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.

Shroom Leather and... More...

Shroom leather shoe on shrooms
From Material District & sold for €583(!)
on Nat-2

Leather made from mushrooms? Wait... what? Yes, it's true. No longer do we need to kill animal to use their skins for shoes, handbags, wallets and jackets. No... now we can use mushrooms.

I really couldn't quite believe it... because on this journey of divesting myself of food and accoutrements that harm animals... I struggled with the whole leather shoes thing. They are just more comfortable, more resilient, more moldable than those plasticized shoes. And, if you get a really good pair of leather shoes, they can last a decade or more. Sigh, I still miss my Mephistos... best shoes ever.

Now... I don't go through shoes like some people go through kleenex... when I find a pair of shoes that I like, I buy them and keep them. And I am not in competition with Imelda Marcos' closet. I have maybe 10 pairs of footwear:

1. Merrell hikers
2. Blundstone half-boots
3. Danish walking shoes
4. Columbia sport sandals
5. Winter boots from Mark's Work Wearhouse
6. Rubber boots for the garden
7. Crocs for the garden
   
8. water shoes

Huh... is that it? I should go check... nope, that's it... And, when one pair of shoes is nearing the edge of its lifespan, I go and buy myself an equally good pair of shoes. Same brand, same make if possible. My feet know what they like and... as I have learned... keep your feet happy and the rest of you will be happy as well. At least out hiking and walking.

Soooo... mushroom leather... what gives with that?

Cute mushrooms and their sub-surface
network of Mycellium

First, there is Mylo, a type of leather made from the mycellium of mushrooms, that's their underground network of threads that connects the larger mushroom organism. I guess I should mention that a mushroom is not just the fruiting body that you see on the surface of the group... your typical mushroom. Nope... there is way more going on underground than we can even imagine. And the mycellium acts as kind of a super highway underground, connecting trees and the wider sub-surface ecosystem. It's quite amazing. And they Mylo stuff, which they are careful not to call "leather", since it really isn't leather, which is made from animal hides, grows in a matter of weeks and uses way less water (for example) than growing a cow would. Waaayyy more eco-friendly.

Then, we have Muskin, also made from mushrooms, but the cap of the Phellinus ellipsoideus mushroom, an inedible shroom native to subtropical forests. Same idea... same shroom leather idea... Apparently they have also tried making leathers out of pineapple and apple scraps. Go figure.

So, I guess the question is... how do we make our voices heard to demand a switch from animal leather to shroom leather? And, yes, I know that animal hides are a byproduct of the meat industry soooo.... maybe we need to ease up one the meat consumption first... thereby reducing the supply of animal hides... thereby creating space and demand for shroom leathers. Makes sense to me. 

OK... so ready to have your mind blown?? Take a look at this picture... Nice looking steak, eh? Looks like a steak, smells like steak, feels like a steak, chews like a steak and... tastes like a steak... BUT...

A Meati steak

Is NOT a steak! Nope. Not a steak. I know... I am drooling too... but this is made from Mycellium. Yep... shroom meat... in this case, a company called Meati. Mycellium for this steak grows overnight... Read more on the Meati website... And... it comes as beef and chicken varieties too... No artificial ingredients. No GMO. And... is high in fibre (that's good) and a protein as well. What's not to like about this? Alas... so far, Meati is only available in Colorado... have to be patient... The Mycellium grows in fermentation vats overnight and the amount of Meati that can be produced is way, way more efficient than livestock farming. Meet Mycellium Meati... it's the wave of the future folks...

Now... we just have to wait for the prices to come down...

Fast Company has a nice overview article of Mushroom Leather

Fast Company also has a nice overview of Meati