Showing posts with label mushroom foraging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mushroom foraging. Show all posts

22.9.16

Photoshoots, foraging and a food festival


Two trips to London and 8 days of photoshoots later, and at last I feel I'm making proper progress with the second craft book. Of course I'm relieved, but also weirdly deflated, which has left me feeling a bit restless, and possibly, depending on who you talk to, a little grumpy?

Coming up with 35 new craft projects took over the whole of my summer - if I wasn't making something out of cardboard, I was thinking about making something out of cardboard.... or feeling guilty I wasn't. It drove me mad but also gave me a focus, because I didn't have long, just 2 months, and the date for the first photoshoot was burning a hole in my wall calendar. Couldn't really think about much else, which made me feel guilty I wasn't doing enough with the kids. Can't win, can you.

When the London days came and went, I suppose it was a bit like taking the lid off a pressure cooker - and I just wasn't as over the moon with what was left in the pot as I thought. Probably didn't help that I'd had a really good time in London - the days were full-on but rewarding, and I stayed with an old school friend I don't see enough. After work we chatted, went out, ate out - no one else to feed or clean up after. I felt like me. Even took a bit better care of me. Even used my hardly ever touched eye-cream, which seems to be some kind of strange barometer to where I sit on my list of priorities.

There are many wonderful things about being able to work from home, especially with kids, school runs and an often absent husband to deal with - but it is hard to keep motivated sometimes, and it's lonely. Being away just brought all of that into sharp focus again I think.
I miss people and chat and talking ideas though with someone.
So, best not to ring me during the day at the moment, you'll never get me off the phone.

Possibly it's been a bit of an anti-climax and I'm kicking my heels about getting back to my quiet existence in peaceful Herefordshire - but I know it'll pass, it usually does. And it's not as if I have nothing much to do. Still need to write up all the instructions for the craft projects! Which is what I should be doing right now.

And sure, there are adventures of a different kind to be had here too. The day before I caught a very early train to London I went for a 'get thoughts in order' walk near home and did a double take when I spotted this huge puffball by a gate.


It was so big and brilliant white in the sun, I thought for a second it was a sheep taking a nap.
I rushed back to tell my daughter who gets extremely excited about this sort of thing. And it was a perfect giant puffball; very firm and hardly nibbled.

Giant puffball

She was desperate for me to take it home - when we found a much smaller one a few years ago, I fried slices in butter, garlic and bacon and it was a big hit. Lasted for days too, so goodness knows how many meals we could have got out of this one.* But we left it in the end, because I was off first thing, and my husband isn't keen on cooking bog-standard stuff, let alone a mushroom twice as big as his head.


When I got back home I treated myself to a day at the Abergavenny Food Festival. What could be better than delicious and lovingly-made produce as far as the eye can see? Though I do seem to suffer from some kind of food festival meltdown - happened last year as well - there's just too much choice. I become annoyingly indecisive, can't make up my mind at all, and end up eating very little. Instead I seem to spend most of my time checking out what other people are eating and wondering where it came from. I did bring a few things home and they did go down very well, especially the orange and chilli jelly.


I also bought a beautiful knitting book, which was a bit of surprise at a Food Festival.. Delighted with it though. More about that soon.




*Giant puffballs like this are about the only mushrooms I'd happily forage because they're pretty hard to mistake for anything else. More nervous about other ones, after going on an fungi foraging course last autumn (which was excellent) and realising there are a few common wild mushrooms that have an evil almost identical-looking twin. You really need to know your stuff. Think now the pleasure's in the finding rather than the eating for me.

14.10.15

Mushroom foraging in the Forest of Dean

Know your Shaggy Parasols from your Blushers? Not something I'd be staking my life on, but there's a glimmer of a chance now, because after banging on about it for years, I finally booked myself on a mushroom foraging course in the Forest of Dean.


So very glad I did, it was such a good day, and  full on - from 10 to 5 - searching for mushrooms in the woods, learning how to spot the good ones, and more importantly, the deadly avoid-at-all-costs ones.

Our guide was Jesper Launder: top forager, Herbalist and a font of fungi knowledge, with an ever so slight Brian Cox thing going on.


No doubt whatsoever he loves his mushrooms, and I'd say his enthusiasm and passion rubbed off on the whole group. The best kind of teachers - especially when it's really important to pay attention...


There was such a lot to take in - in the first half hour we'd already found over half a dozen different types: Butter Caps, Fairy Bonnets, Honey Fungus, Puffballs, Shaggy Parasols, Blushers.... some edible, some not. I started taking notes - not stuff I wanted to get muddled about. Up to this point the only thing I knew about Honey Fungus was that it was responsible for the demise of several small trees and shrubs in our garden. I had no idea you could eat it.


Jesper explained some of the distinguishing characteristics of different mushroom families - colour (red, best steer clear), shape, stem rings, gills or not; just for starters.
But of course nothing's really that clear cut - some red ones are okay, some good ones have evil looky-likeys - Blusher (good)/Panther cap (baaaad) or Shaggy Parasol and The Vomiter...

Even some in the fungi family that includes the lethal Death Cap are apparently edible, though why you'd want to go anywhere near mushrooms that have relatives with Death in the title... or Web, as it turns out.

There were a few in our group of about 10 who already knew a fair amount, but most were beginners like me. The only wild mushroom I've ever felt happy foraging is a giant Puffball. Mainly because there's no chance of muddling it up with anything else really, and there's one that pops up most years in the church car park next door. We found this a few years ago.


Delicious fried in a little garlic butter with bacon, and the rest went in pasta and savoury rice. It lasted for the best part of a week.

So excited when I found a smaller, but perfectly round and firm one in the same place just before the foraging day, but didn't pick it straight away because I knew my daughter would enjoy that bit. Of course I promptly forgot all about it, and when we went back someone had flipping well driven over it!


Love the name of the one at the back - Amethyst Deceiver - mushrooms do have great names.

As well as looking pretty amazing, some smell unexpectedly amazing too. One of the more experienced foragers found a tiny Coconut Milkcap mushroom that really did smell of desiccated coconut.

We nibbled a few varieties of Brittlegills - very common in the UK, edible, but not all of them are pleasant - some tasted spicy hot, like you'd been hit by a wasabi express train. The most desirable one is the Charcoal Burner...which doesn't have brittle gills like the rest. I'm feeling the more you learn, the bigger the mushroom minefield gets.


Jesper took us foraging in three different places - the first was probably the best, but as he says, it can change so quickly - a spot that's good one time, can have little to offer on the next visit. The foraging window isn't often that wide either, and probably not helped by the growing numbers of wild boar in the Forest of Dean, digging up the soft ground. Some spots where just a mass of churned up earth and mud.


HUGE mushroom envy when someone found this large Porcini (Cep or Penny-bun) - from the popular, and mostly edible, Boletus family. They're an easier one to identify because the underside of the cap has spongy pores rather than gills. Still, some are toxic (of course) and we were warned to avoid red boletes and ones that turn a vivid blue when cut.

Jesper explained other helpful detection techniques, like the spore test, though feel that's getting into advanced foraging territory; and as he's a qualified Herbalist, he talked a bit too about the medicinal properties of some fungi, which was one of the most interesting parts for me.

I had no idea that some common Polypores (Bracket Fungi, usually grow on wood, often shelf-shaped), like the one called Turkey Tail, are used to treat cancer. Mainly in Asia, though there's more research going on here now apparently. Or that Birch Polypores can be used as firelighters, knife sharpeners or, rather brilliantly, strips cut from the underside make a neat natural plaster. Antisceptic, porous, anti-fungal and sticks to itself.


Did you know that the dusty spores in an old Puffball also act as a natural antiseptic and can be puffed out to help treat a cut? It's known by quite a few weird and wonderful names. Seeing a murky little cloud burst forth, 'Wolf's Fart' sort of makes more sense...

I was definitely not top student forager - there was a measly amount in my basket compared to the others, but as I'm the only one at home at the moment who eats them, that was fine.

I hadn't really appreciated all wild mushrooms should be cooked, and that some absolutely have to be cooked, to break down toxins. And on the whole chuck out the stalks.

We found quite a lot of Honey Fungus, which is a popular one, though apparently not everyone gets on with it. That's another thing - a tasty little mushroom treat for someone can be an indigestible nightmare for someone else. But I'm pleased to report no repeating problems with our Honeys. I cooked them with a little butter, thyme and seasoning, and though they disappeared to almost nothing in the pan, they were delicious.


Obviously a little mushroom knowledge could be a very dangerous thing, but actually, if anything I'd be more wary and cautious now. I'll be dashing out to get a seriously good guidebook before I dash out to do any foraging. It's more about the knowing and the searching for me, rather than the eating.

And if I ever did venture out, I'd stick to the most obvious ones that are easiest to spot, like Porcini, Funnel Yellow Chanterelles, Hedgehog Mushrooms (spines instead of gills) and of course my old favourite, the Puffball.. as long as they're not purple inside...


Jesper also offers a kind of after care service, so if you're brave enough to have a go yourself and are not absolutely 100% sure what you've got, you can email him a picture. He runs other courses in different parts of the country - and not just mushroom foraging. If you're interested, do have a look at his website to see if there are any near you. You won't be disappointed.