I was always kinda, sorta interested in mushrooms, but after moving to the Midwest and getting exposed to the big mushroom foraging culture out here, my interest, err, mushroomed.
Foraging season starts with morels, which are not only First! but delicious and (as of now) nearly impossible to cultivate. Literally seconds after the New Year started my Facebook feed filled with images like the one at right.
Last year I foraged for morels for weeks, finding just two runts for my pains. (But I’m not complaining! 2 >>>>> 0, and they were delish.)
This year, I’m not messing around. In May I’m heading north (way north!) to Boyne City, MI, to attend the National Morel Festival. Along with music and food and morel-related hucksterism of all kinds, they have a beginner’s foray (where I’m assuming they paint the morels yellow for noobs like me). So this will definitely be my year!
I was going to self-appoint myself as the Balloon Juice ambassadress to the great Kingdom of Fungi. However it turns out our noble Webmaster, Alain, is also a forager. (And probably much more experienced than me. And btw you’ll notice we have a nice new shiny “mushroom” category for this post. :-)) So we will share the honors. And perhaps some of you, too, are into shrooms in their various manifestations. (Please let us know in the comments, or email me if you have something to contribute.)
This post began as a 10 Reasons Fungi Rock Your World, but the list mushroomed, and now I’m up to 21. Maybe you can add some.
- Mushrooms can replace styrofoam.
- Mushrooms can replace meat.
- They are Nature’s Internet.
- Magic.
- Magic at Johns Hopkins. And more. And more.
- They inspire great art.
- They inspire great literature.
- They can heal the earth.
- They’re a viable small business, including in inner cities. (If I were in my twenties I would totally be doing this.)
- They’re purty.
- They’re a kingdom! And are genetically closer animals than plants! (Becuz they are heterotrophs who digest organic matter versus autotrophs who create their own.)
They once ruled the earth. Behold the 25-foot Prototaxites.- You can grow them in a laundry basket! (As previously reported in this space.)
- That movie The Martian? It was BEYOND RIDICULOUS that the progatonist, Mark Watney, was a botanist and not a mycologist. Had he grown shrooms rather than spuds he would have gotten a lot more protein and other nutrients for a fraction of the effort. See this prototype for disaster relief.
- Mushrooms can cure what ails you.
- And if that doesn’t work, they can eat your dead bod. (As previously reported in this space.)
- Myconsent is ecosexy.
- Zombie ants!
- They live in space
- YUM
- They are aligning themselves with our feline overlords:
Did I leave anything out? Please post any mushroom-related science, anecdotes, recipes, or other in the comments.
Hillary Rettig
I tested all the links a bazillion times, but needless to say will be chuffed it they all do work.
btw, because WordPress apparently doesn’t like super-linky posts like mine, and spits them out faster than a forager spits out a Deadly Amanita, if there are corrections / additions to be made I’ll add them to the comments thread, or a follow up post.
MattF
Yes to all that. My local farmer’s market got a Mushroom Lady a couple of years ago, and I’ve been exploring the mycological wonderlands since then. There’s a few what-the-heck-is-that shrooms– but they’re all very edible.
A couple of things to note. It’s best to eat ’em fresh, but sometimes you don’t get to it right away. In that case you need to know that some kinds of mushrooms simply dry out over time and others get icky. So far, the best behaved are royal trumpets– they dry out and then you can reconstitute them at your leisure. Shiitakes also dry out, and need to cook longer than others. And shiitake stems are ‘good for stock’, but not for eating.
For cooking, I generally nuke ’em, which the Mushroom Lady frowns on, but it works for me. Also, you can mix them with rice in your rice cooker. Either way, you learn about all the shades of umami. Great stuff.
Baud
The Fungus Among Us.
qwerty42
Bins full of them when I was at Pike Street Market in Seattle a few years back. Full. Pricey, but until cultivation has been sussed out … Just wondering if hen-of-the-woods will show up at supermarket again the way they did …
Hillary Rettig
@MattF: These cooking tips are excellent, and since cooking is NOT my forte I welcome them.
Also, foraging is a cheap, fun, healthy hobby. You just need a basket, a knife, bug repellent, and information–and also a desiccator to preserve your finds. (And obviously the intelligence not to eat something you can’t 100+% identify as safe.)
Another benefit: this is probably the first winter EVER where I didn’t get sick at all — not even for a day. The variable was that this was also the year I ate my first foraged mushrooms.
Hillary Rettig
@Baud: not only are they among us, they always win!
Hillary Rettig
@qwerty42: my other urgent goal this summer, besides morels, is to find a Maitake / hen of the woods. also this: https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/maitake
bystander
@Baud:
@Hillary Rettig:
Between the two of you, I think Baud has a winning campaign slogan.
Morels are my favorites! Pleurottes in France in November, sautéed with flaky salt, make the gray skies grayer but in a good way.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Watney probably would have been happy to grow mushrooms instead of potatoes; it would likely have been easier. But potatoes were what he had.
That reminds me that I need to check the book again. I’m not so sure that the potatoes they showed in the movie should have germinated that many plants.
laura
Chantrelles! My personal favorite foraged autumn mushroom.
I’m not gonna lie, I love me some of the magic ones, though it’s been years since the last time…..
Greg
I’m from the Boyne City area (Petoskey, actually), and morel season is big there. Lots of restaurants will pay for morels.
That said, and maybe heretical for this thread, can’t stand mushrooms. Not about taste, texture, whatever. It’s knowing they’re a fungus. Just can’t put that in my mouth. But have fun in BC! The Grain Train is a good source for healthy foods, and Inspired Living has great stuff as well.
mental.masala
When I’m hiking, mushrooms/fungi are among my favorite photographic subjects.This year I’ve had some bizarre varieties sprout in my planter box in the SF Bay Area. They are cup shaped — perhaps they know that there is a drought and need to capture some water. Here is a not very good photo. I’ve seen quite a few other interesting-looking fungi appearing in the yard, like a beautiful bunch of copper-brown mushrooms that sprouted from stump.
I’d love for my company to be using the fungus-based packing material, but the decision makers are too stuck in the past and too cheap (there shall be no sacrificing of margin for sustainability!).
I see fresh morels at the farmers market for a few weeks each year, and splurge on them once a year to make morel souffles (use a cheese souffle recipe as the foundation, add morels that have been cooked in butter and cooled to the base). Delicious!
Bartholomew
Q: Why do Toadstools grow so close together?
A: They don’t need Mushroom.
I wish to say something about what I see as a major mistake being made in Cole’s most recent post: that somehow ideas like ‘affordable education’ and ‘gay rights’ and ‘women’s right to choose’ are LEFTIST ISSUES.
Humans right issues are liberal issues. Left-wing and right-wing politics have only one: the taking of power. However it is gotten. Tribal constructs. Allowing the conflation of Left and liberal was an error. The idea is to erase liberalism along with our history … and honestly, many of today’s pragmatic ‘leftists’ would not mind that at all (in the short term).
Maybe scapegoating causes a tendency to see in terms of groupthink. In reality though, America was founded as a liberal nation, not a leftist one. It is liberalism that defeated the British Empire, the slave South, and both fascism and communism. It is the selling out of liberalism that has laid the nation low.
Roger Moore
Nonsense. As you said yourself, mushrooms are heterotrophs, so they need organic matter to feed on, and there no organic matter on Mars except for what we bring with us. Mushrooms and other fungi may be a helpful way of disposing of organic waste, but they’re not going to be a primary crop on space travel.
Nancy
When my husband and I owned a little business in Traverse City one of our office employees was an avid morel hunter who went down to the woods near Mesick. He had a secret place that yielded gazzilion morels every spring. He would bring me a brown paper sack full of them. I learned how to saute them in lots of butter. I miss the delicious smells and taste of May and the color of the maples in October.
MikeBoyScout
The Puget Sound Mycological Society – http://www.psms.org/index.php
J R in WV
You do need to be careful about IDing your ‘shrooms. There is even a look-alike for morels that can be dangerous, although I don’t know of anyone around here getting them confused.
There are a lot of mushrooms here in SW West Virginia, all of WV really. Neighbors donate some to us as neither of us is really good at mushrooming.
They call morels molly moochers around here. It is possible to cultivate morels, but not profitable as the process is involved and expensive. We also have chantarelles, chicken of the woods, shitakes (which are easy to cultivate) and many others.
p.a.
Don’t forget: only learn mushrooming from an older person. #Darwin
Hillary Rettig
@Greg: must be weird to be mycophobic in Boyne City!
my foster kids, from Sudan, deeply distrusted mushrooms in all their forms. so perhaps my current obsession dates back to those years of never having them in the house. btw they once told me mushrooms reminded them of “hyena penises.” And they hadn’t even seen these:
http://www.mushroomexpert.com/phallaceae.html
:-)
Hillary Rettig
@Bartholomew: extra points for that bold segue :-)
Hillary Rettig
@J R in WV: “molly moochers” wow I would love to know the etymology of that.
I will be driving from Michigan to NC in July and hope to do some foraging en route.
Hillary Rettig
@J R in WV: i highly recommend this resource for IDing:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MushroomID/
55K+ members. you post a picture and within seconds some super expert will weigh in and tell you what you have.
other benefits to foraging: getting exercise, being out in fresh air, meeting cool people
Hillary Rettig
@Roger Moore: wut? the same organic matter he used for potatoes could have been used for the shrooms only (as per OP) more efficiently.
>they’re not going to be a primary crop on space travel.
says who?
Mustang Bobby
@Greg: I spent five years (1990-1995) in Petoskey, living just up the street from the Grain Train. Glad to know it’s still in business.
I never went morel hunting on purpose, but I love the taste of them in certain dishes. They are an acquired taste, but I’m glad I acquired it.
Mustang Bobby
Q: Why is the mushroom always a popular party guest?
A: Because he’s a fungi!
[rimshot]
Roger Moore
@Hillary Rettig:
I think you misunderstand what’s happening there. He’s using a relatively small amount of organic matter, mixing it with inorganic material (i.e. sand and clay), and using that as soil in which to grow his potatoes. They also need CO2, which is abundant already in the Martian atmosphere. That works with autotrophs, which can generate new organic matter from inorganic material and sunlight, but it doesn’t work with heterotrophs, which need existing organic matter to grow.
You can never get more calories of mushrooms than the calories that were in the original organic matter you fed them. That’s why autotrophic green plants are always going to be the primary crop and any kind of heterotroph, be it animal or fungus, is only going to be a secondary crop.
Gus
@qwerty42: I see hen of the woods at Costco. I think they’re something like $10 a pound, compared with $40 at my local co-op. They’re fairly easy to find around here (Minneapolis area), but they’re a bitch to clean properly. I’m pretty much an amateur at this stuff, but I’ve made some delicious cream of maitake soup. It turned out a bit gritty, though. If you’re interested in mushroom foraging, find a mycological organization in your area. I went foraging with a group once, and it was a wonderful group of mushroom obsessed nerds.
kindness
The tangents here could get Weir’d. They could also get Jerry’d & Phil’d.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
Apparently, you can make anodes for lithium-ion batteries out of portobello mushrooms that are not only more efficient than synthetic graphite, but actually increase capacity as the battery undergoes more charge cycles.
Booger
Morels are a nice gateway fungi, but in my neck of the woods they’re pretty fickle and our weather hasn’t been cooperative the last few seasons. But we’ve had great luck with Hedgehogs, another great one for noobs because it’s super easy to identify and has no toxic analog. We had plenty to eat fresh (cooked) and plenty left over to slice and dry for winter; still have some left in the freezer.
They sometimes make a quick appearance in spring, but our main crop is usually late September to late October, typically on Virginia Pine litter.
MattF
@Mustang Bobby: I knew a mycologist (years ago) who had a bumper sticker that read “Mycologists have more Fungi”.
Mike J
Back when I used to go to Drinking Liberally, there was a couple I often shared a pint with who hunted mushrooms. I seem to recall that they would make notes on where all the wildfires were each summer so that in that fall or the next they could find one variety of mushrooms they prized over others. Was that morels?
dedc79
@Roger Moore: Isn’t the key that sunlight part though? If you’ve got some, great. If you don’t, mushrooms start to look like a better bet. If you don’t have reliable sunlight and need to substitute lamps , then you’re burning energy to grow your crops, which you wouldn’t need to do to grow mushrooms.
Hillary Rettig
@Roger Moore: ah. makes sense.
Hillary Rettig
@dedc79: fyi mushroom cultivators do use artificial lights to optimize. still far less than for plants tho
Hillary Rettig
@Mike J: That is a good tip (check burn sites) but for some mysterious reason only works west of the Mississippi.
Hillary Rettig
@Booger: I foraged a bunch of hedgehogs last year. I know they’re supposed to be choice but I didn’t find them that great. // That’s also true of other mushrooms I’ve harvested.
Hillary Rettig
@MattF: probably NOT a forager tho b/c foragers NEVER use bumper stickers that advertise their presence. they like to keep their spots secret.
still a cool bumper sticker
Ken
@J R in WV: Indeed. I think Terry Pratchett once wrote “The Death Cap (so-called because people who deal with poisonous mushrooms have absolutely no sense of humor)…”
Ken
@dedc79: The mushrooms would help insofar as they can recover nutrients from stuff you can’t or won’t eat, but if you don’t have green plants (or algae) it’s just prolonging the inevitable. It’s sort of like the old joke business plan for raising mink, where you also raise rats – feed the rats to the minks, and after you skin the minks feed the carcass to the rats. Unlimited supply of skins with no expenses!
JPL
A chef that I met taught me to slowly brown mushrooms until almost crispy. It’s a process that can take up to thirty minutes. They are delicious as is, but for a real treat add cream and let that cooks with the browned mushrooms.
Also for your entertainment pleasure..
Shell
@JPL: As Julia Child always said “Don’t crowd your mushrooms!”
smintheus
We usually have more morels in our orchard than we can eat.
cleek
@JPL:
i like to brown them, then caramelize in a bit of single malt Scotch
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
Hillary – there is a very active mushrooming subreddeit on reddit. I don’t remember what it is called by my younger son is very active there & they love to help noobs to forage safely. I’ll drop him a note & message you when he gets back with a link
Emma
A friend of mine buys plain everyday mushrooms, dices them fine, and substitutes them for half the meat in her meatloaf. Delicious.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
There’s a Mexican ice cream shop in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, which, as anybody should know, is the Mushroom Capital of the World. There are many Mexicans who came years ago to work on the mushroom farms between Kennett Square and Oxford, and they’ve now been there for generations. One family found themselves missing the ice cream from home, and found that lots of other Mexicans felt the same way, so they started their own ice cream shop. They make their own ice cream, in many flavors from their home, like avocado and chili. Anyway, once a year, for the town mushroom festival in the fall, they make mushroom ice cream, too. I’ve had the avocado ice cream, but I haven’t been there for the festival, so I haven’t had the mushroom ice cream. Maybe this year…
Ol'Froth
I’ve been hunting mushrooms for about ten years now. I never find more than a handfull of morels in the spring (although I once came across an embarrasment of riches in verpa bohimica). I harvested a bumper crop of chanterelles last summer, so many that I wound up exchaging a couple of pounds for a dinner out with the family at our local fancy restaurant.
MoxieM
A German word for you: Pilzvergiftung. (Meaning death by fungus poisoning). It’s more common than you’d imagine, in a newspaper archives search. As you probably know, foraging is a very common pursuit in central and eastern Europe. And, my mom’s favorite aunt (for whom I was named) and 2 of her adult children, and 3 of her grandchildren died from it. Everyone, including the maid–everyone, except the baby, died from eating the soup one lovely day in September. Because one bad mushroom in the soup poisons everyone.
So, the scene: a lovely and pastoral art colony at the foot of the mountains, a table outside under some trees, covered in a carefully pressed cloth and pretty dishes. A few dishes are probably overturned. It’s quiet, very quiet. (Except for the baby, who keeps on crying.) Everyone is dead. The end.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
Hillary – the reddit group is Mycology (duh!) and can help with things like identification etc. There is also a mushroomgrowers sub I guess. Hope this helps
greennotGreen
All you foragers please remember to only forage where you have permission. Land owners pay taxes on that land, and they may also forage. Taking from the woods without permission is no different than stealing flowers from their border or tomatoes from their garden.
Hillary Rettig
@JPL: one of the classics! thanks!
Hillary Rettig
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: Wow! Hadn’t heard of this at all! Thanks.
Hillary Rettig
@smintheus: tease!
Hillary Rettig
@mental.masala: gorgeous photo MM!
Hillary Rettig
@MoxieM: For reals? That’s so sad.
I’ve read reports that mushroom fatalities are rising in Europe due to recent immigrants/refugees foraging and not knowing what they’re looking at.
Hillary Rettig
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Thanks! will look out for that.
Shell
Whats scary about mushroom toxicity, isn’t a couple of days of food poisoning, its that it can destroy your liver.
Gee, this thread has gotten rather dark.
Booger
@Hillary Rettig: Worse, mistaking poisonous eastern european fungi for lookalikes which are harmless in Syria. Heartbreaking.
No, actually I understand it’s liver breaking, which is worse.
yastreblyansky
John Cage! Even if you do not like his music (which is an entirely normal attitude) you have to love his mushrooming.
Bartholomew
@Hillary Rettig: extra points for that bold segue :-)
Thanks Hillary LOL I’m sure you’re at least as sincere as your namesake. I’m just doing this to cement the karma of the monkeys you’re herding. Plus the tribal paranoia is interesting.
Really what I’d like is to see the Hillary Clinton JUST ONCE talk to someone on the right in the horrible dismissive way she talks to Greenpeace activists.
I’m sure she loves you though. What I mean is, it’s clear YOU think she does. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ha.
Chyron HR
@Bartholomew:
You know Rettig is a loud and proud BernieBelle, right?
MoxieM
@hillaryRettig Yeah, sadly, it’s a true story. And, I’ve learned by searching for newspaper accounts, fairly common, unfortunately. It happened a long time ago–so anyone with first-hand knowledge is long gone (hence the newspaper archives search). But foraging is a strongly cultural hobby, and people (generally) know the good from the bad, except for when they slip up. So that’s my wet blanket/cautionary tale. Maybe don’t make soup?
moderateindy
I can’t recall the name of the book but it had an interesting premise that the ingestion of magic shrooms, and other such drugs could have been a main reason for the evolution of things like language in mankind’s history.
The idea that the psychotropic effects helped open the primitive man’s mind that facilitated the development of a way of thinking that changed how people viewed the world, and led to things like language being more fully developed in order to better cooperate with others more efficiently, is kind of cool as an idea; and kind of plausible to those who’s outlook on life was changed / enhanced by experiencing things like mushrooms and acid.
Sure it’s pure conjecture, and a fairly ridiculous unprovable theory, but not any more than believing in Jeebus, and look how many of the indoctrinated still buy in to that fairy tale
TheMightyTrowel
@moderateindy: is ‘the mind in the cave’ and is mostly crap with extra crap pseudoscience to draw in the rubes.
That said, there’s lots of evidence that getting fucked up on opium, booze and natural hallucenogenics was a clear priority of all of our ancestors
Doug R
href=”#comment-5737087″>Hillary Rettig: Come to British Columbia where some people make money collecting mushrooms.
Doug R
https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/publications/00002/chapt1.htm