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extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR
I don't actually want to explain mushrooms at length because I am not a properly trained mycologist, so far what I've been taught and taught myself would lead me to summarize mushrooms as being more complicated and more dangerous than learning to identify trees, or even how to carve wood or use trees for medicinal purposes, firewood, etc. But risk and reward as always seems to scale. If you become mildly interested in mushrooms you can take nice pictures of them and if you are reckless you can also die, if you are willing to slowly learn a whole lot about mushrooms you will have a lot of free food for the rest of your life with minimal risk. They also have other uses, and I'm not talking about chaga tea supposedly fighting cancer, or any other medicinal poo poo that cannot be proven. In terms of drug properties, I think we should limit the thread to talking only about the legal and not that fun for most people mushrooms that contain psychoactive chemicals. If you're interested in learning about Psilocybins that topic already has a home in TCC.

I am lazy and will do one species per post, and you all have to do work and provide similar pictures and anecdotes, questions, etc, because I am only familiar with a few dozen mushrooms.



This is a batch of Chlorophyllum Rhacodes, and I will regret not googling how to spell that soon. The common name is the shaggy parasol, due to it's parasol shape at maturity, and that it is a shaggy variation of a more popular and known edible Macrolepiota procera, the parasol mushroom. It's good to use both names as the common names vary by state and country just like any slang in any language. As shown by the Latin binomial they're not as similar as once thought, and it's classification was changed. The shaggy parasol is actually closer related to Chlorophyllum molybdites, which is twice as big and brown only in it's center, and will make you very sick but has killed zero adults on record.

Below them is a leather Rawlings baseball and I find about one per season while hiking, they are not edible but are worth about 15 dollars and can be thrown, like a baseball and caught much like a baseball as well.

There were a ton of those but this was my first time actually eating mushrooms and not taking pictures of them, so I only took about a dozen. Typically you don't want to harvest young mushrooms, as in the bulbous state they're harder to identify and more likely to be confused with deadly mushrooms. Most deadly mushroom incidents, or best case scenario leading to severe liver damage are from Amanitas. This family of mushroom include both the Destroying Angel and the Death Cap. It also contains a lot of species that are edible, and some that are legal but not fun psychoactives. A good general rule is to avoid amanitas until you're pretty far into the hobby.

I cooked them in butter because the internet told me to, and I cooked them for a good ten minutes on medium high until crispy on the outside and soft just on the inside, tastes and smells like a strange but delicious health food alternative to bacon. So far I've just been stirring them in with potato soup and with brown rice, so that they're very much the highlight of the meal. Some people throw them on a steak which makes no sense to me because a steak already tastes like a steak.



When taking pictures of mushrooms to identify and possibly consume, this might be the most important angle that exists. Notice the "bulb" (volva) is included, the stem, the ring from where the bulb grew into a large cap but left it's ring, and an upshot of the bottom of the cap are all visible. Some mushrooms have gills underneath, some have pores. And of course many variations lead to many other words, but you'll need to look at these to not die. (edit) I am a huge idiot and half the volva is actually somewhat obscured by pine needles and even off camera, so that picture is actually a third of an inch bad.

Bruising and cutting the mushroom also help to identify it. C. Rhacodes "bruises" reddish to orange when you push your finger into it or cut it, and then that color will fade to brown rather quickly. This is a key to identifying this mushroom especially if you are too lazy to do a spore print, or living out in the woods.

That's a lot of words, so that sums up one mushroom as far as I care too. I'm in the northeast United States of America (capital of the world) and there are a ton of these around here. Check pine forests. They're also less likely to be sprayed with lawn chemicals than the more convenient locations. General logic applies here, identify twice, cook thoroughly and eat a small amount and wait several hours before going to town on the rest.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Nov 11, 2016

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extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR
Post reserved for popular books and websites on mushrooms that my friends and professors have read, but I have not and will tell you to anyway:

https://www.amazon.com/Mushrooms-Demystified-David-Arora/dp/0898151694

https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-American-Mushrooms-Hardcover/dp/0394519922


More very vague and general tips: Mushrooms are not trees. When you step on one, you should probably not have done that but you have not killed some great life force. Mushrooms put out millions or billions of spores, and underground they sort of gently caress each other in a weird complicated way that I don't remember most of the words to. Stringy lines form, hyphae? I believe, and they become huge underground webs called a mycelium. The physical "mushroom" above ground is a fruiting body, a product of this. Much like acorns are to an oak tree, mushrooms are to this mycelium. Unless conditions are poor or the structure is entirely ruined underground, more will pop up. Some species of mushroom in the right conditions see their entire fruiting body cycle in a single day. Nothing is visible, then something, then it grows large and peaks, and can even wilt and die in the same day again depending on minerals, soil including poo poo, amount of sunlight rain etc.

Because of this, there are many arguments about mushroom harvesting. Special knives exist that have a fine brush on the other end to clean the mushroom, as most people find rinsing them with water will make them soggy and that's flavor running down your drain with the water. The knife end is probably unnecessary, just a tradition and one more shiny thing to collect. The truth is you need the volva the safely identify a mushroom, and even once you remove this you have not harmed the mycelium, under proper conditions entirely new fruiting bodies will rise through the earth, sometimes an inch away sometimes fifty feet. Take pictures first if you're an amateur, once you confirm an ID it's up to you if you think another mushroom forager will be along before the other fruiting bodies die. I took only a quarter of the healthy shaggy parasols I found, which is stupid because no one around here is into mushroom hunting beyond a few retired professors. I'll go back and find the ones I passed up on gross, and new ones alive soon. Still, this can be good to consider if you live in an area with a lot of cool people or find too much of a mushroom for you to realistically eat within a couple of days. I know absolutely nothing about the safest way to properly dry and can mushrooms, and I don't really care to find out. I'm not preparing for hiding in a bunker in an imagined WWIII, I'm preparing my mind to always find more food when I need food.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Nov 11, 2016

thatguy
Feb 5, 2003
it's been a few years since I went to a seminar about this that a mycologist nearby ran, but I thought he said fruiting only happened when their food source ran out. Is that not the case?

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

thatguy posted:

it's been a few years since I went to a seminar about this that a mycologist nearby ran, but I thought he said fruiting only happened when their food source ran out. Is that not the case?

I've never heard that before, the most predictable trigger for new mushrooms (for most species) is always rain, or any source of water. Keep in mind fungii as a whole is really too broad of a topic to summarize even if we have an expert post here, just compare the common puffball with the mushrooms I posted in the OP and in one case the "fruit" or specifically the edible part is a bag of spores, and in the other it's fleshy tissue that has often already released most of it's spores before people eat it. There could be some species that function that way, but I don't know of them.

Free Market Mambo
Jul 26, 2010

by Lowtax
Mushrooms are great, and are aspect of many culture's interaction with nature. In Eastern Europe and the Baltics, every autumn is the mushroom season. People young and old wander into the woods looking for mushrooms, and usually return. SAR calls spike during that time period, because peeps focusing on the ground usually end up having no idea where the are. This has gotten better with the introduction of smartphones.

I'm far from a mushroom expert, but I've taken a few courses on them, and can generally identify them properly. Unless I'm 100% sure, I double check with a guide. Make sure your guide is current, as in the last 5 years. Mycologists sometimes come to new conclusions on edibility after research. Make sure your guide is local, mushrooms that may look the same as at home sometimes are not (EE immigrants in Israel often get mushroom murked).

In the Nordic countries, mushroom hunting and other foraging activities are generally protected under their nation's Rights of Public Access

A great NA pocket guide is https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Promises-More/dp/0898153883 the cover of which is one of humanity's crowning achievements.



Weirdly, most of the mushrooms I end up picking grow on trees, and are generally not eaten. A few of my favorites.

Chaga, Inonotus obliquus


This one grows on birch trees, generally injured or sick ones. it looks like a big gross burl. It's usually harvested with an axe and allowed to dry. The inside is fibrous and golden colored. Chaga is sometimes known as tinder fungus, and when dried it makes a fantastic firestarter, catching sparks very effectively.

It's often used to make tea, and can be sold to commercial harvesters. I've never done so, and only harvest it to give as gifts or for my own use, I think it tastes nice. There is some Chinese and Russian research saying it has anti-cancer properties, but I'm pretty skeptical about that.



Razorstrop Fungus Piptoporus betulinus


Technically edible, but I've never tried. Grows on birch (Betula), and is fairly common. I like it because you can cut out a small bit, and the flesh acts as fairly passable strop for a razor, knife, or axe. You can also burn it, and it makes a slow smoke for keeping away mosquitos, which does not smell great.



Artists Conk Ganoderma applanatum


This one usually can be found on downed logs, and is notable mostly for being fun. Pressure applied to the spores on the bottom leaves an ink-like mark, and can be "drawn" on. I've left friendly notes for groups following me at shelters with this mushroom, and it usually is memorable.

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Free Market Mambo posted:

Chaga, Inonotus obliquus


This one grows on birch trees, generally injured or sick ones. it looks like a big gross burl. It's usually harvested with an axe and allowed to dry. The inside is fibrous and golden colored. Chaga is sometimes known as tinder fungus, and when dried it makes a fantastic firestarter, catching sparks very effectively.

It's often used to make tea, and can be sold to commercial harvesters. I've never done so, and only harvest it to give as gifts or for my own use, I think it tastes nice. There is some Chinese and Russian research saying it has anti-cancer properties, but I'm pretty skeptical about that.

Thanks for posting, I saw your picture in another thread and hoped you'd post chaga here. How does chaga tea taste? It's strange to me that most people don't seem to believe that it's a magic healer, no one talks about the taste and yet the value remains there and there is a certain status with a good chaga find.

Any tips for identifying chaga vs. a burl? Obviously if chaga is present, the tree is already in some sense dying and not entirely solid, but if it's a burl mistaken for chaga what happens is someone cuts or hacks it off, the tree maybe dies and maybe lives a while, and now they have a burl they don't have a use for unless they're a woodworker with tough hands. In your picture you can see the iconic orangey insides almost bursting at the seems, but in normal sized/smaller cases I don't think this is common.

Also just to make sure no one gets too confused: I haven't heard anyone call chaga tinder fungus in my neck of the woods, but they do call Fomes fomentarius the tinder conk, and it is as hard as an actual shell in some cases. This one was harder than the dead log by a long shot. People take one of the layers, I imagine the inside? And somehow press it into a material used as a fabric to make hats and things out of. Looks leathery online, I've never seen anyone actually use it in person.



These are kind of rare around here, most dead birch are loaded up and down with those birch polypores however, which are more like a consistent rubber texture and not soft on the inside nor hard like a shell outside. They're also used as tinder, razor strops if anyone alive still has both the hobbies combined, and rarely spoken of as a food even though they're probably edible.


edit

Also Otzi the Iceman the famous preserved corpse had both tinder conk and birch polypore on him, but beyond assuming they were both used as tinder or tough chewy food we'll probably never know why.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer


Pardon me, do you know where I could find any fun guys?

Free Market Mambo
Jul 26, 2010

by Lowtax
It's a fairly neutral taste, I've found it just adds an earthy undertone. Some people sweeten it with honey. I drank a liter of it before a particularly hellish week, and credit my survival to it (not really).

I've always heard Fomes fomentarius referred to as false tinder fungus, but that could be a regional thing. Chaga doesn't need the intervening boiling and pounding step that fomentarius does, was my theory of the false/not false conundrum.

Free Market Mambo
Jul 26, 2010

by Lowtax
As for identifying chaga, the clearest thing is how black it is, it also tends to grow in more "parasitic" shapes than a burl. If you're still not sure, you can try breaking off a bit by hand. Chaga should come loose, a burl will not.

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Epitope posted:



Pardon me, do you know where I could find any fun guys?

LoTR gifs should be a staple of this subforum, thank you

Free Market Mambo posted:

As for identifying chaga, the clearest thing is how black it is, it also tends to grow in more "parasitic" shapes than a burl. If you're still not sure, you can try breaking off a bit by hand. Chaga should come loose, a burl will not.

Thanks, I've seen people claim it's as hard as a burl but based on everything I know about wood and burls I assumed this was false, not intentionally, some people just have baby hands I suppose.

You don't have PMs, is there anywhere we can chat and you can become my very first friend? Beyond that I'd like to bother you to find out as much as you can about traditional birch skis, but that is for another thread.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Nov 17, 2016

Free Market Mambo
Jul 26, 2010

by Lowtax

extra stout posted:

LoTR gifs should be a staple of this subforum, thank you


Thanks, I've seen people claim it's as hard as a burl but based on everything I know about wood and burls I assumed this was false, not intentionally, some people just have baby hands I suppose.

You don't have PMs, is there anywhere we can chat and you can become my very first friend? Beyond that I'd like to bother you to find out as much as you can about traditional birch skis, but that is for another thread.

send me a message at hewtangclan@hmamail.com

Free Market Mambo fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Nov 17, 2016

ookuwagata
Aug 26, 2007

I love you this much!
Stinkhorns, indeed look like cocks:


Right now here on the west coast we've been finally getting some good rains after two years of hell-drought, so I headed up to Sonoma County to look mainly for Chanterelles, specifically Cantharellus californicus. What distinguishes it from other Chanterelles is that it has this habit of indeterminate growth, which means if left alone in a good spot, it can grow quite large, I've found a specimen almost the size of a football. But that generally is only found on private lands, most of the time on public lands they never get that big, because someone picks it well before that happens

If you find a good spot with one or two poking up, look around, there's generally more. You might have to dig a bit (which is why I bring a hand rake with me) under the pine needles and other duff.

There's also two small Hedgehog mushrooms in that basket as well, Hydnum repandum, which from the top are often pretty easily mistaken for Chanterelles. Tastes pretty similar, less likely to be covered in dirt (the tooth gills underneath miraculously tend to be clean)

Another good mushroom that grows around the coast is the Candy Cap or Lactarius fragilis rubidus/Lactarius rubidus

Called fragilis because of the rather fragile hollow stem. Like all lactarius, when the gills are broken, a milky fluid oozes out. In the case of the Candy cap, the fluid should be watery white, and not rapidly change color. The distinctive and desirable trait this mushroom has is most readily evident during drying or cooking, it smells like maple syrup. It's good in desserts, and I personally like making pumpkin pie with it.

One important side note is that after eating it you may smell like maple syrup for a day or so afterwards.

The Porcini.

Boletus edulus granedulis, these guys were huge. Found them not on my trip, actually while jogging in SF. Lucky me. I somehow managed to get to it before the banana slugs messed them up too bad.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Cool kings

If you harvest by cutting or pinching off the stem, you'll disturb less mycelium and get less dirt on your haul.

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

ookuwagata posted:


The Porcini.

Boletus edulus granedulis, these guys were huge. Found them not on my trip, actually while jogging in SF. Lucky me. I somehow managed to get to it before the banana slugs messed them up too bad.

Thanks for reviving the thread with a great post. I have yet to stumble upon porcinis and am jealous of those especially. How do you prepare them? And do any of you have any luck with finding winter oysters?

ookuwagata
Aug 26, 2007

I love you this much!
Haha, I keep forgetting that I always have a knife on me for cutting them off.

What I do is generally separate the pores from the cap, (as usually the pores tend to be damaged from banana slug feeding more often than not) and also peel off the pellicle, the brown skin on top, and then slice and sautee in a bit of butter or really good olive oil with a small amount of shallots and garlic. If there's a lot, after briefly sauteeing them, I freeze them.

The stems are generally tough, so what I do is I make a stock with them to flavor sauces, gravies or make soup with. I pour the cool stock into an ice cube tray sometimes, freeze, and then shrink wrap the cubes to add a bit of flavor to various things.

I'm going to head up to Sonoma again in early January, but the last time I went I only saw one or two really mushy looking oysters. There might be more at...either Samuel P. Taylor or Jackson park, can't remember which one in CA was loaded with them.

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

Who here grows mushrooms? I wanna do that... too lazy to collect. Anything besides button simple enough to manage in my basement?

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Squalid posted:

Who here grows mushrooms? I wanna do that... too lazy to collect. Anything besides button simple enough to manage in my basement?

I've seen multiple people recommend these and if you look up the price of oyster mushrooms at most farmer's markets it's actually not much of an expense, the only real downside is they seem to not grow too big. If anyone has any ideas about how to maximum a harvest on one of those I'd be interested, or if trying to plant the kit minus box in the back yard is worth doing or probably has a pretty low success rate of preserving the mycelium.

https://backtotheroots.com/products/mushroomfarm

ookuwagata posted:

Haha, I keep forgetting that I always have a knife on me for cutting them off.

Not to begin another debate of mushroom opinions but I've never seen any evidence that you can hurt the mycelium by improperly picking, cutting, or ripping a fruiting body of a mushroom out of the ground. I think no matter how experienced someone is, it's probably best to dig up the full body including the volva on at least a few of the mushrooms. Even then there's some small chance you're in an area that's penetrated by two similar looking species and will gently caress up your stomach or kidneys.

edit (replying to Epitope)

The dirt part is of course true, but that's what a mushroom brush is for, or the sleeve of an old sweater.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Dec 30, 2016

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Fair enough. Stomping around their patch is probably more than pulling up the whole shroom. But for dirt, like lots of things, prevention beats cure.

Luvcow
Jul 1, 2007

One day nearer spring
I apologize in advance if the OP doesn't want this to be a "please help identify this random mushroom" thread. I love taking pictures of, painting and drawing mushrooms and as such am always wondering what I am looking at. Here are just a few of the mushrooms I've photographed in the woods of New England, was wondering if anyone has any ideas what they might be::







Reading this thread I'm becoming aware that in the future I need to get photos at a different angle but I don't plan on eating any mushrooms so I try not to disturb them, cut them, move them etc.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
The first one is pretty old and starting to fall apart. Something gilled (the ribs under the cap). Could be another amanita.

The second one is some variety of bolete. You can tell since it has pores (the foam under the cap). A lot of these are edible or at least won't hurt you much.

The third is an amanita. A lot of these are quite poisonous. The red one in Mario (amanita muscaria) you can hallucinate with, but you get liver damage or something. The destroying angel is pretty metal

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR
Agreeing with Epitope on all three, the first isn't identifiable (and in general most people will want to see a second shot of the gills or pores underneath the cap, if not also a third of the volva) the second looks a lot like the tasty king boletes posted not long before you (but you've come a bit late to harvest it) and the third is an amanita, probably the poisonous amanita cokeri.

I took pictures for several months before harvesting or eating any, it's a great segue into free food even if slow learning.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Hmm, apparently the liver damage thing might be a myth. Might have to try smashing some Goombas next summer

Luvcow
Jul 1, 2007

One day nearer spring

Epitope posted:

The first one is pretty old and starting to fall apart. Something gilled (the ribs under the cap). Could be another amanita.

The second one is some variety of bolete. You can tell since it has pores (the foam under the cap). A lot of these are edible or at least won't hurt you much.

The third is an amanita. A lot of these are quite poisonous. The red one in Mario (amanita muscaria) you can hallucinate with, but you get liver damage or something. The destroying angel is pretty metal




extra stout posted:

Agreeing with Epitope on all three, the first isn't identifiable (and in general most people will want to see a second shot of the gills or pores underneath the cap, if not also a third of the volva) the second looks a lot like the tasty king boletes posted not long before you (but you've come a bit late to harvest it) and the third is an amanita, probably the poisonous amanita cokeri.

I took pictures for several months before harvesting or eating any, it's a great segue into free food even if slow learning.


Awesome! Thank you both of you. Always curious what the names of the things around me are, I'm familiar with most of the birds, animals, trees and wildflowers etc. but when it comes to the mushrooms I have no idea. Thank you for making this thread OP.

CopperHound
Feb 14, 2012

I recently started taking pictures of mushrooms with the hope of identifying them later. I wish I saw this thread earlier so I would know to make sure to take note of the bulb, ring, and what they feel like. Do any of these look definitely edible, deadly, or :lsd: to you guys?

This is from the Santa Cruz mountains:


This was on the side of a paved multi use path in Contra Costa County. It felt a bit slimy and I might be imagining things, but I think it left a slight burning sensation:


All the rest of these are from Henry Coe state Park, I have a hiking pole in most of the pictures for size reference:




These caps caught my eye because they were nearly black on top






I haven't seen something like this before. It was just a lumpy ball full of a fluffy green powder






Bugs in the gills?

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Epitope posted:

The third is an amanita. A lot of these are quite poisonous. The red one in Mario (amanita muscaria) you can hallucinate with, but you get liver damage or something. The destroying angel is pretty metal

If there is any liver damage it isn't the kind that puts you in the hospital as a lot of people (legally, they're legal most places) do trip on them. I find them interesting but I'm not super convinced, most people describe it as being something more similar to being very drunk or on benzos and with bad stomach pains than a 'traditional' mushroom trip. Siberian eskimos, inuits or whatever they are called (it's 6 am) would supposedly give them to their caribou/reindeer to eat, then collect and drink their piss. This is because the known active drugs are mostly ibotenic acid and muscimol, and the deer are metabolizing the somewhat bad chemical for you. They would be drugging deers so they can drink piss and make their own trip more enjoyable and less groggy. I've heard it claimed this is the origin story of santa's reindeer though I'm not entirely convinced.

CopperHound posted:

I recently started taking pictures of mushrooms with the hope of identifying them later. I wish I saw this thread earlier so I would know to make sure to take note of the bulb, ring, and what they feel like. Do any of these look definitely edible, deadly, or :lsd: to you guys?

This is from the Santa Cruz mountains:


All the rest of these are from Henry Coe state Park, I have a hiking pole in most of the pictures for size reference:



I haven't seen something like this before. It was just a lumpy ball full of a fluffy green powder


Don't eat any of these without researching further but since this is fun I'll wing more guesses: both the one filled with fluffy green powder (spores, it stores all of them in there unlike most mushrooms where they're under the cap and drop after a few days) and the first picture are likely lycoperdon perlatum, the common puffball. Very edible and appreciated when fully white and dense in the middle, and not opened up, grey or green. Mostly a safe mushroom to choose as your first one to harvest, though some people with poor eyesight and extreme laziness have mistaken them before for young amanitas (those big flat ones that are often poisonous) because many amanitas are stubby ball shapes when very young. There's a hundred difference in them, but if you don't carefully look for any of them it can be an issue. Also while puffballs are mostly beloved food, a few are bad if I recall the pigskin puffball is bad for you but it's spores and guts are always black, making it fit within the rule of 'don't eat it' even if you mistake it for an old common puffball. The same is true of giant puffballs, basically they're all white semi-dense and foamy until they go bad where they become a grey or green mush instead.

The orange ones could be chanterelles but I would guess are more likely the toxic jack-o-lantern mushroom, omphalotus olearius. (I accidentally didn't quote these and will check back tomorrow, time to sleep)

The brown ones with the white underside are either delicious oyster mushrooms or not, they have a few look alikes and the top of those look off to me, but they do each have their own stem that curves and ties into a group, and their gills on most species do follow the stem down and are ringless.


Luvcow posted:

Awesome! Thank you both of you. Always curious what the names of the things around me are, I'm familiar with most of the birds, animals, trees and wildflowers etc. but when it comes to the mushrooms I have no idea. Thank you for making this thread OP.

Thank you for posting in it! Glad the idea didn't die after all.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Jan 2, 2017

CopperHound
Feb 14, 2012

extra stout posted:

Don't eat any of these without researching further but since this is fun I'll wing more guesses:
No worries. I am not the kind of person that will eat something because a person on a comedy forum says it is maybe [but probably not] safe. I figure most of the time when I run into something that looks like food there has to be some reason another animal hasn't gotten to it first.

I'll keep checking out mushrooms as I run across them and and take note of more of their features.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
One time we were biking around in the woods and there were a bunch of nice boletes and we were filling whatever little carrying capacity we had. We stopped at some cabins to hit them up for water. It was people on vacation, making steaks. We were all, you know what would go great with those? Wild mushrooms! They seemed dubious but possibly convinced. I still wonder if they went for it, based on some random kids on bikes advice.

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

The amanita piss works regardless of what kind of animal piss you're drinking, if you don't have any reindeer around (don't drink piss people).

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Squalid posted:

The amanita piss works regardless of what kind of animal piss you're drinking, if you don't have any reindeer around (don't drink piss people).

I have joked about doing this with local farm animals but I think it borders too close on animal abuse to try it. Also drinking piss even if you have the right species of animal to complete the ancient tradition is pretty gross I imagine? This is why I regret mentioning muscaria, now this will be known as the thread where people talk about drinking piss.

edit

Ok after reading the erowid sentence "she pretended to resist" I would say now is a good time to make the thread about all mushrooms that are not psilocybins or amanita muscaria

extra stout fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Jan 4, 2017

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Oh you wanna get frisky eh?
https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=28413

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

Saw some beetles chewing up some mushrooms, rolling them into little balls and carrying them away :3:

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR
Finally posting the results of my first yield from that little $23 oyster mushrooms for kids type of grow kit, it was a fun experience and I learned a lot. Ultimately you would have to turn this thing into a part time job to get the yield to compete with the price of even paying someone for freshly harvested wild or basement oyster mushrooms, but if you like science projects or (like me) don't live near a place with a mushroom market, I'm voting worth it. Snapped some pictures.



Slit a + shape into the knife and removed a thin layer of the mycelium that already formed before starting, soaked in water slit side down for 8+ hours. Kept it at about 50 something degrees (F) which in hindsight was too cold. Took about two weeks for growth possibly because of this. Oh and pinning of the fruiting bodies never came even close to the open slit part of the package, so had I not tilted the thing out of the box I never would have even noticed many dozens of fruiting bodies trying to grow through the tight plastic corners. Cut that open with a knife and gave them some air, many sprays of water a day hoping for food.



Being compressed by plastic for a day or more did not stop these wonderful bastards from growing to their potential despite the slow cold start. Here's a peek at my cheap and ugly looking idea, use the box, cut up some strips of the extra cardboard and use them as a tent for a plastic tent with holes in it. Figured it would promote humidity while allowing plenty to escape to avoid mold. In hindsight you could get the humidity way higher even in a more tight space without this being a problem. Especially with a fan or even just putting it near an cracked window with wind for an hour a day.



They seem to enjoy being sprayed with water five times a day eating recycled coffee beans in a lovely cardboard house. Whatever makes them happy is fine by me.



A lovely blurry picture with a coin about the size of a quarter for reference. Color of the caps is not actually a very good measurement for Pleurotus ostreatus, the most commonly eaten and native oyster mushroom in North America. They can be anywhere from almost black on the top of the cap, blueish, light brownish. They seem to be more lightly colored in the wild,and you will see the caps lose the intensity of their color as they age.



The best guide for when to harvest seems to be more about the shape of the cap, the splitting of the cap, and texture and hardness. It is up to you if you want to eat the mushroom caps when they are prettiest vs. when they are slightly bigger. I felt it was worth giving them one more day to see if they got huge or just slightly older. They went with the getting slightly older looking option. Some good attributes for when the caps will likely not grow more are:

-The cup shape becomes a flat top, and then the edges of the flat cap will droop down.
-They will be less round, and more of an ear shape.
-As seen on a few of the caps, they will begin to split at the edges.

Waiting any longer than this will just mean harder or drier mushrooms continuing to become a light light brown. Means it was time to invent a bad recipe by combining generic stereotypes of Scandinavian food of course. I diced the stems and cooked them in aquavit, 80 something proof spiced liquor. Didn't break them down enough, or at all. The caps themselves were delicious, cooked in a small amount of butter and nothing else.


Things I learned before eating more of them: I still see no reason not to eat the stems, free food. They are tougher, I don't even know for sure that lignin is in mushrooms but I imagine this is because lignin or the similar mushroom equivalent helps them grow tall and firm. If you cut up the stems and eat them with something you boil in water, even mac & cheese, they soak up both the water and later the cheese and are great. The caps really are good in butter, dipped in lingbonberry jam for a bittersweet cranberry type of sauce.

There are loads of studies about the nutritional value of mushrooms and despite not finding any reason not to eat the stems, most people who eat mushrooms seem to throw away a good 40% of the yield by volume simply because they don't like chewy foods. Definitely going to start saving the stems on all mushrooms I grow or forage to throw in soups and stews until I find any reason not to.

More words as though this post isn't long enough: Totally recommend this kit for first time adults or kids with supervision. People who have never eaten oyster mushrooms, don't live near a market with one, etc. Despite having loads of fun with it I think I learned enough that I'll do a more DIY and bigger approach next time. Either buy bigger bags of already developed mycelium from a smaller company or I might get plugs and be patient with an outdoor approach, putting them in oak logs.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Mar 9, 2017

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Good stuff yo. Someone gave me some wine caps they grew in their yard. They had a pretty massive amount of food for the size of their little patch.

Epitope fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Mar 11, 2017

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Epitope posted:

Good stuff yo. Someone gave me some wine caps they grew in their yard. They had a pretty massive amount of food for the size of their little patch.



How did you cook them and how did they taste? Those are still on my to try list. Also I give up at effort posting for a while, you should post some pictures of them good eatin' mushrooms, fella

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer

extra stout posted:

How did you cook them and how did they taste? Those are still on my to try list. Also I give up at effort posting for a while, you should post some pictures of them good eatin' mushrooms, fella

Hey, it takes effort to find relevant Magic The Gathering art :P This was a couple summers ago, so no pics. I'm sure I tried them fried up in butter salt and pepper. Always got to start there, to compare to everybody else on the baseline. I think maybe we made a soup. Pretty tasty, like a portabella but more delicate or something

Yeonik
Aug 23, 2010
Gettin to be Morel season up here in the north, fellas. Can't wait! I'll effort post more a bit later, mushrooms are a passion of mine and I'm sure I'll be bored at work.

Epitope
Nov 27, 2006

Grimey Drawer
Last year there were some popping this time, but it's been a bigger snow year so, patience...

extra stout
Feb 24, 2005

ISILDUR's ERR

Yeonik posted:

Gettin to be Morel season up here in the north, fellas. Can't wait! I'll effort post more a bit later, mushrooms are a passion of mine and I'm sure I'll be bored at work.

I'm excited to look for them but I've yet to even find false morels (verpa bohemica) which here are supposed to be an indicator of 'true morels' coming soon after, but honestly I'm still learning which of those are edible and local, and I see mixed debates on if black morels are mildly toxic. Most people just say to cook those a bit longer.

You will get dozens of :shroom: points if you post any pictures of mushroom hunts, even if you don't find any as exciting as morels.

Epitope posted:

Last year there were some popping this time, but it's been a bigger snow year so, patience...

Just gives us more time to interrogate people to reveal their spots to us, I've been doing some hikes and seeing nothing other than tiny inedible growth on a few dead logs and dead standing trees not worth identifying if I'm in a mood for food.

extra stout fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Apr 9, 2017

Yeonik
Aug 23, 2010
In northern MI, the snow is just finally getting melted outta the woods, it'll be a week or 2 before we find any.

False morels (peckerheads as we call em ;p) are up after morels (or during the peak time) in my area. Though, I guess I'm talking about black morels which aren't necessarily in ever morel area.

I'm pretty good with local mushrooms but I don't know jack about non-local mushroom compositions. I've got tons of pictures, I just need to find them - once upon a time I thought I might like to write a mushroom book.

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Yeonik
Aug 23, 2010
I think both of these were last year. Wife got a new camera that I was trying out, trying to be all artsy and crap (you'll see what I mean when I share some of my other hideous pictures.)

Lil cutie, I'd say he was the first find of last year. I don't pick them when they are this small - I'll let em grow and come back. I don't always get them (it's public land), but I'd rather see someone get a nice mushroom than me get a crappy one.


A little plate, probably a couple years ago on this one. Nothing spectacular here!

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