Edible & Medicinal Mushrooms, Forest Foods

[Vianova]

Andy H sez

I remember being told (a very long time ago now lol) that fungus growing on wood is usually safer than the ground varieties

well, don't count on that because Galerina's grow
on wood chips.

Galerina's contain deadly amantins
like Amanita Phalloides.

The best option for mushroom ID
is a SPORE PRINT.

Take off stem.
Take shroom cap and place on a piece of paper
gills down.
Wait a couple to several hours.

Sidenote: some shrooms like Boletes and Polypore Conks have PORES instead of gills,
and some shrooms have spines,
instead of gills or pores.

The mushroom spore print leaves a coating of spores on a piece of colored paper
or white paper,
and the spore print will have a definitive COLOR.

The Deadly Galerina will leave a distinctly orangish rusty brown spore print.

There is really only one reason a Galerina MIGHT
be eaten.

Psychedelic shroom pickers go after strains of psilocybe called Cyanescens and Azurescens
due to the extreme potencies.

Sidenote: Coastal PNW Cyanescens are a slightly different strain than their European counterparts,
and far stronger.

OK
the problem with The Cyans and the Azures
is that as babies they are remarkably similar to
the Deadly Galerina.

I have seen a Cyanescen on one end of a large wood chip,
and a Galerina on the other end.

I have seen small Azures look identical
to small or medium size Galerinas.

Solution:
Spore Print EVERY DAM_N Shroom
NO MATTER WHAT
if you are attempting to pick these psilocybe strains

The Cyans and Azures will have a blackish purple
spore print,
the Galerinas will have the orange rusty brown print.

Problem for young pickers is that sometimes
the searcher for psychedelic Cyanescens
will find the pot-o-gold at the end of the rainbow:
i.e.
a few thousand in one huge flush.

what to do?

YOU SPORE PRINT EACH AND EVERY ONE.

I personally have seen this phenomena...
thousands and thousands of Cyans,
absolutely everywhere,
from small and tiny to huge wavy cap quarter ouncers.

Nobody can eat them all, I referred the patch onto some college guys who probably made a bundle of money.


deadly Galerina on a log







but
I don't like Galerina's or Cyanescens........

Psilocybe Cyanescens has unusual side effects,
and that will be discussed later.



Back to
EDIBLE CULINARY MASTERPIECES

ha!

The Bolete is hard to beat.
Another famous Bolete
is the Admirable Bolete, especially if found growing to maturity in a bit drier weather after the rains
so that they are not all soggy.

When cooked they have a background lemon taste
that is spectacular, and these are one of my favorites for the frying pan.

I never seem to find too many,
like you would find clusters of King Boletes
but this one here was found up near Dock Butte
south of Mt Baker
and was quite the prize as it was a beefy one.








Pores underneath

[Vianova]

****akes are prized culinary masterpieces of Nature.
****akes contain Lentinan, a powerful anti-cancer compound.

I grow ****ake here in logs.
Primarily Alder, but I have several experimental logs
of a variety of woods both ongoing and attempted.

I use Stamets ****ake strain as the plug spawn
that he sells from Fungiperfecti.com
in Olympia Washington.

His ****ake strain is spectacular, but I have had no luck with his Maitake.
I did get Reishi to pop in Apple wood.
Stamets operation is probably the most proficiently professional mycological team of mycelia production on the planet.
I don't care for his US Bioshield affiliations.


Anybody can grow ****akes with practice and patience.
I have developed an innovation to lead to higher and more repeated flushes over 2-3 years on as small as 5 inch wide logs.
Also found a wood better than Alder or Oak
for production.

If you cover your plugs in your logs with wax,
your yield will double to triple.
Be sure to get logs from as pristine or clean of a source as possible and clean them well
prior to plugging and waxing.

You will see my wax stains on the logs often over an old plug or on the sawn or exposed surfaces.


Early Spring these ****akes bloomed from 13 inch wide logs.
I had to put them in this giant tub that has a water release valve,
to keep them from the potato bugs and slugs.

Did you know that a potato bug is a ..crustacean...?

This was a great harvest,
it produced for 1 and one half months, but it took the log 1.5 years to produce this second flush.




So this fall I got a late start and we also have had cold dry weather stunting the growth.
Last night the warm wet front moved in,
and over night the buds grew 40%.
here they are in the shopping cart, you will see the same 3 logs up right that were in the tub,
Shroom Flush number three,
the second one in 7 months!

each flush produces a percentage less,
and these are BABIES.



closeups of undersides of the babies,
and notice the color differential between the ****akes from two types of logs .




Yummy man!






Rare example of Pinicolas that have fallen to Earth with the tree, then re-adapted to grow and shade the underside, very unusual example.




a cute bundle of yellow coral shrooms budding from the soil at Ross Lake

[GregorArturo]

I just wrote this for a seperate thread, but then found this one! I'll keep it in here! YEAH FOR MUSHROOMS, the magical, the yummy, and the deadly. They're all beautiful!

---------------------------

AMANITA MUSCARIA

A common and legal (yes, 100% legal) hallucinogenic mushroom that grows in most temperate regions of the world. It's usually found at the base of conifers, as it lives off the live roots of the tree, sometimes birch and oak too. It's usually the very common red stool with white warts on top, or the Mario mushroom, you see growing in yards. It has a larger season out on the Pacific coast from spring to fall, but east of the Rockies, it tends to be orange and yellow and appear in the late summer until the first frost. The variant found in Maine is called formosa (Amanita Muscaria var. Formosa) and tends to be a pale yellow to much brighter yellow cap, with white stalk. On the stalk you can see this little white skirt hanging from it. You also want to dig it up from the bulb. Whole thing is edible and usable.

Unlike psilocybin mushrooms, the experience is considered much more spiritual by many as it is excellent for meditation and lucid dreaming, as it tends to make people feel tired.

One must prepare it correctly, as eaten raw it can make one very sick stomach wise. Controlled heat (roughly 190 degrees F at 30 minutes tends to work great) causes a chemical conversion process in the mushroom and makes it safe to eat plus much more hallucinogenic.

Doses range from 8 to over 20 grams, with varying effects, but people usually take lose doses around 1-2 grams, sometimes everyday as it's considered great for seasonal depression. If one doesn't dry it, it is absolutely excellent cooked. I tend to sautee the mushrooms rather lightly (very little heat) in olive oil for ten minutes with some onions then throw them into a tomato sauce and let that sit for about a half hour cooking at a very light simmer (water boils at 212 degrees F remember, 190 is your target). One can also boil a few times over, specifcally five minutes each time up to three times, while replacing the water each time to complete detoxify the mushroom to simply enjoy it's wonderful and unique flavor.

Researchers have hypothesized that the Amanita Muscaria mushroom is the ancient Soma described in the Vedas. Siberian shamans have known to widely use this mushroom in religious practices and ceremonies. The 'lesser' people would drink the **** of the shamans as the body doesn't process most of the chemical, and sometimes the imbiber is even more intoxicated than the shaman.

Anyways, I found over 200 grams (when it's dried) today in my friend's front yard. They've been sitting in the sun for a couple days so they are just past the point where they are perfect to eat cooked, still possible, but I am going to dry them and grind them up into a powder. You then can make a tea with them which is considered by some to be the best and most efficient way (but you lose the flavor as the sacrifice). Enjoy the pics!

PLEASE NOTE: This for the most part is purely informational. Picking wild mushrooms is extremely dangerous if one doesn't no what they are doing. A field guide is highly recommended (lots of good info online though). I have spent over three years hunting edible and hallucinogenic mushroom with great success. I've clocked in just around 200 hundred hours hunting but also probably around thirty hours of reading on the subject. There is a very large amount of information out there, and I highly recommend you do a fair share of research before even considering to ingest a wild mushroom. Shroomery.org is a great source for info, discussion, and professional identification.

Tomorrow, I'll post some pictures of other mushrooms I find hunting, mainly the edible ones I get such as Chicken of the Woods (Tastes just like chicken! So good!).









-------------------------

Amanita flacovinia. (This was one of my center piece pictures for an art exhibit I did on Maine fungi this fall) A somewhat close look alike but definitely can tell the difference upon close inspection. This has no skirt above the bulb, but does have the partial veil half way on the stalk. Always seems to very bright and solid yellow, but are much more of a summer bloomer in the Northeast, and die off in the early fall. It also rarely has any warts, and if it does they are only a few in the dead center. The guidebooks say it is poisonous along with muscaria, but I am almost positive that it's not, and that it's actually a tasty edible (from inner mushroom circles). I do not recommend eating it by no means. Amanitas (the genus) have the most poisonous mushrooms in the world, but luckily Muscaria is very easy to identify among the group, actually one of the easiest mushrooms overall in all mycology.

[Vianova]

Excellent,
thanks for the addition!

i will add a cool little image to compliment your amanita muscarias

at Mt Baker two days ago popping out of the parking lot rubble at Park Butte,
a baby Amanita Muscaria...looks like it is going to be a yellow one.
About a 1 inch cap.



Up at Newhalem there was a field of amanita's,
another baby

[AndyH]

You gotta love some of the useful info on this forum

[Vianova]

It has been a busy weekend,
and I got back to see the progress on the ****ake Logs.

.........3 days ago........





One hour ago







Closer in from above, sure looks like it's time to cut some more,
for a Risotto





One cannot eat ****ake every day.
it is a delicacy and medicinal to the point of common sense intake.
Some people do not do well with ****akes digestively.
One must guage for them selves, but unlike King Boletes which I can eat every day,
I do limit ****akes to every two or three days.

i think it is a good idea to dry them somewhat after harvest,
and
if you sun dry ****ake with the gills up in the sunshine for a few hours,
they will absorb tons of Vitamin D ---- see studies by Stamets,
but the again one must be careful of excess vitamin D intake,
so I usually limit the gills up in the sun to 2 hours.



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...?dopt=Citation
Inhibition of human colon carcinoma development by lentinan from shiitake mushrooms (Lentinus edodes).

[lightworkers]

AWESOME info, THX so much!

[Ampgod]

Do all those mushrooms look like they belong in your body?

They are a fungus.

[Blufire77]

It’s so ironic that I just came in from a day of planting ginseng out in the woods on my farm and found this thread.

Wow . . . . . absolutely beautiful pictures of super specimens, you definitely seem to have found your calling in life.

I too have been a long time gatherer of mushrooms and other forest flora for medicine and heavenly food. I had a very good teacher in my great Grandmother who would take me along on her medicinal herb gathering forays. Actually I think I was mostly the “pack mule”. I wish so much now that I would have paid more attention to her wisdom.

One rule she drilled over and over in my head was to never take every mushroom or plant in the area . . . . we always left two or three and thanked the “Spirit” for allowing us the bounty we did harvest.

Also very important when gathering mushrooms is to carry them in a net type bag so that the spore from the harvested mushrooms is dropped on to the forest floor as you hike along and therefore “reseeding” as you go.

I look forward to reading more in this particular thread. Really good stuff.

[GregorArturo]

Originally Posted by Ampgod

Do all those mushrooms look like they belong in your body?

They are a fungus.

Fungus is just much as alive as you are. The same with plants and animals. Think about that.

[sunflower]

I am saving the pictures in this thread. Thanks for all the info. I love mushrooms!

[Ampgod]

Originally Posted by GregorArturo

Fungus is just much as alive as you are. The same with plants and animals. Think about that.

Cancer is a fungus.
I would simply suggest researching them and what they do in & to the human body before consuming them.

[Trishsgate]

Sol Invictus posted this about a month ago which really helped me on my way this has a few mushrooms as well. You may wish to contact if still around the site. PS love mushrooms as well.
https://www.projectavalon.net/forum/...ead.php?t=3753

[sunny D]

I really like this thread....And I like eating mushrooms (with garlic).......Namaste

[fossileyesed]

Originally Posted by Ampgod

Do all those mushrooms look like they belong in your body?

They are a fungus.

i started eating pine mushrooms[matsutake]2 years ago,havent had foot fungus since.coincidece?not sure but gonna keep eating fungus lol where i live in the pacific northwest,canada,it is a gold mine of edible fungus.peace out awsome thread