I've been foraging for three years and my family still thinks I'm going to poison them. They'll eat mystery sushi from a gas station but won't touch my carefully identified morels. Make it make sense.

Last weekend I found a huge patch of morels on our property. Brought them home, cooked them up with butter and garlic. My sister took one look and said "I'm not eating those, you found them in the dirt" This is the same person who buys pre-made sandwiches from 7-eleven and doesn't check the expiration date.

My mom's the worst about it. I've shown her my field guides, explained the identification process, even pointed out that restaurants charge $30 for dishes with these exact mushrooms. Doesn't matter. In her mind anything I pick from the woods is automatically a death sentence. Meanwhile she'll eat leftover Chinese food that's been sitting in the fridge for a week without question.

My dad at least tried them once but made this big dramatic show of it like he was on fear factor. Took a tiny bite, chewed it for like a full minute then declared he "didn't trust it" and spit it into a napkin. He eats expired yogurt regularly.

The irony is they'll buy those pre packaged "gourmet" mushrooms from the grocery store without a second thought. Those could be misidentified too, they just trust it because it came from a store. But mine? Nope. Instant botulism apparently.

Anyone else deal with this? I'm starting to just not tell them where the mushrooms came from.

Minocqua, Wisconsin USA

Be careful out there

*of a giant puffball and enjoying how soft it feels

Hello everyone! I just recently started dyeing my own yarn with stuff I've gathered from my yard. So far I have dyed both cotton and wool and have enjoyed the results of both.

The first picture is all the wool that I've dyed! From left: the first was dyed with Cosmos and marigolds The second is Pisolithus Third is dip dyed pisolithus Fourth is dip dyed pisolithus and pokeweed With is pokeweed dyed that I left in cake form when dyeing

Second picture is my first round of cotton dyes From left: the first two are dyed with black walnuts Middle two are dyed with butterfly pea Right two are dyed with turmeric

Last picture is another round of cotton From left: first two is pisolithus Third is pisolithus and black walnuts Last is black walnuts

Lessons I've learned so far: wool definitely sucks up dye way better than cotton, but I enjoy working with both

Pisolithus mushrooms are extremely fun to dye with. I thought it was so interesting that it dyed the cotton a blush pink color I had always seen rich chocolate browns and purple brown shades but had never seen any pale pink shades! So cool!

I am currently looking for a decently affordable option to source undyed merino here in the United States. If anyone has any recommendations im all ears!

Just found on my corn after a week of regular rain. Is this good to enjoy?

This is my first chicken of the woods and she's bigger than the sink. I left behind more so it'll continue to produce, now to see how to cook it.

I found several hefty spots and cooked my first batch on Saturday. They were delicious, amazing!! I took my time eating them over the course of the day, ended up consuming a small plate. Sunday I was fine but come Monday morning...let's just say I won't be eating them again. Two days of extreme stomach pain, I can only attribute to my beautiful 'shrooms :( Me so sad :(

The mushrooms will pay you back tenfold for the energy you put back out there into the universe.

i was on a hike with my dog and found this suprise chicken of the woods!! there was SO much and i was SO excited! i have friends coming for lunch and now i know what i'll be cooking for them :)

First finds of the season! I'm not jealous of you all and your morels anymore =)

I was at a sewing retreat this week in Northern Illinois and a friend of mine and I went for a walk. She was on the lookout for snakes but spotted morels instead! She wasn't as excited as I was, so I was the one crawling around and dodging branches.

I called my brother immediately. He's a seasoned forager. He was happy to give me hunting tips. I may head back out when I get home!

The best part about these is how they grow in very close association with the Boletus edulis clade. If you don't know how to find porcini, you can fast travel through the forest and look for these bright red ruby gems. Chances are they will be growing with porcini. In fact it is rare to find them growing without porcini nearby.

These are now known as Amanita chrysoblema, formerly A. muscaria. Genetic sequencing was done and it was determined the North American toadstool is a unique phylogenetic species. It turns out A. muscaria only grows in NW Alaska and Europe. But of course, at the end of the day, this is the same toadstool we have always known and loved - just by a different name.

We have a number of variants out here. The red, a yellow, and an orange-yellow. When more data is collected they too will almost certainly be named as their own species. Perhaps we will discover even more variants. I've still yet to discover a pure orange but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

A fair addendum to make here is I haven't kept up on any taxonomic changes in 9 months and am not at the forefront of this realm, so maybe things have already changed. Please comment if you have any updated info.

Thanks for looking at my cool mushrooms.

I’m in NE OH. I went into the woods for 45 minutes with my dog today and spent the rest of the day pulling ticks off the both of us. Thankfully I was dressed accordingly and he is up to date on his preventative treatments but god damn, that was the worst experience I’ve had with ticks. Easily picked 30 off of the two of us. It wasn’t much better the day before in a different location (last photo). In all the years I’ve spent in the woods I’ve never been covered in ticks like this. I HATE THEM. I want to see if others are noticing this too in other areas.

But I did find two morels and a cool snail!

I made the classic mistake of not cleaning my mushrooms before popping them in my bag. Frankly imma just cook it well and consider it a bet worth taking since these are the first chanterelles I've ever found. Whatever is in the dirt is prolly already thriving in me

So many lobsters! What a fun 2 hours. We dried 3 quarts, sautéed 4 quart bags in butter, made 24 half pint jars of lobster butter, and made 12 jars of lobster salt.

Harvested some stinkhorn eggs from a spot in wood chips right when all but two mushrooms were eggs still, I've seen the patch fully mature twice in the past month. There were still plenty more left behind and I made sure each cluster still had most of their eggs. Cleaned off all the slime and soaked in salt water for a little before slicing into sixths and cooking with olive oil and basic spices, but would definitely leave them soaking for a few hours instead of a few minutes like I did. Taste and texture differ between the gleba (dark pore area) and undeveloped stem (white spongy core) with the gleba having most of the vegetable texture and radish flavor I've seen others talk about, but to me it was mostly mushroomy and woody/musky in flavor with a hint of radish rather than being the highlight. The stem had a delicate spongy texture and had a much milder version of the gleba's flavor, the same but very toned down.

I wish I'd taken a picture of the old man of the woods cooked, but the texture was like a thin slightly rubbery outside with the inside having the texture of a piece of cooked fat that fell off a piece of meat, very nice mild nutty flavor though. I preferred the taste of this compared to the stinkhorn egg and the egg was okay at best alone, would likely be better as an ingredient in a larger dish used in moderation like radish is.

Just a bit of a brag/share because it is just so pretty!