I'll second that, Scafool. Mushrooms are some of the most useful wild edibles (in temperate woodland at least). I grew up in a family where gathering mushrooms has a long tradition that goes further back than anyone can remember. It actually takes very little effort to learn the basics - how to identify several of the most common edible species and which ones to avoid at all cost. But this is one thing that can't be learned from a book and it's highly location-specific. You need some hands-on guidance and a bit of practice.

Pick only those mushrooms you're totally sure about and you'll be fine. I've eaten plenty of mushrooms in my time, can't say I'm a big fan but they're a decent source of food. Too bad they tend to grow only in specific locations. Also, the weather has to be just right, warm and wet.

Maybe he thought the mushrooms were of the magic variety. There will be Gnomes running around under his hospital bed right now..

"Maybe he thought the mushrooms were of the magic variety".


That brought back a flashback of "magical" proportions

Mike

i've had several common types of mushroom and found them to be fine cooked as a add-on to a meal..chicken of the woods is a yellow shelf mushroom thats nice fried in butter,same with inky caps before they get "inky" puffballs the same,fried but they need to be young,morels are found on canoe trips and go with lake trout..what i don't eat are mushrooms that look like the ones you get in stores as there are a few that without doing spore prints and such can cause nasty reactions.i would not eat any mushroom in a survival situation,in fact i don't think i would eat any wild plant.

Mushrooms may have a few nutrients, but their calorie content is pretty low. Not much of an exchange in relation to the possible danger.

If you know nothing, then of course you risk everything eating foods unknown to you.

If you learn a few common edible mushrooms in your area and stick to them, then you can eliminate the danger at least as much as you can buying food at the supermarket.

If you find mushrooms a tasty addition to your food, then you can be ready when opportunity knocks.

Edit: Eliminate the stupidity not the mushrooms.

Sigh.

I don't like mushrooms, so I guess I'll have to stick with the stupidity. 8-)

It's not nearly so good in sauce.

My Great Uncle & Aunt would collect mushroom and bring a bag back for my Grandmother. She would put them aside. The next day she would call them up and ask, "How are you feeling today?" If they were okay, she would eat the mushrooms. To my knowledge they never had any trouble during everal decades of collcting.

BTW, a great identification book for the Northeast is George Baron's Mushrooms of Northeast North America: Midwest to New England. Beautiful book that's well orgaized for easy idenfication and is loaded with wonderful photos that mak basic identification easy, although I would not recomnd using it as way to entify whether or not a species is edible. I, like others here, caution against samply shrooms unless one has been trained properly. He also has a website, http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gbarron/index.htm. Another interesting website is Tom Volk's Fungi.

BTW, the link to George Barron's book takes you to my Amazon affiliates page. I get a small portion of any sale as store credit. But I'm not offering the link as a way to promote myself (I have yet to sell any product because I don't promote it!), but rather to point out the links in the upper right corner under Browse By Category. This will open pages that list various nature books and field guides I have read and would recommend to fiends and Scouts. In fact, all of the books are in a large tool chest library that I haul to Scout outings to teach for advancement and merit badges. I would welcome any recommendations on other books that could be added to my "library."

Gotta watch out even if you know exactly what you're doing. I read an article a long time ago about a family from Korea who moved to the US. They found what they thought were some of their favorite mushrooms growing wild, picked them and cooked them up. Almost wiped out the entire family.

My grandfather used to pick mushrooms, I regret not asking him to teach me.