*lifts hand up*

Mushroom hunting, yeah true, its a real pleasure when the woods start to get this "shroomy" smell in fall, and a lot of fun!

I am very lucky to know a place for fly agarics, probably hosted from only one large individual mycelium, looks really magical when they all come in one giant flush!
Well, its not really a large mycelium, but more than 200 meter along their symbiotic silver birches, which is for a species that needs a partner really a lot I would say?

Amanita citrina can be collected as well, it contains bufotenine, but I havent bothered to collect more than a few, and didnt knew what to use them for considered the dangers to collect amanita phalloides mistaken which is only really white and not yellow.
And altough people that have eaten amanita phalloides mistakenly said it tastes really good, one should recall no one of the people is alive anymore as liver and kidney failure is a deadly condition in most cases;D

Liberty caps (they have a weird name in german, it would say literally translated "coneshaped bald-head") are common in some places too, enough to found if one wants to do so. I dont, I would just prefer to collect some from a friends garden who has some old colonys of psilocybe cyanescens and p. azurescens.

BTW, about the latter, has anyone else experienced the phenomenon too that they dont fruit every year in europe? P. cyanescens does, every year, but the azurescens justs skip one or two years (being lazy watching tv i bet) when he finally pushed some of the goods out of the soil, as if he would do the most  hardest labour there... he really should take his wavy capped cousin as an example! ü

Thats about the psychoactive ones, but I also collect edible ones i know, for example the birch bolete with shares partial ground with my fly agaric vault,
But if I am a very lucky man, than I will find a parasol uneaten by maggots, I would just take it then and bake them like a schnitzel, awesome
Boletus edulis can also bee found, more rare and seldom they are maggot-free. Mostly they are only good for drying, but dried ones can be bought only the fresh fine boletus are worth hunting.

Using mushroom hunting books, I can strongly suggest to borrow Pareys book of mushrooms, or as wikipedia has told me maybe more likely to be found as:

Marcel Bon - The Mushrooms and Toadstools of Britain and North-western Europe

is of course A MUST for the beginner here, the use of spore prints is recommendend for identification too.

But bee careful using borrowed books from the local library! I have sadly found out once that more than two dozen different identification books with pictures or drawings have listed the liberty cap under content, but then nearly every book had the corresponding site with pictures of psilocybe semilanceata cut or in one case even careless ripped out!

Toady it seems uk-people are unlike you more mycophobic right?
When I tried to find out the common trivial names for some mushrooms just now, I had to experience they sometimes dont have any. 
How can it be that boletus edulis hasnt dozens of trivial names?
But the europe obviously became more and more mycophilic, the more eastern you go, with the russians on top, they have even recipes to make the unediblest, even slightly toxic, or simply awful tasting mushrooms edible!
In my language it expresses itself in some of the weirdest names the mycologists could imagine, the "cone-shaped bald-head" is a harmless example of weird named mushrooms compared to some others

Anybody else stock their spice cupboard from the wild?

Toady LOVES a good chilli, (which In his opinion just isn't right without morels and shiitake in it), and likes to add a little unconventional heat with peppery boletus (Chalciporus piperatus, interestingly very often grows in association with fly agaric under the same tree(s). Dried, then sliced to shreds or ground immediately before use, is pretty firey, Toady uses it in a very similar way to the way he uses black pepper or chillis in general. And fly agaric. That is quite an amusing head turner, when people find out that an otherwise either toxic/magic mushroom can be prepared right, and eaten, used to give the 'umami' taste sensation with meat dishes, or serve for medicine.

Even his old man, there was a look of almost horror when he found out one of the special ingredients during the cooking. But hey, the bugger had better bee used to unusual eating habits by now with an autie son for one, and a mycologist for another. Put the two together, and its asking for fried stinkhorn eggs, fly agaric in the cook pot and stranger things besides to get served up for dinner

Never heard the term 'stink morel' before. Although it isn't far from the truth. Toady has witnessed those little buggers so utterly HEAVING with flies that michelle obama and kids could have opened their legs feet away and the flies probably would barely have noticed

Pretty sure nothing on earth could possibly ever come close to rendering those awful things into a food product.

Sometimes one has to wonder just what the criteria are for an author to list a species as edible. Merely containing no abject poison, does not, IMO, a meal make. Or else I could have a perfectly nice supper of bricks and toilet water.

Wasn't as bad as durian fruit though. Couldn't swallow more than one bite, before it got turned into something of an improvised biological weapon, and used to pay back a college tutor for bullying another lass on the course to the point of tears. (believe it or not, all the books mentioning durian fruit, do not even come CLOSE to the eye-watering stench it gives off. Like a mixture of rotting soiled diapers in a dirty back alley, burning willy pete, and rotting cabbage/garlic. Cleared out an entire building with just a couple of pieces, tossed up into the crawlspaces in the toilet block roof.  Damn thing cleared out a high-rise building almost as fast as if one were to drag the rat out, and start swinging it round by the tail, that crawled up Cherie Bliar's muff and died. Mein Gott! that was indescribably foul. The stinkhorns though I suspect to many people might be marginally worse (having observed the effect up close and personal, of a big cluster of the things behind my fridge/freezer )

Personally though I am used to them, they just mean that there is at least enough rainfall lately for SOMETHING. Just another part of that earthy, woodsy sort of smell that to Toady, smells of freedom (and free dinner, medicine and of course, a good thorough psychic house-cleaning to bee looked for, of course)

As for P.cyanescens, those seem to bee a cold-loving species, Toady cold-shocked his woodchip buckets to get them to fruit. VERY potent when fresh, or newly dried, and keep for a while if dessicated over drying agents and stored cool, and out of light, under inert gas.

Toady suspects the ratio of psilocin to psilocybin might quite significantly fall in favour of the former, given the stability issues, in this species. But when new, they are one of his favourites, In any case, a +2.5 at a dose of 0g is impressive. 3g of those same shrooms blew his fucking head clean off, and TheBitch...she took quite a lot less, being relatively new to tripping (Toady THINKS TheBitch might have got drunk before it came to parasitize off his good will and loyalty to friends, but tripped? no. Those cyans though had her break through alright though, interestingly, Toady had an uncanilly similar-sounding experience in certain respects concerning 'entity contact'.

Sadly though, personality disorders (looking back, the little hell-harlot is a blatant borderline case, as well as OCD, bipolar, malignant narcissism, an arch manipulator and a thief. What kind of ungrateful sack of fermented rat urine repays the kindness of someone who takes someone in under their wing, and oath of safety (and whilst Toady will swear to few things, that is for the reason, that his word, once given, is not retracted lightly, and betrayed only at the direst need (such as telling this fucker to piss off and never return, and on being attacked physically, dished out more than was bargained for, but far, far less than karma would have demanded (Toady can't really bee chopping up bodies with hacksaws and dissolving them in lye (pre-mortem:P).

But after being taken in, fed, housed, clothed, medical issues taken care of, suicide attempts forcibly thwarted even, fucker went and STOLE the very last dose of that batch of cyans. Not a large harvest, just so happened that Toady seems to have a permanent background process running at the firmware level, along the lines of 'is that a LBM he sees in those bushes...what is it?'

Split them equally by weight to begin with (accurate to 10mg resolution), and added to that, by stealing and hiding his painkillers, nitrazepam, loprazolam and chlormethiazole rx'es. Just to look the hero when stepping in with a couple of piss-weak, partial agonist opioids, and a couple of temazepam/valium, if Toady more or less begged.

Only his common sense not to take the GABAergic meds as prescribed (less often, rather than more) stopped that resulting in an awful withdrawal....well...any more than uncomplicated opioid WD is)

It seems that psychedelics, at least, mushrooms, have little effect on borderline cases in terms of anything positive changing in their outlook and how they treat others.

Quite possibly though karma might just have flown back to roost...one of those mushrroms was NOT a Psilocybe, and possessed a rust brown spore print.....that was in a separate bottle, it too went 'missing'

Toady sure as hell knows what he hopes it was....and TheBitch did indeed get pretty sick later.

(hey...if you are going to behave like a toxic, backstabbing parasite, and then, DESPITE being made very aware indeed of the danger of Galerina and some Conocybe spp. And warned that the former do indeed grow in that very same patch of woodchips......and then still steal a possible amatoxic mushroom. Well then, you deserve every bit of misery you get IMO)

Stupidity is a terminal disease to bee sure. But unfortunately it isn't usually terminal fast enough
Here, Cyans are fairly uncommon but not what could bee termed rare. A very welcome second fruiting season, coming out after the libs are long gone

Unfortunately many Boletes are full of maggots, and get that way fast.

By stinkhorns, I mean Phallus spp.

Yes, I do peel the layer of slime off the cap of the slippery jacks, larch boletes, another similar Suillus spp. are also a favourite of mine. Prepared the same way, skin off the slime layer, fry the caps in butter and serve with some grilled bacon and/or sausages. Absolutely delish.

As for Caesar's mushroom...no. Sadly. AFAIK, it does not grow in britain.

Blushers are fairly common here....have you eaten them? do you rate them as a decent edible?
I've never actually got around to trying them. You are aware that they have to be boiled, the water thrown away, boiled again before cooking, I hope? as otherwise they contain a haemolytic poison, I believe the name is 'rubescenslysin'

Another one I go for, is Boletus piperatus, as an addition to my spice rack, along with  dried, heat-cured A.muscaria, the latter really brings out the meaty flavours in a stew, chilli or with steak a treat, not much is needed, its sort of mother nature's MSG

Whilst the peppery boletes, those have a real fire to them, when I cook chilli, its not just black pepper and chillis that provide the heat, all sorts of mushrooms go in there, a mixture of at least:

Shiitake
Boletus piperatus, dried and powdered
Cured fly agaric, again, powdered
Smoked morels, usually M.elata
Some dried cep (Boletus edulis, or its close relatives, depending on what is to be found)


The fly agarics are popping up about now locally, so its high time ol' Toady went on a hike to pick up a supply for the coming year. It was dry as a muslim nun's cervix for fly agarics last year, but luckily the year before, Toady got a good few carrier bag fulls, on multiple occasions, so many that he barely left the family any time with an un-occupied oven to cook dinner in


Also-what are people's absolute favourite fungal treats (of the edible variety that is)

Personally-

Macrolepiota procera (parasol), fried in butter, perhaps with a light dusting of fly agaric, or topped with melted mozzarella.

Morels...mmm, just about anything involving morels. Was lucky enough to have several huge flushes of them pop up at his old home, in the garden on wood chip mulch, M.elata..stewed them, fried them, put them in chilli, roasted them...generally feasted on them for many absolutely superb meals.

So expensive in the shops, even dried, small specimens. Which just don't even come close to being of the quality of some nice, fat, freshly picked wild ones.

Giant puffball, fried as cutlets in either batter or breadcrumbs.

Now thats a 'mushroom' with memories attached.

Toady had been lucky enough to find not just one, but two BIG giant puffballs, still in their absolute prime, the smaller of the two being nearly 3 feet across, it was 'show and tell' day at his first spazz school (he has been to two, one for kanner's autism as its focus, the second for asperger's/HFA). At the time, he was, he forgets exactly, but betwixt 9-11.

He brought his treats in, and after talking a little to the class, was going to make puffball cutlets and share them around. The teachers went and took them both from Toady, and wouldn't return them, just dumped them under the porta-cabins used as classrooms for some of the smaller groups in the lower key stage levels.

There was enough for everybody, and he never got them back, they completely refused even at the end of the school day. Toady was absolutely heartbroken, and angry as hades at being treated that way. After offering a rare, and precious treat, it felt like having his face spat in for his trouble. Could have taken them home, and had them all to himself, or shared with his family, but no. His generosity was returned with first theft, and then humiliation.

And whats more, he had hiked miles upon miles upon miles the previous day to find those, and was really looking forward to several days worth of meals, of his absolute favourite wild food, only to be left without so much as one measly slice. All that effort, and all he got in return was robbed of his prizes

Tsathoggua can, being older, understand that perhaps health and safety BS and the general noxious culture of masturbating compulsively over risk assessment forms might have got in the way of doling out his home-done recipe to his fellow special ed kids. But to just take away his puffballs and mindlessly trash them was  both senseless and unfair.

(not to mention the teacher in question was [is] a right fucking awful cunt to begin with. Caught her, for instance, teaching a cookery lesson, finding a big tetra-pak type container of tomato juice had gone moldy, and gave it to the kids to put in the food they were making for themselves after scraping off the thick layer of mold on top, and picking out the septic-looking chunks of...something unmentionable at any rate.

Little kids, very young, some of whom weren't just autie or aspie, but who had some form of mental retardation also; including the girl Toady liked in that school, who he had to warn, he wasn't about to leave the lass he had the hots for to eat that shite)

Hahaha man that is an amazing story big up thy self!

Never had any success finding any liberty caps in uk.

Toady has been thinking...this year, he might have to invest in a great many bags of woodchips, etc. And a pressure cooker.

Growing shiitake, and morels, in particular appeals to him, and if he could pull it off, and be lucky enough to find some caps to take spores from, trying to grow parasols (Macrolepiota procera) would be nice. Those are one of his absolute favourites.

p. cubes, orissa india. rye berries to equine dung. monotube style. 




=]