With a looming second Great Depression on the horizon, or at least what economic bozos call “stagflation,” it’s good to sit in nature and have some deep thoughts: Things like, “What are the most important things in life?”, “Maybe I should focus on things that nourish my spirit,” “Maybe God is in all of us,” and maybe, most importantly, “What is this thing in my yard and can I eat it, because I’m really hungry and completely broke due to rich bastards making America great again but only for the other rich bastards?”
As a man who has eaten plenty of things that have shocked friends and neighbors I am happy to report that, yes, there are things in your yard, your neighbor’s yards, and public parks and walkways that are edible – and oftentimes more edible than that horseshit wraped in paper that McDonald’s is selling.
Weirdly, wild mushrooms are where foraging novices seem most likely to start. This is not entirely bad because it weeds out the risk takers and casual chucklefucks fairly early and leaves more natural nutrients for people who have IQs higher than a common housefly.
The Angry Gardener is part of a Facebook page for mushroom enthusiasts and it is filled with exactly what you’d expect – experts with little patience and plenty of attitude, non-experts who will give advice that can get you killed, and thoroughly uninformed fools who simply ask, “Can I eat this?”
Well, friends, mycological experts have a joke for that: “All mushrooms are edible, but some only once.” Ha. Ha. Enjoy the humor while feeling your liver painfully dissolve two days after eating your delicious steak with Amanita bisporigera gravy.
Let’s get this straight at the outset: Fungi is not to be fucked with. They have characteristics of both plants and animals, which is a little scary in itself. They range from the delicious and delightful morels and oyster mushrooms to the psychoactive Psilocybin varieties to destroying angels and death caps, which according to the accounts of now-dead mushroom gourmets, taste just great. There is even a strain of fungi known as cordyceps that take over the brains of insects. One strain of cordyceps infects ants and causes them to latch onto something nice and high and then the ants’ heads fill with spores and explode, so that the spores can be spread over a nice wide area. At least it’s probably entertaining to watch.
This fungi is the inspiration for that zombie TV show “The Last of Us,” which imagines a strain of cordyceps that infects humans. Knowledgeable mycologists cheerfully tell us that this is not too far from being a possibility due to that pesky global warming that the same people who caused the current economic shitstorm said wasn’t real. Those assholes make my head feel like it’s about to explode even without the fungi.
Thankfully, there are only a few deaths annually due to eating poisonous mushrooms, but there’s still plenty of entertainment to had from stories of fungi novices.
Probably the most commonly eaten poisonous mushroom is Chlorophyllum molybdites. These are large, beautiful mushrooms that often grows in fairy rings and looks delightful in a yard or meadow. They’re sometimes known as the “green spore parasol mushroom” or the “false parasol.” Another common name for it is “The Vomiter,” but that’s only half the story. I call it a “magic mushroom” because it can magically turn your body into a two sided fountain. Don’t sit down without a bucket in front of you and don’t lean over without a bucket behind you. All of us on that mushroom Facebook page enjoyed hearing about the progress of a poster’s teenage son and his friends who fancied themselves experts. There are no reported deaths from this mushroom, only people who wished for death after eating them.
Chlorophyllum molybdite is a good example of why to be careful. It looks very similar to the edible Chlorophyllum rhacodes and the Macrolepiota procera. The best way to tell the difference is that the edible varieties have a white spore print, while the Chlorophyllum molybdite has a print with spores that turn green. If you have to go to this much trouble and you don’t have a degree in mycology you are already in over your motherfucking head and should stick to that portobello burger at O’Charley’s when you can afford it again.
There are some very safe mushrooms that do not have poisonous lookalikes. Oyster mushrooms grow on dead dying wood and are pretty unmistakable. Morels are weird and full of holes and the only similar-looking mushroom is the “false morel,” which won’t kill you, but does make a few people a little nauseous. Chicken of the woods, especially the orange variety, has no toxic lookalikes and can be fried like chicken and actually kind of taste and look like chicken meat when pulled apart. Then there are puffballs, which are sort of the tofu of the mushroom world – a real delicacy if you liked eating paste in elementary school.
In short, there is only so much that the Angry Gardener can tell you about mushrooms. I can you that my girlfriend and I tried entirely too many Psilocybin mushrooms one night and while she had several epiphanies and deep spiritual insights, I simply saw strangers looking in the windows and imagined our bodies as looking something like Easter baskets. By the time six hours had passed and I could finally enjoy dancing with my shadow and watching the wallpaper shapes float off the wall, she had already started a new religion and was exhausted.
I do encourage you to seek out safe edible mushrooms and to read a book on them before you put them in a goddamn frying pan. Good luck. Before these four years are over, we may need a book on which of our neighbors might make the tastiest economy dinners.
Yours in Christ,
Russell Upsumdinar