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The left ginger woman is actually part of the club. You can see the robes in the rubbish bin behind her and she has a ring on in the top picture.
But before they kill you, would they taste good with pasta?
It’s never occured to me to wonder if deadly poisonous plants taste good. What does nightshade taste like?
Apparently they taste like tomatoes, so they would go well with pasta
I’ve had a black nightshade berry and I can confirm it tasted like a sweet tomato. I assume the poisonous ones taste similar, if they were bitter then accidental poisonings wouldn’t be a big concern.
Why not after? 🤓
All mushrooms are edible once.
And you can look at the Sun through a telescope twice in your life
I do some light general foraging in the forest I live in and mushrooms are a seasonal treat. And I often have Shaggy Mane mushrooms growing in my yard, (don’t worry, I do not use fertilizer or herbicides ever). And fresh chanterelle mushrooms are an edible gift from the gods.
Like most things in life, mushroom hunting isn’t super dangerous, (if you mess up the odds are it won’t kill you outright but they will make you wish it had), but it does take some learning and practice.
There’s a few top edible mushrooms that look like nothing else. Good starting point
Chanterelle mushrooms are a good one. Delicious, easy to identify, and don’t have a deadly lookalike.
Jack O’Lantern Mushrooms: A Poisonous Chanterelle Look A Like
Jack O’Lantern mushrooms also known as foxfire mushrooms or Omphalotus species, are a poisonous mushroom commonly confused with edible chanterelles.
Not deadly, sounds like – but also not fun! Be careful out there, junior mycologist club members!
That is one of the recommend ones in my Mushroom foraging book: Morels, Inky Caps, Cauliflower Mushroom, Chicken of the Woods, Oysters Mushrooms, Chanterells, Giant Puffballs, King Bolete, Black Trumpet and Hen of the Woods.
Chicken of the Woods is another easy, (and VERY tasty), to identify mushroom for beginners once they know what to look for. There are many different types of look a likes, but they are extremely fibrous and chewing and piece of wood would be tastier.
My Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest Guide has a series of top edibles in my region. Morels, Inky Caps, Cauliflower Mushroom, Chicken of the Woods, Oysters Mushrooms, Chanterells, Giant Puffballs, King Bolete, Black Trumpet and Hen of the Woods. All are suppose to be easy to identify without a deadly look alike. I haven’t gotten a chance to try anyone yet but hopefully this year.
I would still recommend going out with an experienced forager until you are comfortable. They can at least offer up good extra information as you hunt them.
Mushroom hunting is fun and tasty, but it does require care, knowledge, and experience. So be safe out there!
For sure. There is a mycology society I might join to help with that. I do a lot of foraging of plants in my yard and neighborhood. So I got to help me look up things as practice. Its been fun and no issues so far
I’ve eaten 6 of the ones on your list! Hoping to add morels very soon.
Black staining polypore is also one that is super easy to ID, the very edges are edible, the inside fronds get very tough, but you can cook those up to make a phenomenal goth broth that works well in chicken noodle soup.
I like the idea of goth broth
Don’t shaggy mane grow on manure substrate? They are probably coming up around dog poo or your leach field/septic tank. Delicious mushroom either way!
Not in my yard. While I have hunting dogs, they aren’t allowed to run free in the yard without supervision during training exercises. But I do have plenty of deer shit-- I live in the middle of a fairly remote forest.
Most of the shaggy manes grow on a clay hillside that gets lots of leaves in the fall. And they grow nowhere else on my 5 acres of lake shore. The wild raspberries grow everywhere like weeds though. And I don’t get bumper crops every year. Sometimes there are none, (wet years), sometimes a small handful, (most years), and sometimes they cover that hillside, (dryer years).
Geology is similar - one gray rock with brown spots is granite, another is zanzibarite - a name I just made up but that’s the idea. But then doing geology wrong won’t usually kill you.
Mushroom foraging gets so much unreasonable fear that it will kill you instantly the first time you do it. And only people with arcane woodcraft skills and a death wish do it. Yes, there mushrooms that can kill you if you eat them. But a lot of the bad ones will just make you wish they had killed you. But you will survive the experience.
And like many human endeavors, such as skydiving, driving a vehicle, swimming, or crossing a busy street, will quickly get you killed if you do it wrong. It takes education and practice with someone that knows how to do it correctly to learn to do it yourself. Mushroom hunting falls into that same category.
If you wish to do it, take some classes. They can be often found in big cities. Go out with proper experienced guides and perhaps learn a new skill. The hardest part is admitting when you ain’t sure if you are right and then walking away. Or not. It’s up to you.
I have a friend who used to hunt for morels with his dad. I said really, where do you do that? (cuz I just casually wondered) - He suddenly got all cagey and wouldn’t give me a straight answer, like I was asking him to reveal the location of the missile codes LOL.
I would hand over my credit card before I give out my best hunting grounds. ;)
I just meant what kind of terrain, not directions to a spot. I was actually wondering why he didn’t just create the right conditions in his backyard.
The classes I seen do have places to show terrain and even for new people to find mushrooms. But individuals, well we don’t have places for such things. I just have places were I know I can find mushrooms on a good day. And that’s it.
It would be impossible for your friend to create all the proper conditions for many mushrooms to grow in his backyard.
Lol. Lmao even. Geochemistry is a big deal. Take a look at the Anaconda Mine.
Thank god I absolutely hate the taste and texture of mushrooms.
I thought I hated mushrooms but it turns out the most common grocery store mushroom is just the worst kind. Crimini/button/portabello it’s all Agaricus bisporus and it sucks. Enoki mushrooms opened my eyes and so far I’ve liked every single mushroom I’ve tried that isn’t that dogshit A bisporus rubbery mud.
I guess. But I don’t think my family ever had bought mushrooms apart from shiitake and truffles. All the rest were hand picked in the forest.
I do too… except for shiitake mushrooms, which I absolutely love.
Other than that, I have yet to have a mushroom I really like. Some of them (like the white kind they put on pizza) I would rate as tolerable.
I mean thw stuff they put on pizza barely has any taste at all. At least here. It’s the texture that is disgusting.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of the texture either. But I can tolerate it.
Shiitake mushrooms though… nothing similar in taste or texture. They do have to be prepared by someone who knows how to prepare them right because it does take a little experience, and they’re also expensive unless you want to get them dried and reconstitute them, but those aren’t nearly as good.
That said, if I am in a restaurant and I see them on offer, I will order them.
Portabellos are super disgusting to me. They taste like dirt and have a mouthfeel like dirt too.
Don’t know about portabellos. Not sure the same mushrooms even grow here as where you are. We mostly eat ones we pick outselves. I never liked going mushroom picking.
Have you tried Lion’s Mane? Has a meaty texture, you might dig it.
I have not, but I will look into it at some point, thanks.
have you tried Pleurotus? It’s texture and taste is quite similar but relatively weaker.
It grows on wood like shiitake.
I have not. Thanks.
Jokes on you, they’ll all kill me.
Just kidding - jokes on me, I’m allergic :(
To all mushrooms? Are you allergic to beer? I’m sorry, I instantly have a thousand questions
Yes I’m allergic to all mushrooms I’ve tried - my allergy report just says “mushrooms” so I’d imagine that means all of them. Not anaphylactic but pretty severe bodily evacuation. I did know someone who was deadly allergic to them though, and he said the doctor told him that magic mushrooms would also kill him.
Are there mushrooms in beer? Beer gives me the runs but I always assumed that was because I also have a wheat intolerance.
That’s okay, I’m used to questions. I’m also allergic to a ton of raw fruits (mainly apples which actually cause anaphylaxis) and raw veggies. Fine when they’re cooked but just not raw ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m sorry, that’s rough. I’m not allergic to them, but I can’t digest most animal fats, and it was really difficult before I just went vegan and stopped trying to figure out what would trigger me. “Pretty severe bodily evacuation” is a good way to put it, actually.
Not mushrooms exactly, but fungus. Beer or fresh wines like Federweißer should still have active yeast in them.
I wonder if there’s a distinction between mushrooms and fungus for allergy purposes. AFAIK, “mushroom” is about as broad a category as “leaf,” but maybe there are structures specific to them that you react to.
I assume penicillin is a no go for you, right?
I’m actually not allergic to penicillin at all so now you’ve got me thinking. It must be a specific kind of mushroom they were referring to in the tests and not all fungi. I certainly haven’t had any luck eating any common mushrooms but I’m not sure it’s all fungi as I don’t have issues with antibiotics and my response to beer is not nearly as bad as when I eat mushrooms.
Sorry you had to go through that as well! I was lucky to be able to get referred to an allergist that dealt with the majority of my environmental allergies with shots at least, but there’s not really a way to manage food allergies other than avoiding them.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungus, so it could be that you’re allergic to something common to all mushroom gills or volva. In my case, neither the doctors nor I were really interested in testing it all out, because there’s not much of a benefit and exclusion diets are horrible and take forever.
Luckily, it runs in my family (though not as severely as in me), so I was raised without pork or really fatty cuts of meat, which made it pretty easy to isolate. And I don’t know about you, but I find that I have a pretty Pavlovian response to the idea of eating things that make me sick and don’t miss any of it.
Beer is made with yeast, which are fungi.
But so is bread and every other alcoholic beverage.
Read a mushroom textbook 30-years ago, so take this as you will, but it’s damned easy to test.
Chip a tiny chunk off with your tooth. Wait 45-mintues. Heart burn, feel weird? Stop. No? Take a bigger chunk. Rinse and repeat.
People act like the tiniest bit of fungus will kill them dead. Not unless your liver has failed, and then you got worse problems.
Anybody know how to trip on Aminata Muscaria? Sure is a lot in the woods around here.
The better advice is if you don’t know what something is, don’t put it in your mouth at all. If someone was to try this when they are desperate for food, usually if alone and lost, they could make a bad situation even worse.
There are quite a few stories or people eating death caps (Amanita phalloides), especially after cooking and not being able to detect anything off until they need to go to the hospital.
Aminita muscaria has been used medicinally for years and has some really good potential. If you really want to trip though, just stick with psilocybin. Ibotenic acid is a neurotoxin and there is not a reliable way to test dosages at home. The last dosage advice I read was just eat a half mouthfull and you should be good if your stomach doesn’t cramp up to all hell. (The companies that have been pumping out muscimol gummies recently are shady as fuck if you were wondering.)
The aminita family is still super interesting though and deserves a ton more research.
A muscaria isn’t so much a “trip” as it isn’t hallucinogenic, it’s more of a deleriant and disassociative. Also it’s gonna give you stomach cramps. People generally don’t eat them for fun.
Aminita Muscaria can be eaten. There was either a vice article, or video about it. I recall thin slices and frying them was part of the technique.
I imagine it’s a stomach cramps and vomiting kind of high like poorly prepared peyote/mescaline.
Erowid should have articles/instructions for preparing Aminita Muscaria, just read some trip reports there. They often include basic steps.
P.S Make sure your mushrooms have ALL the anatomy and colours, and spore print colour of the variety you’re looking for.
I followed the work of some A.M. groups for a bit and they have basically proven it can be eaten without dying. The question is, what benefits do the different A.M. compounds have? Unfortunately, everything I heard or read from those groups was anecdotal and not formalized. Admittedly, I am a year or so behind on my fungi studies so there may be new info out there.
Speaking of anecdotal, my experience with psilocybin has been phenomenal. Granted, I don’t eat much anymore, but I don’t really need to. Studies do support its use for PTSD treatment for vets (me) and for recovering addicts and alcoholics (also me). I only mention this as there are likely thousands of undiscovered compounds in mushrooms that may be phenomenal for mental health The evidence (anecdotal or not) is looking good for A.M.
Alas, there are risks.
poorly prepared peyote/mescaline
Wait, there’s a way to not destroy your stomach?
This is why you get mushrooms from the market. And why I avoid “functional mushrooms” because poisoning is a function.
some of the tastiest mushrooms can never be bought “from the market”.
They are rare and their “gatherers” keep their territories as a secret.
Where I live mushrooms from the market are ridiculously expensive. That’s why it’s so common to go mushroom picking yourself. It’s a nice outdoors-y way to spend your time and it’s not that difficult if you get a primer from someone seasoned at it. And some mushrooms you’ll just find a ton without much effort.
There are moments where hunting mushrooms in the wild can be very dangerous.
OG loot boxes
You don’t know whether you pulled a legendary until the trees start talking
And the ground waving
and a field mouse with tiny wings and a trunk perched on the top of your beer bottle drinking from it
Mycophobia is too real y’all.
Which ones go well with pasta and will kill me the in-laws are visiting and I need an excuse not to be here
Everyone needs a Paul Stamets on speed dial for emergency mycological classification.
Hey, Paul, should I eat this mushroom I found?
the best meal you’ll ever have in the rest of your life
It could be both…
