Your mushroom question, revisited

[urbpan]

I'm teaching another mushroom class this Saturday. I'm working on working on a powerpoint presentation for it, or at least consolidating two handouts into one concise and useful one. It was very helpful to prepare for my last one by asking you all your mushroom questions! Here are last years'. Any new questions I can answer for you?

Comments

[agelena.livejournal.com]

Do all edible mushrooms have about the same nutritional content?

(this one from my students, who found surprise mushrooms growing in their grown-in-a-cup lima beans): Are there mushroom spores floating around in the air all the time?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

1. Probably. To my knowledge, no one has compared nutritional content of different wild mushroom species. Cultivated mushrooms are pretty good for you: http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2482/2 I think it's fair to assume that different species will have slightly different nutrient balances, but that they will be more or less the same: fiber, protein, b vitamins, trace amounts of others.

2. Yup. There are probably more of them at certain times of the year (the fall, in New England) and during wet weather. There are also mold spores, yeast spores, bacteria spores, slime mold spores, fern spores....and so on. I'd love to see someone sample and identify spore content of various places.

[abearius.livejournal.com]

How do you take a spore print?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Decapitate your mushroom, place the cap on a clean sheet of paper. If the mushroom flesh is white, I'd suggest using a sheet of black paper, otherwise white is good. Cover the cap with something--a clear glass is best so you can check on the progress without disturbing the spores. Depending how "ready" or spent the mushroom was, you will get a print in 1 to 24 hours.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

There was an article in the globe a couple days ago about Powerpoint presentations. Here it is online if you are interested. When I saw it I thought of you since you had mentioned powerpoint in a previous post.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[gardenfey.livejournal.com]

Are there any local mushrooms that don't have any poisonous look-a-likes? Can you propagate mushrooms from their spores and how would you do it?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Yup. This book lists six (oyster, chicken, hen-of-the-woods, morel, giant puffball, and shaggy mane). A caveat: wishful thinking makes people see edible mushrooms where there is a dangerous mystery instead. But it's pretty hard to confuse a giant puffball with something else.

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

what is the most delicious mushroom <( ._.)>

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That's a matter of opinion, really. The best I've had so far was a Boletus specimen I collected and cooked last September. Googling the phrase "most delicious mushroom yields the following opinions:

Chantarelles
Caesar's mushroom
Hen-of-the woods (I've had this, and it was delicious, but it was in a cream sauce. What's not delicious in a cream sauce?)
Lactarious deliciosus (Good contender by scientific name alone!)
Morels
Oysters
The Prince (Agaricus augustus)
Candy Caps (Lactarius fragilis)
Lyophyllum shimeji
"Penny Bun" (some kind of Boletus)
Puffballs

And so on.

Probably the short answer should be "Truffles" since they have so much flavor in such a small package, and can be so expensive.