#45 - Forage for Mushrooms

A few days ago, my friend Teddy sent me a picture of some mushrooms he'd foraged, and I thought, oh, I'll probably be at Teddy's house in about a week, so maybe he can take me to forage some mushrooms, so I can check this off my list and eat some delicious mushrooms.

I'll be at Teddy's in 2 days, but right now, I'm staying with my parents. Today, I found my dad working in the yard, and he says, "Hey, you've gotta see this."

He takes me near the back of their yard, and there's a tree ringed with mushrooms. I ran to get my phone to use the Seek app (which you can use to identify flora and fauna) to see if it would recognize them (as it often doesn't work well with fungi). It identified the fungi as golden oyster mushrooms.

So then, I went to my computer to see what I could learn about golden oyster mushrooms and any toxic look-a-likes. I confirmed they were, indeed, oyster mushrooms, likely golden oyster mushrooms, and it turns out, oyster mushrooms are delicious; golden oyster mushrooms are technically an invasive species, except that they don't seem to cause any harm and just feed on decomposing wood; and no look-a-likes are toxic--they just don't taste good.

I then went back to my dad and told him, "Well, good news: Those are golden oyster mushrooms, and we're going to eat them. Bad news: That tree they're growing around? It's dead."

So, when we fired up the grill for dinner, I went and cut a few off a few stems, went inside to wash them well (yes, I do usually actually wash my mushrooms, though I know some people say just to brush them. It really only adds like 1-2% more water to the mushroom, so not a huge deal, and these were covered in the type of tiny beetles that love oyster mushrooms, so I wanted to get them all off), and then sautéed them with some olive oil and salt.

They were delicious. And there are a ton more. I hope my parents actually eat them or they keep growing, so I can take a bunch back to Chicago with me on my way home!

What a surprise to be able to check this off my list today!