34 replies to this topic

[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.