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kid sinister posted:can't figure out how to cultivate them My cousin is working on a masters of mycology he used to harvest these crazy expensive mushrooms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsutake I said he should figure out how to cultivate them. His reply was that it would be cheaper to figure out what gene made them taste like they do and implant that into button mushrooms. Fungus has really crazy life cycles and symbiotic relationships.
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| # ? Mar 14, 2012 22:41 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 14:08 |
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Lots of great info folks, I've learned quite a few things. I may try my hand at collecting morels since they are apparently fairly easy to tell apart from poisonous lookalikes.  I'll be adding more to the first few posts in the coming days. I may be able to get out and do a nice hunt for edibles on Saturday and post the results.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 04:31 |
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 Cymbalaria muralis Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Kenilworth Ivy This stuff will take over a garden if left unchecked. Luckily the leaves are edible and taste like cress when young.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2012 10:52 |
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MaakHatt posted:
This crap has taken over my yard in NC, and it's impossible to get rid of. Guess it's time to have a salad.
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| # ? Mar 18, 2012 12:23 |
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I work out on a bunch of people's private property, on Wednesday I'm going to ask one of the landowners if I can go mushroom hunting. I think he will let me because I already have access to some parts of his property, but he has a hunting leas on the place where I think the mushrooms are. Anyone have good mushroom hunting tips? I go looking every year but never find a ton.
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| # ? Mar 20, 2012 01:24 |
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I've taught my kids some safe plants to forage for in our yard, including two you don't seem to have on your list- wood sorrel and clover. I was reminded of this thread just now when my six year old came inside and asked if I wanted any of her "lemon leaves" (the wood sorrel).
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| # ? Mar 21, 2012 21:46 |
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There's a mulberry tree in my mum's backyard. I used to eat unripe mulberries all the time as a kid, never gave me problems.  And if anyone has knowledge of Australian edibles for foraging, I'd love to read about those.
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| # ? Mar 22, 2012 17:27 |
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Didn't even see this thread until now. I'm a decently experienced amateur mycologist and I've been into foraging for a few years. Already this year I've been out for greens and back to some of the spots I have flagged for ramps, since I'm not really sure when they'll pop this year after such a mild winter. In MI the garlic mustard is out in abundance, and there are plenty of baby greens to collect if you're confident in your abilities. Young plants can be a lot harder to ID. Looking forward to morels and the spring oyster mushroom flush!
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| # ? Mar 22, 2012 19:44 |
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razz posted:Anyone have good mushroom hunting tips? I go looking every year but never find a ton. Go the day after rain, and the day after that. Look for a species that the local environment favors. When I go out into a pine forest I don't expect to find too many oyster mushrooms because they're hardwood decomposers. Make a lot of notes and go back to the same places year after year. Harvest responsibly and triple-check your ID. Learn how to take a spore print. Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 22, 2012 around 20:03 |
| # ? Mar 22, 2012 19:58 |
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Corridor posted:There's a mulberry tree in my mum's backyard. I used to eat unripe mulberries all the time as a kid, never gave me problems. Most of the cites I've seen on places like Wikipedia are to Erowid, a site devoted to psychoactives. The only cite it has that's vaguely scientific doesn't actually talk about any supposed hallucinogenic properties, but instead the presence of a glucosidase inhibitor (diabetics rejoice). Source (American Society of Plant Biologists; link on site broken): http://www.erowid.org/herbs/mulberr...rry_info2.shtml The only real hint I've found is an article discussing how the causal agent of a fungal disease in the Morus genus produces Myrotoxin B, which apparently kills mice pretty dead. Sources: http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/s...ml;JP1998004560 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2501953 There was also a journal article from the 80s that was recommending actual scientific study into claims of such effects in dozens of plant species, apparently including mulberry, but it doesn't seem like that's happened. Edit: this isn't to say unripe mulberry fruit aren't hallucinogenic, just that science doesn't seem to have bothered looking into it at all. lonelywurm fucked around with this message at Mar 22, 2012 around 22:31 |
| # ? Mar 22, 2012 22:15 |
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I was dropping some seeds in the ground today and I saw a weed out of the corner of my eye. I didn't think about not having gloves on and just yanked it out. Next subject. I have a garden full of stinging nettle.  According to wikipedia you can boil these guys to remove their stingers that inject a cocktail of chemicals that will string and burn the hell out of you. They have a lot of protein and taste like spinach! J-just don't touch them.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 21:59 |
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Yay! Nettles stir fried with wild mushrooms over rice is just about my favorite camping meal ever. Stinging nettles actually can be handled and eaten raw, but it's tricky! There are a lot of youtube videos that will show you in detail. Interestingly, one of the things that makes them so sting-ey is oxalic acid, which is found in a number of wild plants, especially greens. If you eat a meal of plants very high in oxalic acid your mouth will burn like it's on fire. A stinging, horrible fire. And it can contribute to kidney stones. Anyhow, oxalic acid is awfully water soluble (where it hydrates and becomes harmless) and you can eliminate or greatly reduce the presence of oxalic acid in wild foods (and swiss chard) by boiling for a minute or two and then changing the water. Continue boiling in the new water or finish cooking it a different way. Dock is another wild green that's easy to find and gather like nettles, but requires a change of water to remove/hydrate the oxalic acid.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 22:33 |
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I'd LOVE to get into mushroom hunting but would want to do it under the watchful eye of an expert. Any ideas how to find someone that would teach me? I'd be happy to pay them but don't know where to start.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 01:44 |
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Socratic Moron posted:I'd LOVE to get into mushroom hunting but would want to do it under the watchful eye of an expert. Any ideas how to find someone that would teach me? I'd be happy to pay them but don't know where to start. Good luck. Around here morel spots are sacred territory and people keep them a closely guarded secret.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 01:58 |
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It's pretty possible to teach yourself how to hunt for mushrooms safely. You should learn about the basic biology of mushrooms so that you can use a key in the field. You can take pictures of your finds and post them at places like Mycotopia and experts will review them and provide a positive ID. Learning how to take spore prints and helpful pictures is important. To get a mushroom identified online you need clear pictures of the cap, gills, and the substrate that it's growing on. A spore print on white paper or foil will show you the spore color which can be key. If you live in certain states you might have an active mycological society. A lot of times they will organize guided hunts, or even informal hunts where you can talk to knowledgeable people. Looking at their schedule online will give you a good idea what is in season in your area, too. Even if you live in a crappy area for mushroom hunting, growing edible mushrooms is a cheap and fun hobby. Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 24, 2012 around 05:52 |
| # ? Mar 24, 2012 03:00 |
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I think I'm a couple days early on the morel hunt  But I did find this in a dumpster. SCORE! 
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| # ? Mar 25, 2012 00:26 |
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Yay!  I went out yesterday and found nada as far as mushrooms and sweet taxidermied deer heads. I did find a whole clearing of trout lilies. They take a long time to gather but they're really good, kinda like big crunchy kernels of sweetcorn. I only got a handful and they're just starting to get to be past their prime.  Trout lilies are spring ephemerals that like rich, well-drained, moist soil and a bit of shade. They form a dense mat of roots with small edible bulbs about 3 - 5" deep and can cover just huge areas. Any temperate forest in the USA is likely to have a lily patch somewhere in it, usually right around the edges of a swampy area. They may be protected in some areas I guess but tend to be abundant. The bulbs are best when the leaves are first appearing or long after they've died back in the fall. If you mark a patch it's easy to go back when the bulbs are the best. They get starchy during the summer, sweet in spring and fall. The leaves are distinctly mottled and hard to misidentify after they open up in the early spring. Only the bulbs are edible as far as I know. They're good raw or cooked and are a gourmet vegetable as far as I'm concerned. Samuel Thayer covers them in depth in Nature's Garden (great foraging book) in the first chapter. They're a companion plant with wild ginger, raspberries, and a lot of wild greens. And so much other stuff. Glacier lilies and fawn lilies are closely related and edible too. Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 25, 2012 around 18:16 |
| # ? Mar 25, 2012 16:28 |
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I managed to get out to the nearby national park on an edibles hunt on Saturday, so hopefully I'll have a good write-up on it done before time to turn in tomorrow evening. No harvest there since taking out any plant life can result in a hefty fine, but it's always a good place to brush up on identification. In other news, I went harvesting at my parents' house and the nearby woodlot today. Redbud trees are taking over the area, but the colony of sassafras has completely died off, and the arugula that had spread into their yard from one of my old gardens didn't come back this year.  No sassafras tea or homebrewed root beer for me this year unless I find another clump of it.I'm also planning on a batch of dandelion wine, just as soon as the next good rain comes through.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 05:12 |
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Yup.    
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 00:59 |
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 Nice haul!
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 01:35 |
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drat! What part of the country are you in? Man I can't wait to start looking.
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 01:56 |
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Northeast Kansas. I guess a guy near here found 23 pounds in ONE DAY the other week. My roommate and I found this spot in maybe 30 minutes of searching, then spent 45 minutes or so picking. Probably will go back in the next few days and see if the tiny ones we left got bigger, or if there are any more around that same area. We estimated that we got around 4 pounds today.
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 02:01 |
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razz posted:Northeast Kansas. I guess a guy near here found 23 pounds in ONE DAY the other week. Well I think its time to start looking around here. I'm in southeast Nebraska. That's a very nice haul, more than I've ever found in a day. My dad and his best friend found twenty pounds in a day once. They were wearing pullover sweaters and filled them both. It was the only way they could carry them.
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 02:08 |
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I bet we could have easily doubled that amount if we looked more. But we didn't get out till late and we didn't have a whole lot of daylight left. You should start finding them soon if you've gotten any rain! We had three straight days of rain last week, and it's been in the upper 60s or higher every day after. So basically perfect morel time!
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 02:25 |
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I just went morel looking for the first time. It was supposed to be a field herping trip foremost, and then I'd hope to find a couple mushrooms while doing it. It took quite a while before I found my first morel, and I was excited. I found a couple more near that one, and then walked a bit ahead and found them just growing up everywhere in this small clearing. I ended up getting an entire plastic shopping bag full of them. (I understand you're supposed to use a cloth bag, but I really hadn't expected to find any and had just jammed a bag in my pocket, just in case). I had to continuously tell myself, "Slow down, be careful!" because I wasn't watching for snakes. The entire purpose of going out there was supposed to be to find snakes and salamanders; I had my brand new snake stick, I was dying to use it, and of all things, I wasn't properly watching for snakes! I'll post some pictures later; I saw a few mushrooms I wanted to ask about, and a couple plants that might be edible, but after eating, I'm going back out for more morels.
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 16:55 |
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I think it's really going to be a great year for mushrooms all over the US. If anyone is thinking about taking up foraging for mushrooms as a hobby it's probably a good time to do it. If you live up north it'll probably be another week before we're going to be getting hauls like razz did so there's still plenty of time to learn before you go out. Good for you, OneTwentySix! Finding a morel patch is exciting! Lizards are exciting too, I guess. Every time I go out into the woods I tuck a dozen paper lunch bags into whatever field guide I'm bringing with me so I don't get caught by surprise. Now that you have a spot you should take a basket and I bet you fill it right up. Morels dehydrate amazingly well for storage. The big ones I split and the little ones I leave whole. I put them on a piece of screen or a furnace filter and leave them in the sun. It only takes a day or two (bring them in at night) and they can be put into a canning jar for storage. Freezing destroys the texture of fresh mushrooms. Pickling is another good way to go, but I've never pickled morels. Chanterelles are great pickled on pizza. Dehydrated mushroom powder is a great thickening ingredient in soups and stews. Normally about half of my oyster harvest gets powdered. Until the mushrooms really get going up here I am scouting out some new wild strawberry patches and gathering greens. I like sheep sorrel and chicory best. Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 27, 2012 around 19:17 |
| # ? Mar 27, 2012 18:59 |
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How do you use the dried morels? I've been researching some ways to preserve them and basically the consensus is that if you dehydrate them, they're great for soups, stews, pasta dishes etc, but don't hold up well for frying. But if you dredge them in flour and freeze them then vacuum seal them, they'll keep well and you can just pop them right into the pan and fry them while still frozen. I think I'll try both methods as a comparison this year and see what works best! I'm going to look for some in a different spot in about an hour. Around here, folks say that the morels pop up at a certain height from the water table. So if the water is low, they'll be low down on slopes. If the water is high, you'll find them further up. The morels I found yesterday were in two spots, at 344 and 345 meters elevation so maybe there is something to that Also they were all surrounded by honey locust and greenbriar and I got TOTALLY DESTROYED by thorns. So maybe look in areas that look like completely lovely places to walk through
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 20:18 |
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Rehydrate in a warm flavorful broth or hot water for 20 minutes or so, then just use as normal. If they're going into soup then they won't need to be rehydrated as long as they get tossed in early enough. When you fry them it's better for sure to use fresh than rehydrated but I've done it both ways and it really isn't too bad using dried. Make sure to pat them dry if you ever try to fry a rehydrated mushroom, they spit in the oil like crazy. Fried morels are pretty much a harvest tradition around here. I've never vac sealed them before but I could absolutely see it working and I'd love to hear about how it goes. I have most of the gear for freeze drying, I just need a nice vacuum flask and a better vac pump before I give it a shot. I had wanted to try it this year but I probably won't be able to before I move at the beginning of May. Supposedly freeze drying is the way to go. Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 27, 2012 around 20:58 |
| # ? Mar 27, 2012 20:45 |
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It's been raining heavily here, so I might go looking for morels after it lets up. I've never done it before, so I was wondering about safety precautions. Are you supposed to wear gloves in case you pick up a false morel by mistake? If you get a bag of morels, but later identify a few of them as false morels, do you have to throw out the whole bag, or can you just wash the good ones? Or is it likely that you'll only find one or the other but not both?
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 21:17 |
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I'm in Idaho and we have a neat plant - the Camas. There's a few varieties but the ones with the blue flowers are edible and were a critical part of native diets in the region. Lewis and Clark chowed down well once they hit this area thanks to Camas root. Here is what a field looks like when the camas are in bloom. 
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 21:57 |
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Elftor posted:It's been raining heavily here, so I might go looking for morels after it lets up. I've never done it before, so I was wondering about safety precautions. Are you supposed to wear gloves in case you pick up a false morel by mistake? If you get a bag of morels, but later identify a few of them as false morels, do you have to throw out the whole bag, or can you just wash the good ones? Or is it likely that you'll only find one or the other but not both? I think you'd be ok as long as you don't eat them. The main thing to protect yourself against is ticks. Edit: I'd like to mention that I have never found a false morel in 15 years of looking.
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| # ? Mar 27, 2012 22:35 |
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Elftor posted:It's been raining heavily here, so I might go looking for morels after it lets up. I've never done it before, so I was wondering about safety precautions. Are you supposed to wear gloves in case you pick up a false morel by mistake? If you get a bag of morels, but later identify a few of them as false morels, do you have to throw out the whole bag, or can you just wash the good ones? Or is it likely that you'll only find one or the other but not both? False morels aren't poisonous, just not as delicious and they give some people stomach aches. It's fine if they touch other mushrooms and you don't need gloves or anything. The Mycotopia thread I linked to earlier has the OP harvesting and eating verpas, which is just another name for false morels. I haven't ever seen a false morel first hand either. There are no morel lookalikes that will kill you in the USA (probably anywhere?) they're a very safe mushroom to harvest for beginners. Same with oyster mushrooms. You may have already read, but the stems of false morels are full of cottony fibers. You can see really well in razz's pictures that a true morel stem is hollow like a straw. The whole mushroom is hollow in fact. Good luck! Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 28, 2012 around 02:37 |
| # ? Mar 28, 2012 00:05 |
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My neighbor brought me a morel last spring. She found it growing in bark mulch on the side of her house and was absolutely terrified to even be holding it, with a plastic grocery bag as a makeshift glove. I was pretty sure it was a morel, but too scared to risk it. Later on I picked some shaggy manes in my backyard and took them to the conveniently timed local mycological show for ID. They didn't fry up very well though, probably better in soup. It was kind of cool to see them disintegrate into black liquid though. Apparently it was used as ink at one point.
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| # ? Mar 28, 2012 02:00 |
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CuddleChunks posted:I'm in Idaho and we have a neat plant - the Camas. There's a few varieties but the ones with the blue flowers are edible and were a critical part of native diets in the region. Lewis and Clark chowed down well once they hit this area thanks to Camas root. Have you ever tried them? I really like to eat flower bulbs, they're a lot better than you'd think. I've never had any camas. Cpt.Wacky posted:I was pretty sure it was a morel, but too scared to risk it. Later on I picked some shaggy manes in my backyard and took them to the conveniently timed local mycological show for ID. They didn't fry up very well though, probably better in soup. It was kind of cool to see them disintegrate into black liquid though. Apparently it was used as ink at one point. I used to work as a cook in a Chinese restaurant for a first-generation Cantonese immigrant and he could not get enough shaggy manes. He would be out in the parking lot the morning after rain looking through the mulch. I think they're pretty good but they have to be prepared well. I've only ever had them in dishes where they were fried off and heavily seasoned.
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| # ? Mar 28, 2012 02:33 |
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razz posted:Nothing goes with morels like Mexican Coke.
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| # ? Mar 28, 2012 07:30 |
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kid sinister posted:Nothing goes with morels like Mexican Coke. Haha! Those are my roommate's, I don't drink soda really. So we decided "what the gently caress, it's impossible for us to eat all of these mushrooms" so we sold 2.5 pounds of them and got $55. Sold on Craigslist about 30 min after I put the ad up
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| # ? Mar 28, 2012 18:29 |
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That's wonderful, and you got a great price for them! Around here roadside stands pop up selling morels around the first of May most years. I know more than one old local that supplements their retirement with morels. It's not a bad side job at all. This thread is making me want to go out so bad. I guess we'll have rain early next week but your pics are making me super impatient, razz. Edit: vvvvv Very nice! I see a couple of huge ones in there! Defiance fucked around with this message at Mar 28, 2012 around 21:06 |
| # ? Mar 28, 2012 20:24 |
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Thought you morel hunters would like this.
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| # ? Mar 28, 2012 20:36 |
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Defiance posted:Have you ever tried them? I really like to eat flower bulbs, they're a lot better than you'd think. I've never had any camas.
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| # ? Mar 28, 2012 20:51 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 14:08 |
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cheese eats mouse posted:Thought you morel hunters would like this. Yeahhhh! I've got a new spot to "morel hunt" that I'm actually using to shed hunt, nice!
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| # ? Mar 29, 2012 02:37 |
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