Mushrooms

Chanterelle Ice Cream

September 25, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

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.

…

Chanterelle Risotto

September 25, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

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.

…

Foraging and Using Chaga Mushroom

September 24, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

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.

…

Foraging Shaggy Mane Mushrooms

September 21, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

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.

…

Foraging Chanterelle Mushrooms

July 1, 2018 by Ashley Adamant 1 Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

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.

…

Foraging Reishi Mushrooms

June 21, 2018 by Ashley Adamant 7 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

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.

…

Morel Mushrooms: How to Find and Identify Morels

April 14, 2018 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

There are so many reasons to love morel mushrooms. They’re widespread, easy to identify and tasty. Morels sell for roughly $20 per pound fresh or around $15 an ounce dried, so there’s good reason to hunt for your own. Most morels pop up in the early spring, giving you a good excuse to get outside and observe the world as it wakes up from a long winter of hibernation.

…

How to Make a Reishi Mushroom Tincture

December 26, 2017 by Ashley Adamant 15 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

The term “medicinal mushroom” used to draw snickers and knowing glances, but these days science is recognizing legitimate medicinal uses for mushrooms. Reishi mushrooms have been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine, and western science is just beginning to explore their many uses.

Medicinal mushrooms such as reishi, chaga, maitake, turkey tail and shiitake contain both water-soluble components, known as polysaccharides, and alcohol-soluble components known as triterpenes. For this reason, medicines made from reishi mushrooms often include a double extraction. This two-step process combines alcohol and water extracts to maximize the medicinal benefits.

Reishi Mushroom Tincture infusing in a mason jar.

…

How to Grow Shiitake Mushrooms

November 26, 2017 by Ashley Adamant 1 Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

Shiitake mushrooms are a great place to start for the beginning mushroom cultivator. They’re easy to identify, and simple to grow.

They also have a relatively high market value, both fresh and dried, which means that they make a good addition to your farmer’s market table.

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

…

Growing Oyster Mushrooms with a Kit

August 23, 2017 by Ashley Adamant Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure here.

If you’re just getting started growing mushrooms, I highly recommend growing your first batch from a kit. They’re generally fool proof, and you’ll be able to see the stages of mushroom growth so that you can recognize them later on if you choose to continue cultivating mushrooms.

If you’re growing mushrooms with kids, it’s especially helpful to start with a kit because your first fruiting bodies will develop in as little as 1-2 weeks, keeping the kids interest and attention through the entire process.

There are a number of different companies that produce oyster mushroom kits. Try this one. Or this one. Or any of these. I’ve chosen one from Back to the Roots because they’re well established company that produces a lot of kits per year.

…

Mushrooms

Footer

Amazon Disclosure