]

It was fun reading this. I took a mushroom Id class at HSU in '69, '70? that has provided Jan and me with a solid basis for seasonal foraging as we wander the west. We traded our Tundra in on a new Tacoma because our mushroom roads are growing together and we needed a skinnier vehicle. We look for habitat and check the weather. Summer thunderstorms on high ridges in white fir and under hazelnuts produce white chanterelles up to a pound in size along with Agaricus augustus even though the roads are dusty. We like to go into the winter with at least a dozen quarts of dried mushrooms plus frozen sautéed chanterelles. I should mention that unless your name is David Arora, I would not consider eating a dish prepared with wild mushrooms unless I had personally inspected them. That being said, if you find yourself in a situation where the volume of obvious edibles is overwhelming and possibly staggering, feel free to give us a jingle.

Walt

 

[Lighthawk]

Thanks Walt. Good to hear from someone who has decades of experience foraging for fungi. It's a fun hobby with culinary benefits, and hopefully not gastronomical events!

Things are starting to happen in the foothills. I found a tree last year with mostly old oyster mushrooms running up the trunk. It sits in a damp creek bottom with brush and deadfall with a year round creek at it's feet. The bottom mushrooms had already turned, but we knocked off some of the highest ones which were still good. They were excellent eating and I've kept my eye on that tree ever since.

Babies on downed log

Climbing the tree

 

[buckland]

Hey there... just into the mushroom thing a few years back and though I grow them on Oak logs here at the farm I have only this year felt 'safe' (knowledgeable) to pick natural shrooms this last year. I saw this article in the computer on Flip from the New Yorker and thought to post as well as a shot of some of the shiitake logs against the barn.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-year-in-fungi-2015

 

[Lighthawk]

Wow, it's time to wake up this thread!

Here in the NorCal foothills it has rained 9" this month.
Last year we had even more rain and it was a bountiful year for boletes, aka porcini.
I found them all around town under oak leaves, madrone and ponderosa duff.

So, we've been checking our spots about once a week and haven't seen much.
I found a furry chanterelle, but those are not good to eat, so not much excitement, until today.

I took a short walk on a hillside that produced well last year and found a couple of young coccora, or calyptroderma.
These are amanitas and not for beginners. They are highly prized in Italy and immigrants who came over with the gold rush era have been harvesting them. Friends who are fifth generation residents learned about coccoras from them.



I continued my quick walkabout and also found a "butter bolete", likely a butyriboletus persolidus. I plan to slice and dry this one.
I just used some of last years dried porcini to make a nice wild mushroom gravy which will come with us for our Thanksgiving trip to the East Side.

 

[ski3pin]

Very, very nice!

 

[buckland]

Saw this and though some of you shroom hunters might want to see