Mushrooms

How to Grow Shiitake Mushrooms

November 6, 2018 by Ashley Adamant 1 Comment

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Growing shiitake mushrooms is the perfect way to get started with homegrown mushrooms. Shiitakes are incredibly easy to grow, which makes them a perfect beginners mushroom. For the more experienced mushroom cultivator, there’s often far more demand than supply, which means they’re a good addition to your farmers market table. A high price tag at the store means that growing shiitake mushrooms pays back quickly, especially since it only takes a small investment to get started.

Our very first shiitake mushroom growing out of a sugar maple log.

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Foraging Puffball Mushrooms

October 20, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

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Years of mushroom foraging under my belt and I’ve still never seen a giant puffball mushroom. I keep hearing they’re everywhere, and I know that they’re one of the “foolproof four” easiest to identify mushrooms along with chicken of the woods, shaggy mane and morels. Easy to identify and even easier to spot can only get you so far, if there just aren’t any nearby.

While giant puffball mushrooms may be the most famous, there are dozens of edible species of puffball mushrooms and they’re all just as easy to identify.

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Foraging Witches Butter Mushroom

October 11, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

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There aren’t that many mushrooms you can forage year round, but orange witches butter will pop out of softwood logs any day of the year. That includes -20 days right in the middle of our zone 4 Vermont winter. While it may not taste like much, it is edible, and it’s a year-round survival food. Witches butter mushrooms are also medicinal, and they’ve been shown to have anti-tumor properties, as well as potential to treat certain respiratory conditions.

large witches butter mushroom on cut hemlock log ((Dacrymyces palmatus)

A large orange jelly fungus (Dacrymyces palmatus) growing out of the cut end of a downed hemlock log.

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Chicken of the Woods Mushroom Recipes

September 28, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

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Chicken of the Woods mushrooms are incredibly common in the woods, and they’re commonly found at farmers markets and specialty stores. Wild mushrooms are only just beginning to become a part of American culinary traditions, and it can be tricky to find chicken of the woods recipes.

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Chanterelle Ice Cream

September 25, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

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Chanterelles have a fruity aroma and a mild taste that’s just as at home in a savory risotto as a sweet treat. I’ve candied them, made them into a cheesecake and finally homemade chanterelle ice cream.

Years ago, if you told me mushroom ice cream was delicious, I would have been skeptical. That was until I smelled fresh chanterelles. True chanterelles have a fruity aroma, a bit like fresh cider or apricots, and they don’t taste anything like the store bought button mushrooms most people know. Chanterelle ice cream is mild, fruity and downright wonderful.

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Chanterelle Risotto

September 25, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

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Chanterelle risotto is the perfect fall weather comfort food. The richness of a simple risotto is brightened by the fruity flavors of chanterelles, leaving you with a dish suited for a fancy first date. Or in my case, a much-needed weeknight dinner “date” with my husband, toddlers in tow. The little ones were so excited about their dinner, that we ate in blissful silence…and that’s all this mama could ask for.

Chanterelles are usually a summertime treat, where the delicate and fruity flavors combine well with sweet corn, apricots and other warm-weather fare. We forage chanterelles on our land in early August, and they’re long gone before the weather turns cold and I’m craving risotto. This year, I ran across yellow foot chanterelles at the farmers market on the first day of fall, right alongside the apples and cider. These fragrant, late-season mushrooms are perfect for chanterelle risotto.

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Foraging and Using Chaga Mushroom

September 24, 2018 by Ashley Adamant 2 Comments

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Chaga mushrooms are a centuries-old wild foraged remedy for everything from high blood pressure to cancer. They fetch a high price in stores or online, but they’re a common, easy to identify mushroom that grows all over the world. It’s most commonly found on white and yellow birch trees, and once you’ve found a stand of birch there’s a good chance it contains Chaga mushrooms.

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Foraging Shaggy Mane Mushrooms

September 21, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

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Shaggy Mane mushrooms (Coprinus comatus) are incredibly easy to identify, and a great choice for beginning foragers. They’re one of the “foolproof four” or the four most easily identified mushrooms, along with chicken of the woods, giant puffballs and morels. Also known as lawyer’s wig because they look a bit like the old school wigs used in historical courtrooms. They have only one common look alike, which is also edible, reducing the worry of harvesting the wrong species.

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Foraging Chanterelle Mushrooms

July 1, 2018 by Ashley Adamant 3 Comments

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Just after we moved to our land, a big group of our college friends came for a visit. We took them on a long walk through the woods, showing off our land like proud parents. Fresh eyes noticed a lot about our land that we hadn’t yet seen. One of our visitors kept saying, “Wow, you guys sure have a lot of orange mushrooms growing everywhere…” At that point, I’d never even heard of a chanterelle, let alone eaten one.

Later that week, we took them to the farmers market in town, and one of the vendors had a basket overflowing with those same orange mushrooms, labeled “wild foraged chanterelles ~ $25 per pound.”

Since then, we’ve paid a lot more attention to the mushroom life on our woodland homestead, and successfully identified a number of tasty mushrooms including reishi, morels and chaga. Like a first love, chanterelles still have my adoration.

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Foraging Reishi Mushrooms

June 21, 2018 by Ashley Adamant 10 Comments

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Reishi mushrooms are one of the easiest mushrooms to identify, and a great place to start for beginning mushroom foragers. They have no poisonous look-alikes, so they’re relatively safe as well. Though reishi are generally too tough to eat, their medicinal properties have been well documented.

Basket full of freshly harvested reishi mushrooms

Hemlock reishi harvested on the summer solstice in central Vermont.

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Mushrooms

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