Mushroomers

[PA Pete]

OK - from another post I know there are some mushroomers out there - just wondering who you are and hoping to get a thread or two going [img]smile.gif[/img]

I've been interested for the past maybe 5 or 6 years, but haven't yet made the "leap" to seriously hunting and eating them. I keep telling myself I'll get out and hunt Hen Of The Woods (my wife and I both love them) and other fall mushrooms (I know a good craterellus spot!), but then never get around to it in the fall

Driving around last weekend I saw two beautiful Oyster fruitings but got to them a week or two too late - they were already brown and well past their prime. I need to learn how to recognize good fall oyster fruiting weather as I've often seen them in the late fall after temperature changes (cold->warm?). For that matter I guess I really need to learn "all" the fruiting weather signals. Sure would love to get some morels in the spring.

Got a bunch of books - Aurora's is of course by far the best - his pocket guide is also excellent but sure wish he or someone would write a comparable volume specific to the east. Simon and Schuster is junk (my opinion) but I have a copy around for additional information and occasional laughs. Also have a copy of Stamets and Chilton which I hope to use to get some oysters going on straw or sawdust in the spring. Maybe also some stropharia on woodchips in the back (know where some grow locally - see pix)

Hopefully that's enough of a primer to get some others to join in! Anyone in PA or even southeast PA?

-Pete

Some Photos [img]smile.gif[/img]
Oysters #1
Oysters #2
Wine Stropharia #1
Wine Stropharia #2
Unidentified - Backyard on Walnut Log
Club Fungus - French Creek
Sulfur Shelf - French Creek

[danno1800]

All you need to get LOTS of interest is to post the EXACT location of your best MOREL MUSHROOM locations!!! Ha! Just kidding! I heard about a guy who, on his death bed, bequeathed his best morel site to his brother, then refused to tell him where it was...
I have hunted morels & chanterelles. Unfortunately, the dates always coincide with the busiest time in the beeyard.
Oh, well! Happy hunting...

[Mitch]

I do not go for the fall shrooms.I missed them alltogether last year in the spring.Plan on getting out this year.That is if i have time away from the bees.
Bob

[power napper]

Mostly the puffballs, even found a location good for giant puffballs, like basketball size, the location is at the edge of limestone outcropping. Hunt the morels but the morels in western Pennsylvania are most of the time found around old apple trees and old rotting timbered stumps, old homesteading sites that the trees are half rotten. Hen of the woods are numerous and we call them sheephead mushrooms,(fall season on the biggest trees or timbered stumps of hardwood trees) the fresh young sulpher shelf (chicken mushroom) is simply delicious and oysters are okay. I am self taught and mighty sorry for not learning from old people that wanted to teach me back in the early sixties, if I were to start over I would join a mushroom group of your area, also buy the best mushroom books you can find--always play it safe--don't try to eat a wild mushroom raw,if you aren't three hundred percent sure do not eat it. Pennsylvania has the worlds largest mushroom growing mine in the world--mushrooms are cheap compared to an emergency room or funeral home visit.
When sampling a new mushroom that you are sure of, just a small sample for the first time--you could have an alergic reaction.
I love to putt around on my four wheeler looking and sometimes photographing mushrooms. My prize mushroom find was a rooting caultiflower mushroom--delicious-- hallucinagenic mushrooms grow prolificly and after a rain is mostly the time to hunt mushrooms. I carry the "national audobon society field guide to north american mushrooms" when I am on the four wheeler. The Mushroom Book by Laessoe,Conte,Lincoff is a good book and the smithsonian handbook-Mushrooms by Laesoe and Lincoff I just recieved as a Christmas present. I know that the western pennsylvania mycological group is an active group helping amateurs get started with outings and guest speakers like Gary Lincoff. Enjoy the wild mushroom hunting, I do.

[Todd Zeiner]

Shroomer here for sure!

My grandfather always had the best locations. When his health went down and he couldn't get to the spots, I loaded him in my Toyota 4x4 and dove him into the woods. That is one of my fondest memories. He died the next winter. To this day, I can find them when nobody else can. Every spring after I fry up a skillet full, I leave a few on the plate for Grandpa just for him. They always seem to disapper. (My kids get them I think)
My gandfather was also the beekeeper. I still have his old Root Jr smoker.

Thanks PA Pete for starting a thread in tailgater I can accually read and respond too, and not get politically upset.

[Aspera]

I found some nice sulfer shelves this year. No luck with morels yets.

[power napper]

Forgot to mention the secret to the morels in our western Pennsylvania area, the totally best, most productive,largest morels day for morel mushroom hunts is Mothers Day!!

[George Fergusson]

The best morels I've found were growing on redwood chip mulch at a MacDonald's drive through in Gardiner Maine [img]smile.gif[/img] I've never had any luck finding them anywhere else

I have a good source for giant puffballs, they run 8" to 16" in diameter, I've been getting them every year for about 5 years now. I usually get a few shopping bags of meadow mushrooms (pink-bottoms, I guess they're agaricus?) every fall from local cow pastures and lawns as I'm driving down the road. Found some nice sulpher clusters this fall too.

George-

[PA Pete]

How are the puffballs? Are they especially tasty? I know a couple places to get them and they even grow in my backyard (softball size) sometimes.

-Pete

[George Fergusson]

I find the puffballs quite bland, really. Very subtle flavor. I peel them, slice them into strips and saute them gently in butter with some parsley, then freeze them. They go nicely in pasta sauces and scrambled eggs, omlets, etc. They're mostly air. They cook down big time. Don't over cook them! They'll disapear if you're not careful. I put them in whatever I'm cooking at the last minute.

[Barry Digman]

Best mushrooms I ever had were on a backpacking trip up in the San Juan Mtns. I was fishing a high mountain lake all by myself and heard singing of all things. Along came a couple of riders on horseback. They were having a grand time, and had run across a bunch of boletas. They'd filled a saddlebag with them, we got to talking and I had fresh trout to go with the mushrooms. They'd been riding the Continental trail for a couple of weeks. Maybe it was the altitude, but the campfire, trout, and mushrooms made for one of the best meals I've ever enjoyed.

[power napper]

Puffballs--Will attempt to find my recipe for fixing puffballs, have a special seasoning that we coat them with before frying in olive oil.

[carbide]

Pa Pete,
A local state park near to me has an annual morel hunt on the park's property every spring. They first have a mycological botanist give a lecture on the best places to find them including some good color pictures to be sure everyone can recognize them and then they turn everyone loose to hunt for them for the rest of the day. Afterwards the botanist looks at all that have been gathered to assure that no one has picked the wrong thing.

My best spot for picking is on the South side of a hillside where the railroad dumped the diggings from a tunnel driven through a large hill. The morels usually are halfway between the top and bottom of the hill in a narrow band no more than about 30 yards wide by 40 yards long. Also have a good spot where a small stream runs down through a valley. These morels are always in the bottom of the valley and I've never found any on the sides of the valley. The best time of the year that I have found them is when the May apples are 3/4's grown. It normally varies within about a two week period depending on the weather.

I'd gladly tell you the location of either spot for the small price of 1000 active hives, or the deed to the Playboy mansion. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[power napper]

Good point about the may apples Carbide, forgot to mention that.
Here is my secret recipe for fixing a batch of zuchini or a batch of puffballs or any other mushroom.
1/4 cup flour--whole wheat, corn meal, white.
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
2 egg whites
2 Tablespoon water
2/3 cup cornflake crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
fresh sliced mushrooms

Combine flour, oregano, garlic powder, crumbs, Parmesan cheese and red pepper in a zip lock bag.

Whisk egg whites and water in a pie plate

Dip mushroom in the egg white then place in zip lock and shake to coat.
Fry in skillet of hot olive oil until golden.

Bet ya can't eat just one!

[naturebee]

PA Pete,
I go for the morels in spring and sheeps head in the fall. This year, planning on taking my beelining box when I go for morels, if a bee happens by I'll either come back later to beeline or just forget the morels for awhile and go for bees.

[King bee apiary]

I notice there's no one from the southern states?Ok my first and only real hunt was in a small town in Indiana (pine village),I was 7 or so and really had fun,But living in the south and only going north during the hoildays could not do it much.Well one day when I was 18 and almost forgot all about the mushrooms when I was hiking around some family land here in Alabama and I found four morels.Really don't know if they were the same as the northern ones but left them in hopes that they would spread the next year but no such luck never did find any more.

[PA Pete]

Shame you're not a little closer to me Carbide - I'd be tempted to try to figure out where your secret morel spots are

Thanks for the recipe Power Napper! I'm afraid I'm not a huge Zuchini fan, but I'll give your recipe a try next time I find a decent puffball [img]smile.gif[/img]

Inky Caps / Shaggy Manes? Anybody particularly fond of them? They used to grow like crazy in the grass out in front of the apartment where I used to live in Norristown.

Coyote - Yeah, I've been hoping to find boletes a.k.a. Porcini since I started! I thought I'd stumbled on the mother lode a while back at a park down on the Main Line - they show up there just about every year - too bad they're all Slippery Jacks

Guess I may need to join the local myco group. I mailed them for a flyer a while back, but then got to traveling for work and didn't have the time.

-Pete

[power napper]

Morel hunting tip--When cutting off the morel to take please consider using a mesh bag--like the ones you get when you buy a bag of onions. While you carry the morel in the mesh bag you deposit the spores every where you walk. I started to do that about ten years ago and the morels seem more numerous now, if you use a paper sack or plastic bag the spores are not able to get released while you walk. When I get home sometime i wash the morels off and save the wash water to spread on my secret patches and the north side of my house landscape mulch. It works.

[Todd Zeiner]

I've always used plastic bags. Sometimes I have to go back to the truck and get more sacks. Last year I found over 200 morels around one tree. Maybe if I had used an onion sack all these years I would have found 500. I love this thread! Beekeeping and mushroom hunting, man I wish it was spring!!!

[carbide]

Good tip power napper;

Morel hunting tip--When cutting off the morel to take please consider using a mesh bag--like the ones you get when you buy a bag of onions. While you carry the morel in the mesh bag you deposit the spores every where you walk.

I thought everyone did this! Now I see from the posts here that they don't. I've actually found morels growing along the forest path that I take to get back to the valley where I normally pick them. Since I never saw any along that path when I first started picking them, I figured they had to have come from the spores of the mushrooms that I carried out in my onion sacks on the way home.

BTW, Have you found morels by simply looking for them or did someone else show you where to find them? The one place where I pick them was shown to me by my ex-father-in-law. He had known about the place for probably twenty years before he showed it to me and that was about thirty years ago. Therefore that spot has been producing for nigh on to fifty years. The other spot where I pick them I found by accident when I was taking a shortcut home from hunting morels in the other spot.