Mushroom Hunting

My partner and I hate mushrooms. With a passion. It's a texture thing for us. There's nothing worse than putting something into your mouth and getting that squitchy mushroom texture. Ick. People have tried to sneak mushrooms into meals before and we are swift to pick them out of the crowd.

On the other hand, I LOVE hunting mushrooms! I've been foraging for them since I was knee high to a grasshopper. My mother came over from Germany with a good repertoire of edible mushrooms in her head but, for many years, she was limited to hunting the boring boletes. We called them Birch mushrooms and they are good edible but they tend to stain blue and they aren't choice edible. But... any port in a storm. Over the years, we found other ones... all good edibles: shaggy manes, false morels (a bit tricky that one), meadow mushrooms (another tricky one) and bear's tooth mushrooms (easy peasy but rare - see pick at right).

But then... about twenty years ago, she was hiking up on The Mountain (our town was surrounded by mountains but this was the one at the end of our street and was just called "The Mountain" by us) and... she went through a vale that had birch trees. And then she spotted them... a handful of gold scattered amidst the ferns... chanterelles! Super easy to identify, choice edible and quite prolific.

Golden Chanterelle

Over the years, we ranged across our slope of The Mountain and identified a few other spots. In the last few years, as my mother has gotten a bit slower, I've gone up to visit in the fall and would head out into the woods for happily forage for mushrooms, bringing home bags and bags of chanterelles. Too many sometimes. But my mom had a slew of German and European acquaintances who always jumped at the chance to get free wild chanterelles.

We even found a few spots with the incredible Steinpilz (King Bolete). They have to be picked young though, otherwise you're sharing them with a slew of maggots and worms. My mother would fry up the chanterelles or steinpilze in butter and try and convince me that they were super yummy. "You should try some, just a little bit!" Nope. No thank you. Not this kitten. I'll just stick with being a mushroom hunter.

Moving to Prince George in the mid 2000s, I had a couple of friends who would happily eat whatever fungi trophies I foraged. But a subsequent move to Calgary for a few years ended up being a mushroom free zone. However... upon moving to Vancouver Island in 2013, I had high hopes of finding some chanterelles since they are apparently quite abundant here. No luck. While I knew the particular ecosystem that chanterelles loved up north - birch trees and old forest fire areas - down on the Island there are no birch trees. All was not lost however since I could always go visit my mom in the fall and usually satisfy my foraging instincts.

Until the fall of 2020... the year of the pandemic... with no travel nowhere. And something clicked... it started with one patch of white chanterelles that I found by accident. Just growing along the side of the trail under a few salal leaves. I almost walked right by them but something made me stop and check. Yup... chanterelles! I picked them with glee and then asked a few mushroom-eating friends if they wanted them. Nope and nope. One didn't know what they were and the other didn't have time to cook them. Hmph. What to do?? Well... I bit the bullet, diced them up small (like tiny) and sauteed them into a stir-fry. Neither my partner nor I noticed them. We were on our way...

Chanterelle bonanza

A few weeks later, I found another spot with golden chanterelles... and saw people leaving the woods with armfuls of chanterelles and lobster mushrooms. I came across a blog that said second growth Douglas Fir forests were the ticket... so I tried a few new trails and kept my eyes peeled. I found one spot... then two spots... then three and finally the jackpot spot!

Every weekend, I would leave the woods with bags of chanterelles... far too many to mix into the occasional stir-fry. But, as luck would have it... our massage therapist was an avid mushroom eater who (a) knew what they were and (b) loved to cook with them. So a fair few were diverted to him while we dried a bunch more in the dehydrator. The idea is that we can re-hydrate them during the winter, run them through the blender with the water and use it as a base for gravies or what not.

Hedgehog mushrooms

Just as the chanterelle season was drawing to a close though... I discovered a nice little patch of hedgehogs... they look kind of like chanterelles but have teeth on the underside of the cap. Another choice edible and... they got diced up into another stir fry.

There's something about eating our own foragings that just warms the cockles of my heart. And, as my mother has been telling me for years... mushrooms are very good for you. Lots of minerals and nutrients and just general goodness. I know that she might gasp to think that delectable chanterelles are being buried in some stir-fry instead of savoured on their own but... Rome wasn't built in a day. Baby steps... dice 'em small and maybe we'll get to the point where we can actually eat them when we can see them.

N.B. This is NOT a comprehensive blog on mushroom identification. Please don't eat wild mushrooms unless you are 100% sure you know what they are. I have 40 years of mushroom hunting under my belt and a repertoire of 12 mushrooms that I know to be good/choice edibles. I ignore ALL other mushrooms. I'm not 100% of the majestic Pine Mushroom and so I don't pick those. We had some mushrooms growing in our backyard that, at first, I thought might be shaggy manes but I wasn't 100% sure. I let them grow a bit bigger and they were most definitely NOT shaggy manes. Find an expert mushroom picker to take you out picking... don't just rely on books... There are WAY more inedible/unpalatable/poisonous mushrooms than there are edible/choice ones.

Dusting off the Foraging Habit

I'm a forager from way back. When I was three, my Mom would take me up the mountain near our house to pick blueberries and gather mushrooms. She's German, my Mom, and the Germans have a long history of foraging for wild edibles... and medicinals.

We'd also go pick St. John's Wort, horsetail, club moss pollen, plantain and a variety of other herbals. Have a wound that won't heal? Just dust on some club moss pollen. Works like a charm.

There was even one year where we went out in the early spring, after the snow had melted and gathered moose poop.

Yup... moose poop.

We had a young apple tree that was not doing much except producing leaves. Mom had read that horse manure would be good, although you have to watch it because it can be too "hot". Not having access to a horse... or horse poop, Mom gave figured moose poop would be a good substitute.

Up in the north... in the spring... you see moose poop piles everyone. They're not like murky cow patties... they're more like rabbit poop... except way bigger. Little nuggets of fertilizing goodness...

The deer trail to the stinging nettles

So we went out with our plastic bags and gloves and scooped moose poop. Came home and distributed it around the apple tree and... let me tell you... that tree went from zero apples to 60 apples in one year. Best thing... moose poop.

Anyhow... I digress. There are no moose poops down here and deer poops are a bit too small to scoop. But... my foraging instinct is still strong.

A few years ago, while exploring a deer trail off the beaten path, I came across a patch of stinging nettles. Ooohhh... good stuff!!! I mean, they hurt like heck if you touch them accidentally. Although, apparently people touch them on purpose because the sting helps arthritis. I haven't tried that, not suffering from arthritis. But... I have been stung accidentally and the tingly feeling lasts for hours (sometimes overnight).

Stinging nettles

As I learned from my mother, stinging nettles are a great edible... like, super great. Packed with vitamins, minerals, and other goodness that act as anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories. And it is a leafy green... a dark green leafy green.

On our revised eating plan, we are supposed to eat two cups of leafy greens a day. Most of those greens come from the store where we buy bags of mixed leafy greens.

Until last week, when the store ran out of the pre-packaged stuff... so I bought bunches of kale and spinach and we made our own, slightly less diverse mix.

We are still waiting for our mesclun to grow up enough to begin harvesting it... so we are at bit the mercy of the greens available in the stores...

Foraged nettles

But then I thought... It's spring and... my nettle patch should be ready!

I did a little excursion on the weekend and... it was in super fine form. I picked three bags full and only got a few stings for my efforts.

**Note to self, garden gloves do NOT work if they only have fabric covering the back of the hands...

Took the nettles home, blanched them, chopped them and froze them. We can use them in all sorts of recipes calling for dark leafy greens... like the quesadillas we made a few days ago which needed five cups of kale or swiss chard...

I should perhaps mention that blanching the nettles disarms the whole stinging thing... Just blanch in boiling water for a couple of minutes and they are good to go. They are still a bit furrier than spinach but... they are also organic! And... to top it off... the blanching water makes great soup stock.

My next big foraging expedition will come later in the summer when the blackberries appear... they too have defenses to guard them (wicked thorns) but our goal is to stock our freezer with bags and bags of blackberries to tide us through the winter. And maybe produce a few litres of blackberry liqueur... mmmm.... soooo good.