Wild mushrooms. Photo: Jasmine&Roses, Flickr

• Fungal foraging through the forest with "mushroom man" Benjamin Maleson.
• Get your taste buds ready -- the Wine Bottega is now hosting Wine 101 lessons on the first Thursday of every month.
• After a cold June, local raspberries are finally hitting the farmstands.
• Loving wit -- that is, wit beer: which varieties you should look out for, and how it almost disappeared.
• A Q&A with chef and food coach German Lam.
• Sunbutter -- made of roasted sunflower seeds -- is a way for kids to still bring some "PB" & J to school, plus insulated lunch bags, bakery cookie dough and fruit sauce pouches.
• The challenge of getting breakfast in your kid's belly, how to sass up the breakfast routine and teaching good food habits.
• Newbury Street's Pazzo is still working out the kinks, but has some notable fare to bite into.
• Recipes: Raspberry Shortcakes, Pasta Pie, Breakfast Bars, Crepe Roll-Ups, Breakfast Burrito, Smoked Turkey and Cheddar Biscuits, Muenster Cristos, Brown-Rice Fried Rice with Ham and Eggs, Whole-wheat Pancakes, Basil-Crusted Cod with Tomato Fonduta

While I was on the mushroom foray with the Maine Mycological Association last week I was on the lookout for several mushrooms that are easy to identify and always edible and safe. Ones where i couldn't screw up and poison myself. Sure, most inedible or poisonous mushrooms will only make you sick, or wish you were dead. very few are toxic and will kill you. But being conservative in my mushroom foraging is smart, and I recommend to everyone not to eat a mushroom, even if you are 99% sure it's safe. You have to KNOW 100%, preferably with an expert helping you positively identify a type the first few times.

That said, there are a few mushrooms that are so unique, safe, edible, and good; that even a newbie can approach them with a large degree of certainty. But even in these cases I can only be responsible for myself. So please educate yourself and go mushroom hunting with those who are experienced. Or else just pick, identify, but don't eat.

One type of mushroom that is easy to identify is the Puffball. There are quite a few types, but if you have a guide you can pretty easily tell which are which. When immature or mature they are round balls anywhere from 1/2" to a foot or more in the case of the Giant Puffball, Calvatia gigantea. The Giant Puffball has even been known to grow much larger and a huge blob five feet and 55 pounds is on record. I found some small Pear Puffballs on my foray, and someone found a 6" Giant Puffball and were kind enough to give me half. Just remember that there are some types of poisonous puffballs out there, and that immature Amanita's can look like a puffball from the outside. Although if you cut them in half you can see that the Amanita has the outline of the developing mushroom, but a puffball is solid white all the way through.

In the second part of this series I showed you photos and identified a few of the mushrooms we found during a short walk in the woods with the Maine Mycological Association. We collected a few specimens and took them back with us for when the group met as a whole. Everyone else had collected a few samples of interesting mushrooms as well, and we laid them out on two picnic tables. All told there were around a hundred or more different types of mushrooms collected in a forty minute foray. I was completely amazed at all the mushrooms that were found in just one park.

Wild Mushroom photo gallery A


One of the mushrooms names, and looks, as well as other attributes became permanently burned into my mind, and nose. This is the Stinky Squid, Pseudocolus schellenbergiae. It has an absolutely fetid, disgusting, odor that reminds you of rotting squid guts. Actually, fermented squid guts don't smell anywhere near as bad. trust me, I've eaten them many times. But you couldn't get me to even think about getting a Stinky Squid mushroom near my nose, let alone mouth. They can be smelled many feet, sometimes yards away. It is not recommended to try to eat a Stinky Squid mushroom. Repeat, it is not recommended to try to eat a Stinky Squid mushroom. It is of the Stinkhorn family of mushrooms, all of which, stink. For many of the Stinkhorn family it is not known if they are edible. I guess no one was brave enough to get past their odor. Smart. I placed the Stinky Squid first in the gallery below. Too bad we don't have Smell-o-rama available for our blog, but then again, maybe that's a good thing.

Wild Mushroom photo gallery B

The other day I spoke about my interest in wild mushrooms. I showed you photos of the patch of 'shrooms at my local post office, and how it made me want to find out more about the various fungi that have been popping up all over the area this summer. I pulled out my wild mushrooms guides and tried to identify which were which, and learned that mushrooming is a lot more difficult to do safely than I realized. Also my guide books all seem to be a bit on the old side, with the newest two published in 1980 and 1981. So I ordered several brand new ones including the Audubon guide, Petersons guide, and others. But I didn't want to wait for them to arrive, so I contacted the Maine Mycological Association (MMA) and got a calender of events so I could forage for wild mushrooms with a group of experienced hunters.

I arrived early at the meeting spot in a park a half hour drive away on the Sunday of the MMA foray, and chatted with the 4-5 people who were there. Soon more people arrived, and more, and more. In all there were around fifty avid mushroomers gathered to gather. I immediately attached myself to the the assistant of the expert organizing the foray, and along with two others we headed into the trails through the woods.

I am going to let the photo galleries tell the story. The abundance of mushrooms, with their colors, shapes, and sizes, was amazing. We only walked through the woods for around 30-40 minutes and saw so many different types. I didn't have the time or inclination to identify all of them at the time, as I was so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information. I was focused on hearing what the experts had to say, and taking photos. I will try to identify as many as possible from their photos and list them in the galleries, but many times the only way to get a strong identification is to actually have the mushroom in front of you. Let these photos be an introduction to the myriad of mushrooms hiding out in the woods and fields all around us.

Wild Mushroom Photo Gallery A- The first 15 minutes of our foray.

As I've mentioned before, up here in Maine has been the wettest summer I have ever experienced. Until the past few days it has been overcast and rainy every day for 41 days, with only two semi-clear ones to break up the wet. I've been feeling like a mushroom at times and even wondered if fungus was going to start growing here and there on me. Over the past month I've been watching the local post office, not for mail, but for 'shrooms; which grow there in plenty.

One day I noticed a few white mushrooms, then the next a few orange ones joined them, then some yellowish brown ones joined the party. And a heck of a party it is, I pulled out my mushroom field guides and tried to identify them. I got so caught up it this that I contacted the Maine Mycological Association and got their calender of events. After messing around for a few days with the post office 'shrooms I joined them for a foray into the woods, chasing the wild mushroom. I'll tell you more about that mushroom foray in part two of this series.

I have always been fascinated by wild mushrooms. My dad talked about going mushrooming in the forest when he was a boy growing up in Europe. My mother avidly craves mushrooms, but never went mushrooming herself. Both my mom and dad warned me repeatedly about how unsafe it is and so I guess it stuck. I never did more than buy field guides about mushrooms, which I barely cracked open until this week. This is strange because I am a fanatic about foraging for wild edible and medicinal plants. I have a M.Ed in Outdoor Education, am a licensed wilderness guide, and an Outward Bound Instructor. When I was out in the wilderness I tried to live of the land as much as I could and constantly studied about wild edible and medicinal plants.

I purchased a bag of morel powder during the last day of the Portland Farmer's Market. I asked the adorably wizened man working the mushroom booth what should be done with the stuff. His eyes lit up and he suggested everything from sprinkling it in risotto and soups to rubbing it onto salmon for a particularly Northwest treat.

I'd like to add it to some dish to complement my aforementioned holiday ham. I've been mulling over the possibility of a nice potato gratin with plenty of half-and-half, a lot of minced garlic, salt, pepper and morel powder. When should I mix it in? How much should I use? Or do you have other ideas on what to do with this treasure?

[Photo Sarah Gilbert]