Foraging
Dear Hivemind Communities
This year I was worried I'd miss the ramsons/leek season. I still did manage to find some in the forest. People say that Ramsons are only good before they bloom and their buds open, although I'd beg to differ. I do like them a lot when the buds are still closed. Especially like putting the buds in my Pesto.
A little more than a week ago, I met up with my friend Sonja and we went foraging for Morels. Extremely unlucky, with flat tires on my bicycle that day, I arrived late. Initially I wanted to go to a larger stream/river close to where we met. That river also flows through where I live. It's called Flat (Glatt). Yeahh, that's right i'm from the flat valley.
Instead or morels that day, Sonja, who is awesome at foraging spotted something and introduced me closer to aegopodium podagraria also known as ground elder. I was eating this last year, but the leaf were much bigger. I had no idea what they were called back then. Now I finally knew how to recognise them. I will do a separate post on them.
Belonging to the genus of aegopodium, it's a perennial plant in the carrot family.
I combined ground elder(aegopodium podagraria) with ramsons to make a very simple almond pesto with the following ingredients:
Salt
Pepper
Thyme
Vinegar
Almonds
Ramsons
Ground Elder
Raps Seed Oil
Mushrooms
Last year I was foraging for wild mushrooms at various forests in a different Kanton(state). The forests there are abundant in diverse biomes, which become habitat to delicious fungi fruit bodies during the mushroom seasons. I assume that the region must contain vast mycelial networks. Only learning the differences in fungi recently, I began to understand how to distinguish them from each other when determining mushrooms.
Saprotrophic Fungi
Are decomposers that grow on decaying wood, leaf, sticks, logs and have the ability to break down plant cell wall compounds.Parasitic Fungi
They grow on or within living substrates at the expense of their host organisms. Such as living trees, plants, animals etc.Mycorrhizal Fungi
Mycorrhizal fungi co-inhabit the rhizosphere and form mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships with plants. Plants use sunlight in exchange for water and other minerals to create energy in the form of sugars.
The Hunt
I was Hanging out with @tandava this weekend, with whom I was foraging last year. Having been on several mushroom excursions out in that region where she resides on previous occasions, I was eager to get back out there. Last year she was able to give me in depth experience mapping the area on foot. I think the passion for these fruit bodies seems to be rubbing off on many of my friends since last year. I ow much of what I learned from mushroom hunters to two of my friends from a valley close to a place I call Star Mountain (Sternenberg). I also found a giant Boletus mushroom there and these forests literally have places that resemble an alien planet out of a science fiction novel. I scouted these regions several times earlier. This was north east from where I am.
Now south west from where I am, I passed a little stream close to where @tandava lived this winter and was certain to find morels there this spring.
This weekend we basically walked straight to the stream and noticed the ramsons that smelled epic.
On the other side I came across some Exidia Recisa, Witches Butter aka amber jelly roll. It's a common wood rotting species. Rich in iron and polysaccharides, I knew that they were edible, but didn't have a strong taste and took on the flavour with whatever you cooked it with.
Morels
Morels are actually Ascomycetes that produce Ascocarps with Apothecia and actually don't classify as mushrooms, but I guess we all know them as mushrooms?
How do you find Morels?
I have been scouting potential places since last year and guessing where to find them. I knew that morels grow close to water streams, rivers and around blooming elm in spring in my region. This is around April/May where I live.
Since large elm trees have their buds really high up, here's an image of a blooming bud I found online:
Additional tree genus amongst which you could find morels are American Elm, Tulip Poplar, White Ash, Slippery Elm, Sycamore, Green Ash, Apple, Bitternut Hickory and Black Cherry. It's good to learn the structure of the bark and other surrounding plants to help identify the Biosphere. It's advisable to remember the plants that grow in association with the trees where you found morels previously and apply this when scouting for new locations.
After scouting this area around the stream for an hour, we found around 11-13 Morels there.
À La Cuisine
Pardon my french for in the kitchen
We checked our finds by laying it out on cloth:
I then closely inspected the mushrooms again before ingesting anything that could be potentially harmful or even poisonous.
I was quite sure about the morels to be honest, as it's hard to mistake them for anything else.
As you can see I could not stop my mind from already devouring it.
We cleaned off the Morels from insects and snails, making sure we don't cause any harm to any living creatures on these morels. I apologised internally for stealing their meal and @tandava was very gentle and provided them with a new home in a moist compost environment with plenty of other food. We had also done the same with the witches butter.
We made an asian style peanut butter, ginger garlic and soy sauce for the witches butter and added them. Cooked some savoy cabbage with water, a shot of vinegar and added some garlic. Then we cooked the morels with some more garlic and olive oil, added herbs and then mixed it with the cabbage. We also cooked some quinoa separately.
We then topped the asian style dish with some red onion.
Et Voila:
Here are all my previous recipes, in case you feel like trying something else:
'She did not understand the concept of scarcity. She thought there were unlimited amount of bitcoins' - @yangyanje
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Hello @yangyanje It is an interesting recipe, looks delicious. I wonder If all the ingredients you are using are easy to get here.
Nice photos too!
Shimozurdo my friend! Thanks for stopping by. Still getting familiar with this dapplr feed. I'm sure you can get amazing mushrooms in mexico?
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Yes @yangyanje the mushrooms are very common, but other species from India are not easy to come by.
We are back in hive!
Oh wow, it's so lush and green there and all those mushrooms and ramsons. The climate os so different here, we do get some mushrooms but not in abundance. Hence why I want to create a mushroom farm, that's the vision that I am working on now.
Love the food you created also, always great to connect with you @yangyanje, much love my friend xxx
My dear friend, wild and free soul. Always so happy when you stop by :) Wow! A mushroom farm sounds really amazing. A friend of mine wanted to cultivate the spores and do that in the forest close to his house as a project too. I'd love to read about your mushroom project. I try to find these oasis's, but it really depends on where one is here unfortunately. There are these really nice Biospheres and rare rhizospheres, but a lot of farmers elsewhere get chemicals on tax subsidies. One can see it on fields when the flowers are just yellow and white. I came across a really old tree here once. That's when I realised that trees are often felled below a hundred year age. Switzerland has been using some pesticides that aren't even allowed around the European Union apart from prophylactic antibiotics for their feedstock. Manure full of Antibiotic Resistant Genes(ARG's) seems to be more important ensuring potable water for future generations. Since Switzerland isn't a part of the European Union, they can get away with it. With all these chemical companies lined up close to Basel, I wonder if they mind sending it all down to Rotterdam. Currently the political situation is quite disturbing since the government has a pharmaceutical lobby dominating majority farmer votes by making them dependent on chemicals. They are lead to believe that they will have better yields. Billions that could be spent on organic farming. Our alternative could be to get Billions in tax payers money go into strictly organic farming.
great post, thank you. i'm in appalachia right now and never found morels but plenty of ramps this year!
Appreciate you stopping by a lot. I just went over to your profile and gave you a follow. Awesome post on Yaupon Holly foraging. I wonder how it tastes.
It tastes more like green tea than Yerba mate, and it depends on how long you steep and if you roast the plant first
Awesome post! I'm jealous of the morels, I've been hunting for weeks and haven't found any (yet). I'll try checking more along steams like you meention in your post. Thanks for the tip!
Been very lucky around older elm trees. I am sure you will find some. There needs to be quite a bit of moisture. I am trying to find some in my area now and it's a bit of a challenge, since it's more densely populated and therefore the hot spots have probably already been picked. Finding new spots does take a bit of scouting.
I'm sure most of the hot spots around here have been picked over as well. I've also heard that morels grow well on land that was burned 1-2 years prior, so I'll be checking some nature preserves where they use controlled burns to manage vegetation too. Even if I don't find any this year, I'm enjoying the walks at least.
Wow.... great foraging post. This reminds me of my recent herping with my friend.
Thanks for stopping by. Did you find any creepers? I took a spider home once in spring and it grew huge after eating all the flies. I wonder to date if it really was the same one. I think one should pay close attention what one brings home. I heard they found an alligator in Paris once. Probably was someones Pet when it was little?
When i went for herping, i was so fortunate enough to see a wayanad gecko. It is only known from 2 locations in kerala, Wayanad and Silent Valley national park.
Fantastic foraging post. I wish I had a friend who would take me mushroom hunting. I am told there's something known as 'Chicken of the Woods' and was wondering if it's that giant one you're holding in the first shroom picture?
I didn't know ground elder was edible either! I've always known it to be poisonous. I know the wood is not good for burning as it lets out many toxins.
Back to those morels though, they look fab and the food you cooked looks delicious. 💚🤗
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@holisticmom Thanks for your awesome comment. Always happy to share a mushroom hunting experience with responsible enthusiasts that respect the forests. That giant one I was holding is a Boletus. A regular porcini mushroom.
You mean the polyporous sulphureus, laetiporus sulphureus or chicken of the woods. I actually found that growing on an older pear tree. It's a saprophytic/saprotrophic fungi. It's also considered slightly parasitic or called weak parasitic. It's pretty easy to spot and to come by and very hard to mistake for another one once you know how to identify it, due to it's almost neon color when fresh and it's structure on the bottom side. I cooked it for some friends and it tasted intriguingly similar to chicken breast, depending on the way I cooked it.
Some of my friends would have this astounded facial expression and another would say: 'See, Nature is full of surprises?'
Another yet replied: 'It's so rich, everything exists'
Chicken of the Woods grows around July/August already and is best harvested when it's bright, shiny, young and fresh.
I looked through my photo library and found chicken of the woods that wasn't fresh or edible anymore just for documentation purposes. I actually ate quite a bit of it last year. Some older friends of mine had problems to digest it. It's better not have too much in the evening. Specially not ideal for senior citizens. I never had any complaints.
Ground elder is edible and pretty healthy. It contains iron, magnesium and vitamin c.
Oh awesome, thank you so much for this fabulous information. You are very knowledgeable. For now, I am too frightened to pick even a field mushroom haha just in case. I guess these things take time and experience.
I will save that photo to give me some guidance on what to look for come August. I am intrigued to try it.
There's plenty of ground elder springing up at the moment so I may grab some and give it a try.
Thanks for the speedy reply. Hugs x