I love spending time with my family in the nature. You have clean air, organic food just in front of you and you do sports.
I am teaching my 4 years old son about forest, hills, wild berries and wild mushrooms. With wild mushrooms will be a long teaching process. He needs to learn to identify the edible ones from the non-edible ones, and that takes time and practice.
When we are in the forest I show him different types of flowers, bugs, moss, trees, butterflies and others. We learn to respect and take care of our forests. My parents taught me about wild mushrooms a long time ago and now is time to teach my son or anyone who wants to learn.
I always enjoyed collecting wild mushrooms. I took my son when he was 6 months old and he loved the experience. Now I go in the forest with my son, my big camera with my macro lens and take photos of all the mushrooms I see, edible or not. We have also 2 baskets that keep our mushrooms whole and some recipients for wild berries.
You need to learn about mushrooms in the forest, not on the internet. You need to smell them, touch them and look at them from all the angles.
There are some rules when you go collecting mushrooms:
- If you are not sure about a mushroom don’t take it. It’s better to be safe than sorry. If you decide to take it, because you have a person home who knows better, put it in a different basket.
- You don’t get sick from touching a toxic mushrooms, so you can touch it, but be careful not to touch your eyes or mouth.
- Smell the mushrooms. The edible ones have a distinct smell. Toxic ones tend to have a powerful smell.
- If you found snails on a mushroom then is an edible one. This is only for the mushrooms you know there are edible but you are not so sure.(I ate and I am still eating mushrooms with snails or worms inside. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. It’s not a must.)
- Buy a regional filed guide to learn what mushrooms grow wild near you, check a botanical atlas or internet or ask a person who knows about mushrooms.
- Pick only whole, firm and fresh mushrooms.
Don’t eat them raw. Boiled them once or twice and change the water every time. Just to be safe. If you eat them for the first time could be difficult to digest or you could be allergic to them. If they have worms put them for 1 hour in the water. The worms will come out. (This is because of rain.)
I am 100% sure about a few mushrooms and are the only ones that I collect. I know some are edible, but I never tried them. Still there is time. Each country or region of the country have different mushrooms, so you need to be aware of that.
Those are the ones that I always collect:
- Boletus edulis
- Gyromitra esculenta
- Armillaria mellea
- Lactarius deterrimus
- Lactarius deliciosus
- Suillus tomentosus