wrote:
Precisely. Vegetable sheeps' eyes, but with little flavour.

I think if i were eating something described as sheeps eyes I would be hugley grateful
for the least flavour possible

kay wrote in
:
I was curious that several readers commented "why take the risk when you
can buy them from the supermarket?"

And probably don't realise that blewits, which I have
seen in Waitrose, are marked "do not eat raw" because
they contain haemolytic compounds that are inactivated
by cooking.

Either they go to a much more
interesting supermarket than I do, or they are unaware of the different
flavours of mushrooms.

Well, most of them aren't really worth it,
but some are definitely delicious. My favourites
include lactarius deliciosus, sparassis crispa,
laetiporus suplhureus, auricularia auricula,
macrolepiota procera, hygrophoropsis aurantica

You, like Mr Whisperer, were suffering from not understanding the level of your own ignorance.

Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier to mistake for something else.

You said "looked like a small field mushroom" - there you are, with your word "small" you already had an indication it wasn't quite right. With fungi, especially mushrooms, you don't eat anything that has any indication it isn't quite right. Also, with mushrooms, it is essential to let them grow beyond baby form beacuse when they are baby ones you can't be sure they aren't something else, this is something you need to know about mushrooms. They also tend to be gregarious, so only one of them was also an indication of not quite right. Also field mushrooms tend to grow where livestock is kept, which is why they are called field mushrooms. Is there livestock in your garden? Probably not a field mushroom then, though not impossible, has been known. There are some mushrooms, though not field mushrooms, that are common on grass verges for example, though given what else lands on grass verges one is a little careful.

Yes there are some things that can grow in gardens that are edible, but there are rather more things that can grow in gardens that aren't. St Georges Mushrooms and some edible milk caps (most milk caps aren't) grow regularly in my garden, but in such small quantity I can't be bothered. I was bothered when some morels grew, as they are special, but that was a one-off associated with some bark mulch we put down. My parents' garden had some boletes, which no longer occur when they grassed that bit. It also had summer truffles for a few years. But most of what grew, russulas, amanitas, wax caps, etc, I wouldn't touch.

In article ,
echinosum wrote:

Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to
mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few
parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite
distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So
it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you
had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier
to mistake for something else.

Right. But I would NOT advise someone with that level of lack of
knowledge to eat parasols, because Amanitas (especially pantherina)
can show some of the 'first-glance' characteristics to a much lesser
degree. You need only a fairly small amount of experience of seeing
both Lepiota and Amanita to get beyond that - but you do need that
amount (and the book knowledge, of course).

I quite agree that eating something that looks like a small field
mushroom is ruddy insane.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

I find giant puffball, egg-and-breadcrumbed in cm-thick slices and fried rather tasty. (dust them with flour before the egg, e&b more likely to stick on) Parasol caps done the same way are good too (though prone to being worm-eaten, sadly).

Many smaller puffballs are pretty tasteless if eaten cooked from fresh. They gain more flavour if first sliced and dried, and later used in a stew, though it is a dried-mushroom-soup sort of taste. I don't bother any more with them.

This post is irrelevant.

wrote in message ...
In article ,
echinosum wrote:

Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to
mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few
parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite
distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So
it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you
had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier
to mistake for something else.

Right. But I would NOT advise someone with that level of lack of
knowledge to eat parasols, because Amanitas (especially pantherina)
can show some of the 'first-glance' characteristics to a much lesser
degree. You need only a fairly small amount of experience of seeing
both Lepiota and Amanita to get beyond that - but you do need that
amount (and the book knowledge, of course).

I quite agree that eating something that looks like a small field
mushroom is ruddy insane.


I now realise that identifying safe mushrooms from a book is not my forte
and buy them from the supermarket.

On 05/22/2012 12:07 PM, echinosum wrote:
He thought he was picking chanterelles, not boletes. Chanterelles do
have gill-like wrinkles on them. But although it isn't quite as big a
mistake as mistaking gill fungi for a bolete, it was still a pretty
implausible mistake to make for anyone who had any basic knowledge at
all: like mistaking a lychee for a strawberry, or a nectarine for an
apple - some very superficial visual similarity, but anyone with any
sense of the look and feel of the thing would never make such a mistake.

I just read the Mail article. Your certainly right, chanterelle is
nearly as bad a goof up as cepe, just really hard to understand from
anyone with pretty basic knowledge and experience.

As Nick and others have said, there are certain rules to follow with
mushrooms, but if you're initiated and don't mess with certain sorts,
you'll be fine. We eat cepes of all kinds (including erythropus,
poisonous uncooked but top quality otherwise), chanterelles, hedgehog,
and a few others, but the hard and fast rule is nothing goes in the pan
without 100% sure identification.

Some may feel this is too much risk, but as someone pointed out in the
thread getting behind the wheel is risky too...

But what he ate wasn't a Boletus or anything like. Boletus have sponge underneath, not gills. Makes the whole story a bit odd. There's no way anyone who'd made any study of fungi could mistake a fungus with gills for one with spores.

In article , kay.a3354f6
@gardenbanter.co.uk says...[color=blue][i]

Janet;959477 Wrote:
In article ,
says...-

Boletus in general are very safe if you
know what you're doing. (IFF).-

That's just what he thought....



But what he ate wasn't a Boletus or anything like.

I meant, he thought he knew what he was doing. But obviously didn't and
made a hopelessly wrong call on this occasion.

Boletus have sponge
underneath, not gills. Makes the whole story a bit odd. There's no way
anyone who'd made any study of fungi could mistake a fungus with gills
for one with spores.

I'm reminded of "morning after" drivers.

Janet.

echinosum wrote in
:


Christina Websell;959489 Wrote:
I do like the idea that mushrooms that pop up in your garden are edible
and
maybe some are. I was afraid to eat something that I thought was a
perfect
specimen of a parasol mushroom under my trees and perhaps it was fine.
So I ate another different one that emerged - looked like a small field

mushroom, but kinda not the same but who knows if they change as they
grow.
You, like Mr Whisperer, were suffering from not understanding the level
of your own ignorance.

Sounds like it Education may be expensive, but
ignorance is more expensive.


Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to
mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few
parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite
distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So
it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you
had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier
to mistake for something else.

I've eaten parasols and shaggy parasols. Both were
delicious, but the /second/ time I ate shaggy parasols
my digestive tract rebelled violently. Possible difference:
the second ones were growing under a laurel.

Yes there are some things that can grow in gardens that are edible, but
there are rather more things that can grow in gardens that aren't. St
Georges Mushrooms and some edible milk caps (most milk caps aren't) grow
regularly in my garden, but in such small quantity I can't be bothered.
I was bothered when some morels grew, as they are special, but that was
a one-off associated with some bark mulch we put down. My parents'
garden had some boletes, which no longer occur when they grassed that
bit. It also had summer truffles for a few years. But most of what
grew, russulas, amanitas, wax caps, etc, I wouldn't touch.

Many wax caps are pretty unmistakable, but are only
marginally worth eating.

"Christina Websell" wrote in
:
I now realise that identifying safe mushrooms from a book is not my
forte and buy them from the supermarket.

Not all supermarket mushrooms are completely safe,
e.g. blewitts are unsafe whe raw.

So of course, are many other things e.g. various
types of beans.

In article 2,
Tom Gardner wrote:
echinosum wrote in
:


Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to
mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few
parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite
distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So
it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you
had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier
to mistake for something else.

I've eaten parasols and shaggy parasols. Both were
delicious, but the /second/ time I ate shaggy parasols
my digestive tract rebelled violently. Possible difference:
the second ones were growing under a laurel.

Vanishingly unlikely to be the cause. Did you have any alcohol
with the latter :-)

I have had that effect with what I was absolutely certain was not
the antabuse species, so I suspect that there may be a shaggy one
that includes a small amount of the same toxin. Whether it is
that the normal one can occasionally do so, there is another
so-far unseparated (sub-)species, or my speculation is wrong,
God alone knows. Anyway, mere short-term gutrot isn't something
worth worrying about.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

wrote in message
...
Ragnar wrote:
The sample is rather small but it looks to me like Coprinus comatus
(Shaggy
Ink Cap) not fully grown.
Very tasty fried in a little butter.

Absolutely definitely not going to be giving it a try. :-P
We have edible mushrooms growing outside hte house - one of my neighbours
has eaten them and says they're nice, and she's not died, but I'm still
really quite paranoid about them. (They're big field mushrooms, I think,
with big white tops and pink gills)

I am not going to eat any mushrooms that appear in my garden, even though I
looked it up and thought it was Ok. I spent so long on the toilet:-( but it
could have killed me.

Luckily it didn't as I spent a day excreting it.
I don't know what it was. ~White cap, gills looked ok for edible. Never
again.





..

wrote in :

In article 2,
Tom Gardner wrote:
echinosum wrote in
:


Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to
mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few
parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite
distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So
it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you
had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier
to mistake for something else.

I've eaten parasols and shaggy parasols. Both were
delicious, but the /second/ time I ate shaggy parasols
my digestive tract rebelled violently. Possible difference:
the second ones were growing under a laurel.

Vanishingly unlikely to be the cause.

Oh, I'm unconvinced as well!

Did you have any alcohol with the latter :-)

Not that I can remember, but it was 10 years ago.

I don't recall reading about any antabuse effects
with shaggy parasols, but as you say...


I have had that effect with what I was absolutely certain was not
the antabuse species, so I suspect that there may be a shaggy one
that includes a small amount of the same toxin. Whether it is
that the normal one can occasionally do so, there is another
so-far unseparated (sub-)species, or my speculation is wrong,
God alone knows. Anyway, mere short-term gutrot isn't something
worth worrying about.

I only worry about it in the short term