a mushroom winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by my wee giveaway.  The stories, anecdotes, and recipes you shared really knocked my socks off.  I loved reading each of them.

Many of you talked about family trips to the woods to look for mushrooms and I love that.  That's a memory I'm trying to create with my own children.  I remember finding a giant puffball in jr. high that was large enough to let everyone in our school have a piece of it.  Our science teacher cooked it up in butter and it tasted like french toast.  It wasn't until I was past the teenage years though that I got really interested in mushrooms.  It started with a few morels I found while walking with my dog.  I went home, identified them, cooked them up and that was the beginning for me.

One of you had a question for me and that was, how do I know which mushrooms are okay to eat and which are to be used for dyeing.  First let me say that I only eat mushrooms that I can positively identify.  There's a tendency to want to identify something as the edible you're searching for, but that urge must be resisted.  Only eat something you can positively identify.  When it doubt, throw it out.  Check the shape, size, color, spore color, habitat, season, everything before you commit to eating it.  When starting out eating wild mushrooms it's nice to start with those that don't have any poisonous look-alikes.  There are a lot of good books on mushrooms and I usually tote my guide book from the National Audubon Society out in the woods with me.  There is also a lot of good information online.  David Fischer's "basics" page is a great place to start.

As for mushrooms that are good for dyeing, there are books out on this subject but I haven't gotten any yet.  My experiments with dyeing are largely just that, experiments.  Last year when I noticed that the rotting Lobster mushrooms were giving off a red color I was curious if they were used for dyeing and searched online for the answer.  Just in the past few weeks a similar search led me to Shroomworks' blog which is a helpful and interesting read.

I hope that helps a bit.

Now on to other business...(drumroll please)...the winner of the wee mushroom scene is

Marilyn!
from Room on the Left

Congrats, Marilyn! You'll be receiving an email from me shortly.

Thanks again to all of you that took the time to leave your comments.  I wish I had a mushroom to give each of you.

Have a great Tuesday.