Re: Shrroooms.
morf13 wrote:How do you know they aren't poisonous?
Ah..just eaten it.
Just kidding...parasol, the big one, I had put quickly to the pan with some eggs and flour around it..delicious. One looked slightly different (no hub in the middle) so I put it away. Parasol also have a movable ring on the shaft and don't get reddish when e.g. cut a small piece off from it. The bay boletus' sponge even gets immediately blue - looks super weird - after being touched, both the sponge and the meat. The blue color gets away after a few minutes, ending up in wonderful brown/white slices for future pasta dishes. Dried it in the oven, however the mushrooms get down to 10% of its original size, hope it will get big again when adding some water/milk. The forest 'champignons' are patterned towards the outside, also quite easy to identify, and grow in masses (supertasty with eg. Gnocchi).
Nevertheless I went to the official inspection bureau, such office should exist in any bigger town, to verify if poisonous or not. All other mushrooms were rather uneatable, I even had one or two poisonous in my basket. One gleamed slightly green ('death cap'), the other one was a 'fly agaric'. Here in Vienna they do check it for free.
Basically I can say (after this first mushroom rush) that you can forget all the mushrooms which look exotic (nice to look at), are small (not enough food from it) and those of which you find only one or few standing around (not enough either, possibly exotic/poisonous). So it's better to let those in the forest but to focus on those big ones of which you can get a nice amount of it. Those I eat, the others not, after having them identified, of course. Next time I will bring all, not only samples, to the inspection office before eating them
Another 'risk', btw, are the wild pigs. With 300-500 lbs. and 30-40 miles an hour, an angry sow protecting their babies can get you into serious trouble. They sometimes hide only a few yards away from hiking trails and usually stay there. However, if you go into the coppice you might meet some, which could be a surprise on both sides as their hewers can measure up to 8 inch. They do not wince at eating human intestines, btw, although this wouldn't happen too often. Questionable if such a mushroom collector would ever be found. I actually heard some grunting, loud as a barking dog, with sort of a deep animalistic aggressive tone in it..not like the giggling one of house pigs. They do eat fly agaric's for breakfast, btw. Guess big daddy heard me coming and made his statement. After a while (not seeing them inside an open forest) I decided to get closer and came to some small water/river but they had been on the other side up on a hill, where I did decide to not go. So I kept my intestines working quite well, so far. Porcinos not found at all, btw.
Best place to search for mushrooms is an area of cultivated spruces, about 30 feet high, with lots of needles on the floor and less undergrowth plants.
Parasol
Bay boletus
Champignon
QT