Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: david w. on April 04, 2009, 01:52:53 pm
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Well its almost morel time and I am PUMPED. I look foward to this all year.
I am looking to find other edibles. I won't eat them unless I have someone tell me they are ok or show me them in the woods while I am hunting
I hear puffballs are edible. I see alot of brown puffball like mushrooms but I heard real pufballs are white. Once I saw some white puffbals that were almost as big as soccer balls. It was big enough for a meal. No joke. How big can they get?
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Hi, Yes l've heard that puffballs are edible but l have never tried them before so l'm not sure how to perpare them. l think you have to pick them when they're young and the colors a bright white. But as for eating mushrooms that someone says is ok to eat...l would not recommend or l'd have them eat the mushroom first and watch them very closely to see if they are gettin' sick ;D l would buy a mushroom guide for edibles and non edibles on mushrooms. :)
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Mushrooms ??? There's still2 feet of snow in da woods :o
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Finding greys and blacks here right now.The morels normally would be another week away, but we are forecast for some 20 degree weather beginning Sunday night......Tisk, tisk.
As for puffs,I have never eatin them, but those around here that do say that when they first come up is when you want them. Not alot of flavor as to say a portabella, but good just the same. Lots of them here,mostly in the fall.
Dana, how about corals and boulettes, do you guys have them?
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Still about another couple weeks here until morel time-can't wait. I love 'shrooms. The wild ones I collect and eat regularely are morels, chanterelles, black trumpets, puffballs, beefsteak fungus, sulper shelf/chicken of the woods, Lactarius corrugis, L. indigo, L. volemus, and a few others. As for the puffballs, several kinds are delicious if you get them when they are young and fresh-must be completely white inside. I've seen some giant puffballs the size of basketballs.
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I would'nt eat the little brown puffballs,
but the big white ones are tasty!
Puffballs are good to eat,
You cam find them in the late summer, early fall, they are not a springtime mushroom.
Slice them about 3/4 of an inch thick, they should be pure white inside,
if it is yellow it's past prime.
You can saute them in butter, or butter and garlic. :P
You can also dip them in an egg wash and bread crumbs and saute them . :P
I found one last year that was almost as big as a soccer ball.
Kevin
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It rained at the ranch Friday and Saturday morning the mushrooms were popping up. But if you eat these you have to plan your weekend around Chow Time. ;)
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Folks have been finding morals around here for two or three weeks now. I walked over a few this morning while I was turkey hunting. It won't get really good for another couple weeks though.
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Eddie, they are talking about food type mushrooms, not the cattle poop, vision quest kind...... ;D ;D ;D
In Montana, after a forest fire, the Morels, pop up all over. They have scores of people heading out with their buckets. Never tasted them, but I hear they are quite tasty. As for puff balls, never ate them either. It takes about 6-8 hours for the symptoms of a poison mushroom to take effect, but by then most of the damage is done. I would eat a Morel, but I would be hesitant to eat a puff ball, for fear of gettin a wrong one. The ones Hillbilly mentioned I have heard of before, and the oyster, and the other ones also. But I would not know for sure which was which. I have heard that tree ears are edible. It is supposed to be what is in the Chinese soups, and dishes. ;) There is an old Wives tale, that if you stick a silver spoon in a mushroom and it comes out clean it is edible. However the Deadly nightshade, will not tarnish a silver spoon, and you do not want to taste one of those! ;) Dang those are some big puff balls! Just imagine the puffs they would make! 8)
Wayne.
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Dana, how about corals and boulettes, do you guys have them?
I never heard of them Tim, Morels and beefsteak is about all I've heard of. I'm not a shroom hunter, if I run across some morels
I will take them but I don't bother going out specifically looking for em. I did try puffball once it was yucky :P
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We've had plenty of rain here this spring, and some warm days, but the nights are still cool. Frosted the last two nights. It's usually about the third week of April here for morels. Oh, BTW-don't eat those morels raw. The puffballs are pretty safe, actually-most species are edible except the Schlerodermas (pig-skin puffballs,) and they're thick-skinned and purple-black inside. Any of the puffballs need to be fresh and pure white inside, or they'll be bitter. And don't mistake a puffball for the button stage of an Amanita. I fix them like Buffalogobbler said. Purple-spored puffballs, giant puffballs, and gemmed puffballs are the best ones I've tried. There are also a few of the boletes and Suillus that are good, they usually come out in the fall.
Here's some morels from last spring to get your appetite whetted:
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Dang! :o Boy you been pickin yor little pea pickin heart out on those Shrooms! :o Looks like you need some venison steaks and onions, to go with them! ;)
Wayne
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The puffballs here in South Dakota are all edibles. Some can get the size of a grapefruit! I have had them a few times, sliced and panfried in butter. Steak would be the side dish for these tastey fungi!
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You guys are lucky. I wouldn't have a clue which ones to eat in Florida. I have never met anybody down here that picks legal mushrooms. I'm not sure there are non-poisonous ones here. All I ever see are real big and colorfull. Lots of blues, reds, purple and yellow ones. Never saw those in the store.
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Well between me and the neighbor we found about 50 today. They aint up real good yet but these pretty days and rain have got them sprouting up. Can't wait till tomorrow night. I'm gonna have one heckuva dinner.
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I found my very first Georgia morels this past Saturday. Went turkey hunting with a friend and when he sat down, I spotted a little grey morel right by his boot....then I spotted another smaller one a few feet away from the first. Those are the only ones I found. Brought them home and cooked them immediately...oh man...they were good. The last one I ate tasted just like a potato chip.....it was AWESOME!!!
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Chicken of the woods and sulphur shelf are reliable tree-growing edibles when young....sulphur shelf are bright orange with a yellow bottom and easy to spot. Oysters are easily identified also. found a ton bowhunting this year...shoulda taken a pic. We have morels but I haven't found any yet....cold, dry spring this year.
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does anybody know if there are any morels in northern Pa? and if so, where to find em???
Phil
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Phil, I would think PA should have them. Here in Wisconsin i like to look around dead Elm trees and old Apple Orchards.
Good hunting !!
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its been really warm around here but it just snowed today, so I will give it another week before I look. I generally don't look for the grey ones very much, but I am oing to see if I can find any. Last year was a very good year here. Found alot!
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Hillbilly, that's one Honkin' Morel you got there!
Here in N.Y. thier hard to find, it took me 5 years of searching before I found my first one.
I have one spot that grows 2-8 morels each year and every now and then I find a few in different places.
The Chanterells are much easier to find throught the summer.
Phil I'm sure that morels grow in Pa., but it's probably like N.Y. and thier few and far between.
Here's a pic from last turkey season.
Morels and Ramps!
Fry em' in butter or bacon grease with a backstrap!
Best meal I ever ate!!!
(http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff310/buffalogobbler/Spring2008023-1.jpg)
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another that tastes similar to morels and grow all over the greater northwest (dont know about everywhere else) are calves brain mushrooms. they get HUGE. mom and step dad get morels maybe 3-4 inches and calf brains 10+ inches long and 4-9 inches wide. almost as good as a morel almost. best of luck.
Dustin D
*edit* i looked up calf brains mushrooms, not what i was thinking. going to have to find a pic of what they pick.
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It snowed here the last two nights with temps in the 20's. May hold the shrooms back another week. Buffalogobbler, I like me some ramps-I have a patch of 'em near the house that are starting to come up now. A town near here has a big ramp festival every spring.
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I don't know about that Steve. It rained and snowed here all weekend and Monday and Tuesday this week with nightime lows down in the high 20's to low 30's. I found 55 Sunday, 130 yesterday and 85 today. All while I was supposedly turkey hunting. :-\ The turkeys wouldn't cooperate. So I just went to picking up "dry land fish" ;D
Seems to be a pretty good crop this year around here despite the cold weather. I actually think hot weather shuts them down quicker than does the cold.
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These are all I kept from what I found today. I gave the landowner the rest. My wife won't touch 'em. So this is a good mess for me.
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:o :o :o Great find!
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Nice haul! I've never found hardly any of the blacks around here for some reason. We have grays and yellows.
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Cold, snowy weather, waa, waa,. Always wanted to do that to somebody up north. I'm leaving out this weekend for Northern Manitoba for a week. Realized today I'll be closer to Greenland than Florida. :'( Do any of you guys know of an edible mushroom to look for down here. Except for that "special" one the rest scare the hell out of me.
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It is always wise to be cautious with wild mushrooms.
I have found many that I was sure were safe to eat,
but I did not eat them because I had no one more experienced to assure me that they were safe.
Several varities have poisonous and even deadly lookalikes.
The Chanterelle has the Jack-o-lantern, which is deadly, but once you know what to look for the differences are easy to identify.
Things like morels, puffballs and inky caps have no deadly lookalikes that I'm aware of.
As a rule I stay away from LBM's (little brown mushrooms) and I'll defer to someone more experienced when it comes to white shrooms also (cept' for puffballs) :P
If you think you found a morel or puffball, post a pic, someone will help identify it for you.
Kevin
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Sat at the kitchen table after work with a cup of joe.Watched my wife pick 30 nice greys just outside the yard.Gonna have a fine supper tomorrow night.:)
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There is a moral look alike. I've seen them in the fall. At first glance it looks just like a moral, but the top has little fin like gills under it more like some of the other non-edible mushrooms. I don't know what it's called though.
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"Death caps" maybe?
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I don't think JAck-O-Lantern mushrooms are deadly...but I know they'll make you sick as hell. If you think you have a chantrelle but aren't sure, just cuut one of the shrooms and take it into a totally dark room, wait for your eyes to adjust, then flip it over. The gills of the Jack O Lantern sill glow a faint green color...it's WEIRD!!! Wish my gills glowed in the dark :) :)
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Saw filer, i think you'r thinking of the false Moral. The real Moral will be hollow from stem to cap, the false is solid all the way through.
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Nice finds! I"m still spot checking here in IN with no luck yet. I've found the blacks but nothing like ther greys and yellows. Crappie fillets and shrooms are hard to beat! ;)
Tracy
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Rats! :( And here I thought I had at least one mushroom, I could identify, without worry!! Boy, now there is a false Morel!:P
Wayne
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Wayne, all you have to do is slice them in two and make sure they're hollow and one piece. The false morels contain the same chemical as rocket fuel. They really don't look all that much alike up close, and like Shannon said, the false morels are usually out later in the year.
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Yep, Just cut em in half and make sure there hollow.
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I found a patch one year in Michigan and wondered what that smell was. The stem was "cotton filled" and not hollow. Looked like the real deal but smelled weird.
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I picked up 45 while I was turkey hunting this morning. Most of them were starting to dry out so I gave them to the landowner. ::) ;D
I stopped in on a little thicket on the way home and made a quick run through it and found these. They're kinda small, but pretty fresh. I'll have them for supper in a night or two. ;D
Is there any way to put them up for a while? RyanO has never tasted them and I would like to bring some to the Classic.
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Another nice haul, Shannon. You can easily preserve morels by drying them. A food dehydrator or a warm oven with the door cracked will work. You can soak 'em in warm milk or water to reconstitute them. A lot of people like them better dried than fresh. With my bunch of mushroom-gobblers, I never seem to have many leftover to put up, though.
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Dehydrater is how the "Shroom Hoggs" do it around here. I never tried it.It's like hillbillys house round here...We ate a gallon tonight for supper! ;D
Nice batch!
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I think I'll try drying some ;)
I just finished off a plate of about 25 or 30 halves :-[ I'm full as a tick and starting to get sleepy 8)
Besides the mushrooms. I also found 4 old quart bleach jugs and 3 more old brown bottles with thick flat bottoms. They should make some dandy points. 8)
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One of my friends prepares them to the batter piont then sets them on non stick pan or wax paper and flash freezes them. After their froze just bag em. He brought some into work one day and they were really good...freaked out when he said they had been in the freezer more than a year....Brian
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Ok, so you just make sure the whole mushroom is hollow, like the stem, and the top part, or just the top part?
Wayne
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The stem and all should be hollow-the morel is one unit with no junction between the stem and cap when you cut it open (except for the half-free morel.) The false morel has a semi-solid stem and the cap is noticeably seperate from the stem. Top pic is a true morel, bottom is a false morel.
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Great pictures Hillbilly. Thanks :)
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Thanks for posting those pics Steve. That's exactly what I was talking about.
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Aha! :) That clears things up now. 8) Now I feel more comfortable about picking a Morel. If I had seen the false Morel, I might have taken the semi hollow stem as being hollow, and not Knowing about the separate head attachment. Thanks for the Pictures, it sure makes it a lot clearer...... ;) Does the Morel taste anything like the mushrooms you get in the store?
Wayne
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Kind of, but much better. The store mushrooms aren't sold because they're the best tasting, but because they're the easiest to grow commercially. A lot of mushrooms are mycorrhizal with different tree species and can't be tamed and grown in commercial quantities.
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Thanks Hillbilly, I will have to see if I can get som Morels in Montana. I am thinking of going out there either the middle, or latter part of this Month. Be out there for a month or more.
Wayne
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I've heard that Morals can't be commercially grown, anybody know if this is true ? I know the wild ones bring a pretty penny around here. 40-50 bucks a pound for the fresh ones !
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I've heard that morels cam't be grown commercially also,
But I've seen growing kits that are sold commercially.
Also It's very easy to dry morels if you do not have a dehydrator,
just wrap one or two in a paper towel and place in the fridge.
They start to dry out almost immediatly.
Kevin
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Wow, $40-$50.00 a pound? :o Man, now I can see why so many people grab their buckets and hit the woods in Montana. Hillbilly, what is a Half Free Morel? ???
Wayne
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Wayne, a half-free morel is a species of morel (Morchella semilibra) that has the cap only partially attached to the stem.
(http://www.mushroomexpert.com/morels/legend_11-14.jpg)
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Are the Half Free Morel's edible?
Wayne
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Supposed to be but I've never tried 'em. No morels here yet. >:( Maybe next weekend.
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Hmmm, with "suposed to be edible", I will pass em by. ;) I do want to try the Morels though. I have read stories in the outdoor mags, about how good they are. Thanks.
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We eat them(half morel) and they have the same taste as the black, grey and yellow morels. Usually just take the caps and add them to dishes since they are a bit crumbly and dry out quick. I've never called them half morels and they are usually referred to as anatomical male parts around here, take your pick ;D I've seen the dried morels at the grocery store and are not as expensive as the seasonally fresh. I know that at Michigan State University years ago, they developed a way to produce them in a controlled environment. I still haven't found any on my property in So. IN, but it is time to find them.
Tracy
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Hello!
Mushrooms are just beginning to pop up here. The next couple of weeks should be prime time.
Have any of you ever frozen your mushrooms for later in the year? A very easy way to do it, is to clean and slice them lengthwise. Do NOT cook them yet. Place the sliced halves on a cookie sheet, place in freezer. When frozen, place them in an air tight freezer bag or container; and place back into freezer. When you want to eat them, just remove them; and cook them however you normally do. I just roll them in flour and place in a skillet while still frozen. They taste very good, especially when the season is long past.
Harold
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My wife found these while teaching her Landscaping class at school! I told her that I recall the preacher saying something about sharing in sickness and morels during the vows ;D
Tracy
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Went out today in the rain and got a tater sack full. Deer steaks and morels for supper-life is good. :)
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i had asked a while back if anybody knew if morells grew in northern Pa, and i can confirm that they do! i was down by the lake yesterday, just walking the little "deer paths", playing my flute, when i looked down and there laying on a rock was the most unmistakeable morell ive ever seen. it looked like someone was down there picking them, and dropped it, cause it had deffinately been cut, and it was starting to dry out. it had black wrinkles...
just thought id share my great fortune!
Phil
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Remeber that spot and go back next spring. Might want to check around that area this year yet !
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Hillbilly, throw in a few cold beverages to help wash it down ;D Very nice mess of shrooms!
Tracy
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Morels are very rare up here but I did find these that look a bit like them. They are quite small, not much more than 2" high. Perhaps you guys that are more familiar with them than I am could verify them?
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Marc,those look a bit like what we call "Beefsteaks".They are usually bigger than that. That is about as close as I can tell.