I appear to be awash with mushrooms

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but no confidence to pick them cos having done a google search the edible and poisonous varieties look a little too similar for a layman to tell the difference.

Never had them like now before and am wondering if its due to all the recent rain.
 
I've been trying to get the puffballs out of the fields before the horses stand on them! One of our friends has been dining on them for the last couple of weeks!

He's still alive - honest!
 
My mother told me (and her mother told her ....) that if you can PEEL it, its OK and is a mushroom.

If it won't peel, don't eat it. Safer that way than to eat it and not be sure.

IMO there's too many people doing "mushroom courses" where you go out and forage for mushrooms in the countryside. People are getting hold of poisonous mushrooms (there was a case only this morning in the Daily Mail of a 12 year old girl who'd ate a death cap mushroom - and survived!). The folly of letting a girl this age out getting mushrooms from goodness knows where is unbelievable! So many of these mushrooms look very alike and its only the experts who can really tell the difference. So I say leave it to the experts.

So my rule is it it won't peel, don't have it. Simplez!
 
What a weird coincidental post!
The Magic Mushroom brigade have appeared in the fields next to the yard again now. They appeared this time last year and you'd see teenagers to creepy old men walking up and down and up and down the one field with bags picking them. I only found out what they were getting after the YO found out herself.
She'd gone to poo pick the field on the main road and there were a group of lads in the field and 70+ year old YO goes "carry on doing what you're doing but just tell me what you're collecting" they replied with "we're picking magic mushrooms" and YO replies with "whatever they are keep picking them just don't annoy the horses".
Haha.. Must admit some of the people i've seen leaving the one field are clearly nut jobs though!
 
Be very carefully about kicking golf ball like mushrooms as friend was having fun with poo picker smashing them ended up inhaling them and spores lodged in throat was very ill as they did not move.
 
MiJodsR2BlinkinTite said:
My mother told me (and her mother told her ....) that if you can PEEL it, its OK and is a mushroom.

If it won't peel, don't eat it. Safer that way than to eat it and not be sure.

IMO there's too many people doing "mushroom courses" where you go out and forage for mushrooms in the countryside. People are getting hold of poisonous mushrooms (there was a case only this morning in the Daily Mail of a 12 year old girl who'd ate a death cap mushroom - and survived!). The folly of letting a girl this age out getting mushrooms from goodness knows where is unbelievable! So many of these mushrooms look very alike and its only the experts who can really tell the difference. So I say leave it to the experts.

So my rule is it it won't peel, don't have it. Simplez!
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I will add to that before we lose an HHO'er!! If you peel it and it turns brown or orangeyt then throw it away and WASH YOUR HANDS!! One of the most dangerous fungi in the country looks just like a mushroom but has the decency to warn us by this colour change!
 
All colours this year:
Red tops with white stems, brown tops with yellow or white or tawny stems, white on white in different shapes and sizes, mauve tops on mauve stems!!, big puff balls as well.

My pasture neighbour stated that I could eat some of them, but when I offered them to her she backed away with a no-thankyou!
 
Phew! Thought it was just me! I have one paddock covered in all sorts of varieties and puff balls in another, I too thought someone had been coming down to the yard after I had gone and had been playing golf, and left their golf balls in the paddock!
 
Look underneath and if they have the stripy corrugatedness they should be ok to eat.

I wouldn't advise it though as if it goes wrong it can go very wrong!

I do however know what magic mushrooms look like...
 
We always get crops of the red spotty ones in the woods :) sometimes the white ones appear in the field after it has rained.
I don't like them, they creep me out!! :(
 
Ooh my favourite topic for this time of year! I'm a proper obsessive about mushies, these days.

In fact, there is no set in stone distinction for 'mushroom' versus 'toadstool', but the general consensus is that the latter are the poisonous.

I definitely wouldn't go for the 'if you can peel it, it's ok', or the 'stripy corrugatedness', whatever that means, lol! I can think of many peelable deadly varieties. First to mind is Destroying Angel, which can be confused with the Common Rosegill if you're not clued up about vulvas, gill colour and the like (I've eaten Vulvariella speciosa recently and it's not worth the risk anyway - worst risotto I ever tasted, yuck!). There are also many unpeelable varieties which you shouldn't miss out on. Langermannia Gigantica (Giant Puffball) in my 'umble opinion should be tried by EVERYBODY! It's the nicest, most flavoursome fungus I've ever tasted and you simply can't mistake it for anything else! All the Giant Puffball species are edible that I know of.

Common puffballs are also edible, but I don't like those, either. These are the pure white balls, which an elongated 'stem', looking like golf balls on a tee! Common EARTHballs (browner and more speckly than common puffballs) are inedible, but not grossly poisonous.

Haven't tried shaggy ink caps. I'm too keen on a glass of wine with special dinners, and they react badly with alcohol in the bloodstream, as do a few 'edible varieties'.

Amanita agaricus (*****, is it amanitus agarica???) or Fly Agaric is an evil bugger and you should stay away!!! These are the red ones with white spots, starting out bulbous and convex, moving to concave.

My one to try has to be chicken in the woods. I've seen loads of them when I wasn't certain of what they were, but have I seen one of them since I started studying mushies??? Nope. Gits!
 
Last weekend out hacking (in Surrey) my friend and I found the three largest Cep (Porcini) mushrooms that I have ever seen!! Needless to say, we made an exception and both dismounted from our 17hh+ horses to make sure that we could hide them for collection (by bicycle!) later in the day!! Every hack this week has been with eyes to the ground!!
 
Really jealous, as our sum total this year has been 2 puffballs. Last year the field was like the Milky Way, and you couldn't put your foot down without treading on a field mushroom, though the horses had no such scruples.

Our field produces nine edible kinds of fungi. The next door neighbour got me interested in trying new varieties. I've known since I was a child what field mushrooms are like, and the neighbour taught me a lot. But we took it all very seriously, doing spore checks, treble-checking in our mutual five mushroom guidebooks, AND we always told each other if we were about to eat a new variety. We also always left a slice of said fungi raw in the fridge, so if you are poisoned the hospital have something to work on.

For the record, we have Field Mushrooms, St George's Mushrooms, Fairy Ring Champignons, Meadow Blewitts, Puffballs, something with a name like grammaphobia, the very un-PC named Jew's Ear, and Parasol. That's only 8, but it's very late.....
 
Ahh I love 'free' food and used to go on shroom hunts every autumn.
Shaggy ink caps are good baked in a ramekin with a whole egg underneath, a squeeze of garlic. They only take 15 - 20 mins to do. I normally go to our local woods and cep hunt but I haven't made it this year - that is one tasty mushroom! I also found a beefsteak fungus on one of the yard's oak trees one year, very nice sliced and fried in butter... nom, nom, nom.
Just remembered the wood blewitts I found too - fried those, added cream and had them on toast.
 
I have had the grand total of five mushies this year.. that's all! Last year I was picking them and giving them away to the neighbours, and yet, seemingly, the last couple of weeks should have been ideal for them. Strange things these fungi.
 
charmeroo said:
Last weekend out hacking (in Surrey) my friend and I found the three largest Cep (Porcini) mushrooms that I have ever seen!! Needless to say, we made an exception and both dismounted from our 17hh+ horses to make sure that we could hide them for collection (by bicycle!) later in the day!! Every hack this week has been with eyes to the ground!!
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Poor Henry was dragged through all the shrubbery last Sunday, as I went out with my phone AND Canon cameras. Lots of nice pics and I think I probably walked more than rode. OH says I should make a book. Found some nice Boletus Edulis last night and one of them is mine. Found another at work this morning, so I think I'll nab that one, as I'm not sure last night's mushie will still be good tomorrow (I'm eating at a friend's tonight and forgot when I picked it)!

It's quite reassuring that I'm not the only mushie nut! They think I'm a bit bonkers at work, as I'm always talking about herbs, mushrooms and home made wines/limoncello/chutneys/jams... :D
 
I've eaten so many mushrooms over the last few weeks that for the first time ever I'm almost fed up with them! I've never known such a good year.
 
we have oodles of fungi this year too, but i'm too much of a wimp to try them. we had Death Caps last year, a chicken pecked one (i saw it) and keeled over stone dead about 5 minutes later... :O
we have huge chestnutty brown flat mushrooms under the silver birches, they look delish and i'm trying to pluck up the courage. can't find them in any book or on any mushrooming website though. eek.
OH's mushrooming books say "don't eat anything with gills, unless you bought it in a supermarket"... the ones that look just like supermarket shrooms can be lethal apparently.
i am trying the SAS route (or so i've read!): rub a tiny bit of the shroom on the inside of your wrist, wait and see if you have a reaction. if not, touch your tongue to it, ditto. if no reaction, try eating a tiny piece. wait. etc etc.
by the time i've done this, i get bored and go and get something else to eat!
 
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