Virginia Outdoor Adventures: Hiking, Camping, Kayaking, Local Travel and more!
From the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia is a mecca for outdoor travel and adventure. Virginia Outdoor Adventures Podcast is your local guide to hiking, camping, kayaking, travel and so much more. Get the information and the inspiration to plan your own adventure, right here in Virginia. Lets Go!
Virginia Outdoor Adventures: Hiking, Camping, Kayaking, Local Travel and more!
Mushroom Foraging in Virginia: Wild Edibles, Seasonal Finds, and Foraging Tips with Gabrielle Cerberville, aka the Chaotic Forager (Ep 80, Pt 1)
Virginia’s forests are alive with hidden treasures—and they taste delicious. From morels to chicken-of-the-woods, Virginia is a forager’s dream.
Dive into the fascinating world of mushroom foraging with Gabrielle Cerberville, better known online as the “Chaotic Forager.” Gabrielle is a foraging educator, community mycologist, and the author of her debut book, “Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life.”
You’ll learn where and when to find wild mushrooms in Virginia, how to get started safely, the rules and ethics of foraging on public lands, and why sustainability and ecological awareness matter for every forager.
Gabrielle guides us through Virginia's seasonal bounty, from fall's magnificent hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and giant puffballs, to winter's resilient oyster mushrooms, spring's elusive morels, and summer's golden chanterelles that carpet the forest floor.
Ready to explore Virginia's wild foods? Grab your basket, a mushroom foraging knife, and your appetite for connecting with the landscape. Let’s Go!
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Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life (Preorder the Book from your local bookseller)
North American Mycological Association
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Go Forth and Forage by Appalachian Forager
Book Release Party at New Dominion on Oct 24
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Gabrielle, welcome to Virginia outdoor adventures. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. What do you love about Virginia's outdoors Appalachian
Unknown:ecosystems are just so extremely biodiverse. There are so many things that exist in Virginia at large, but you get so many different things with Virginia, not even just Appalachian ecosystems, but like you get the coast, you get everything I love as a forager, that I can just like, go up the mountain if I miss a season down in the valley, that, like, you can travel 10 minutes in any direction, and you're somewhere completely different, and you have lived
Jessica Bowser:in many other states. So to hear that you appreciate that about Virginia. I love that, because the landscape here has a little bit of everything, and I love to hear that somebody who hasn't experienced that everywhere appreciates it here.
Unknown:I really do. Yeah, I lived in Indiana for a long time, and Indiana is beautiful, but it is pretty flat, and being able to come back to East Coast and experience mountains and just diversity of landscape again, and diversity of terrain is so it's so nice, it's coming home.
Jessica Bowser:Now, you're originally from Pennsylvania, right? Yes. And how did you first get started with mushroom foraging, like, What drew you to wild foods in general? Those are
Unknown:actually kind of two different answers. So when it comes to wild foods in general, I grew up right in front of a swamp. I lived in the mountains. My my family is still in the Pocono Mountains out in Pennsylvania, and because we lived in a swamp with all of this acidic soil, we had blueberries everywhere. So blueberries were like my intro into wild food. And I'm 33 I don't know if you remember what blueberries tasted like when we were kids. Like grocery store blueberries. They were bad. They were like so mealy. They didn't taste like anything. I thought that I didn't like blueberries, and then I tasted a wild blueberry, and I think that set me up to assume that wild food tastes better than grocery store food, and most of the time, that is true. But when it comes to mushrooms, I didn't get into mushrooms until I was about 25 years old, when I was living in Indiana. Actually, I found a mushroom when I was out on a trail run and just got really curious about what it was. I'd never really thought that much about mushrooms before then, but the whole process of identifying it really just started me out on this mushroom journey, and you know, since then, it's just become an obsession.
Jessica Bowser:I think that's kind of how it starts for all of us, is we see something and we're like, that looks really cool, or that's really strange, or what is that? And then we sort of get sucked in, right? Like we start to do a little bit of research, we find some groups, maybe, of people, who are identifying mushrooms or sharing their love for mushrooms, and then all of a sudden, it opens you up to this whole new world, right? You have to put
Unknown:yourself in that place where you're a little bit of a kid again, and you ask a question because you don't know the answer to something. You have to accept the fact that you don't know the answer and live in the curiosity for a little while. It's something kids are really good at and that adults are not as good at. So it's something I have to retrain my brain to do really often. Like, hey, without ego, I don't know this I don't know this organism. I haven't introduced myself to this friend yet. Let's learn something. And that's like, the best thing about the forest, you get to go out and you get to learn something every single time, right?
Jessica Bowser:And I love that you refer to them as friends, because I typically do that when I'm looking at birds or if I come across other wildlife, like maybe a snake or a salamander or frog, but you refer to everything as a friend, like the plants, the trees, the mushrooms, all the things, yeah.
Unknown:I mean, that's how I see them. You know, they're, they're beings, even though they don't experience the world in the same way that a human does, like there is, there is personhood there, right?
Jessica Bowser:I agree with that. And I think when you shift your mind to start to think about the outdoors in that way, it creates a whole new meaning, like you're not just somebody passing through anymore, but you're you're part of a community in a different way. Yeah, absolutely. So you go by chaotic forager on your popular social media accounts. I'm curious what the story is behind the name.
Unknown:So what's funny is, when I started my Tiktok account, which my friend kind of bullied me into joining because she kept sending me videos, and I couldn't watch them because I wasn't on Tiktok. So she really just wanted to spam me with content. And was just like, Get it. Get an account. So I just came up with a name. I have two cats, so I went with chaotic cat lady, because I've always just got, like, a million things going on. I always have a million hobbies. My office is like a disaster of creative explosions. So I went with chaotic cat lady, and then as I started actually making content, I realized that I needed to have a username that more accurately reflected the content I was making. So I kept the chaotic and switched the cat. Lady to forager.
Jessica Bowser:I love it, and I should have known you were a cat lady like, usually we can identify each other pretty
Unknown:quickly. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, there's, there's a cat energy that people have, yeah, yeah.
Jessica Bowser:It's a badass energy, if you ask me, I agree, yeah, yeah, the attitude and everything. I love it. So what keeps you passionate about teaching others how to forage? Because I would imagine, when you're when you open yourself up on social media, you're also opening yourself up to all the negativity and the crazy and the people who come out of the woodwork saying all kinds of things. And I, you know, I don't experience too much of that, luckily myself, but I see it happening with others, and I just wonder, like, what makes you decide to keep putting out educational content amidst all of that negativity, when you
Unknown:choose to teach, what you're going to find is that it makes you a better learner. So one of the most effective ways to learn something is to, like, try to find a way to teach it, which feels really backwards. It's something that I didn't really understand until I got into teaching in academia, because I work at UVA, and I teach courses there, and sometimes you have to internalize things differently when you want to share them with others. I kind of feel like I have the best job in the world, because my job is to info dump about my special interests to people who actually want to listen, but you're right. There are people on the internet who are not there to listen. They're just there to be mean. They're there to be jerks. And I try to take people at face value, but I also try to assume good intent whenever I can. So if somebody says something that feels a little cruddy, I try to do my best to find the opportunity to educate within that. So if somebody says something about like, my hair, because it's always just like some some physical feature that they've chosen to focus on, or some way that I say something, but then like also mentions the mushroom that I'm talking about, I'm going to ignore what they said about how I look, and I'm going to instead focus on responding to the question that might be hiding inside the main comment, because comments and like public facing things like that, are going to be read by other people. And so it's an opportunity to not only educate this person who may not be responding in good faith, but to educate people who are scrolling through comments and trying to get more nuance get more information. So yeah, I try to not overly concern myself with people who are clearly not acting in good faith, though,
Jessica Bowser:and on the other end of the spectrum, I imagine it's also an opportunity for you to build community in a positive way. So we touched on this a little bit. But how does foraging cultivate relationships with the landscape, with nature, and then, of course, with people?
Unknown:Yeah, you have to be mindful when you forage. There is no alternative. If you decide to just wantonly brazenly walk through the woods and start grabbing stuff without paying attention to where you're walking, without paying attention to how much is there, without regard for the other animals that live in the forest that need to eat, you are going to find that you burn all your bridges very quickly. If you take everything, then nothing is there to regrow, and when you come back next year, there won't be anything. So foragers have to think ahead. They have to consider the needs of everybody in that ecosystem so that a resource isn't depleted, and more importantly, so that that resource, so that organism can thrive, so you can come back year after year. And it's not just that it replenishes itself, it's that there's more it's more abundant. It's a stronger, more bountiful organism at that point,
Jessica Bowser:let's talk about foraging in Virginia by season. So it's fall right now. I'm sure people are wondering what type of species they might find in the woods in Virginia in the fall. Do you want to give us a little bit of insights? Fall is my
Unknown:favorite foraging season for mushrooms. One of my absolute favorite mushrooms is this big poly pour. A polypore is just like a mushroom that has a pore surface underneath. It usually grows in shelves on dead or dying wood or very near it. One of my favorite polypores is hen of the woods, griful of front OSA. They sometimes call it the sheep's head mushroom. Common names vary depending on like region and what people usually eat in those regions. So hen of the woods, it really does look like a chicken that's all fluffed out over over a bunch of eggs. It's really cute, and you find it at the base of usually really old oak trees. So it's parasitic, but only mildly So, and it'll just pop up in the same spot year after year after year. I've found the same hen in the same location for like, five years in a row, six. Seven years in a row, and they're really beautiful and delicious. That's a favorite. There's also the giant puff ball, and other types of puff balls too, which look like big, big, like Alien volleyballs in the middle of the
Jessica Bowser:forest. Oh my gosh. I went the first time I saw one, I thought it was a soccer ball somebody had left on the side of the trail. Me too, actually, yeah. I mean, it was just, I was like, Why is there a soccer ball up here on this mountain? But then I was like, why do people do anything they do? And I almost watched past it, but then I went back, and I was like, Wait, what is this? I mean, it was enormous.
Unknown:They're huge, and they're actually quite good. They kind of taste, they don't taste like much, but they take on flavor really well. So you can make, like, puffball pizza, actually is one of the recipes in my book, and it's a recipe that I've posted online many times. You can use it as, like a big pizza crust, because it holds its shape really well, and it's just kind of a really good source of, like, protein and texture, yeah. So, so that's a good one. There's also like honey mushrooms, which were actually the first mushroom that I ever found. We have multiple kinds here in Virginia. There's the ringless honey mushroom, des Armillaria case pitosa, that is one of my favorites. And honey mushrooms also grow in big clumps on the ground, but they have gills underneath, which look like a little fan as opposed to pores on your skin, they are heavily parasitic, so you'll find them in forests. If you look for a lot of dead trees, and you come back in the fall, that's where you're going to find a lot of honey mushrooms. They will kill trees, and they're actually very ecologically important. We need things to die in order to, like, create good soil and to make way for new growth. But honey mushrooms are also really delicious. So they're not as beginner friendly. You do need to, you need to kind of know what you're looking for, but they are one of my favorite fall mushrooms. They are so
Jessica Bowser:good I'm hoping to find some this year, because I have not yet foraged honey mushrooms, but I see other people finding them right now. So this must be the right time, because there's photos all over the socials. Yeah? Finding honey mushrooms
Unknown:when it's like comfortable to be outside again, you know when the summer weather has really kind of gone away for good, that's when I start finding them. One good idea. Tip is that the stems are really fibrous. When you when you pull them apart, they kind of like hold together, almost like string cheese, yes. But then the bottom of the stem, if you pull it out, is going to be a little bit pointed, and it's usually black. The other cool thing about honey mushrooms is that they have bioluminescent mycelium.
Jessica Bowser:I did not know that. It tells me what that means.
Unknown:So bioluminescence is like a natural luminescence. So if you go out in the woods at night and you see something that's kind of glowing, that's bioluminescent. So you might have seen like the bioluminescent reefs that have, like the bioluminescent little critters that are swimming around in them, and it's that kind of like bluish glow. So we actually have a number of bioluminescent fungi that you can find in the forests in Virginia, and so the mycelium, so the underground structure of honey mushrooms, is bioluminescent, so it glows almost like an acidic yellow color.
Jessica Bowser:So this is really cool, because I'm thinking like, as you're telling me this I'm thinking back to a backpacking trip I did many years ago with a small group of friends. It was in September, so it was around this time of year, and we were all sitting around at nights, like after we put up our tents, and it was dark out, and there was something glowing, and all of us saw it, but it was like, the kind of thing that you like, you don't want to say anything, because you're like, Oh, it's just trash, or it's just, like, just my eyes, or I'm imagining it, or whatever, all of us saw it. It took forever before somebody was finally like, is there something glowing over there? And then all of us were like, yeah, what is that? And we all walked over and turned on our flashlights, and it was mushrooms. And none of us could believe it. It was
Unknown:really cool. Were they like, little mushrooms growing on Deadwood.
Jessica Bowser:So, you know, I'm gonna go back and check my photos, and I hope I took a picture of it. This was like 10 years ago, Gabrielle, so I could not tell you what they looked like, but I hope I have pictures of it,
Unknown:because i I'm willing to bet real money based on the fact that it was September and that you were able to see it, that it was probably a mushroom called Pinellas stypticus, which is sometimes called the bitter oysterling. And they almost look like tiny, little oyster mushrooms. They're a little fuzzy on top, and they glow so bright in the dark, if you get the conditions right, if it's like rained enough recently, and they're young enough and it's dark enough outside. You know, I have been some places where you could, you could, like, hold some up, and you could light your way home. If you're
Jessica Bowser:kidding, that's amazing. Yeah, I Gosh. Now I really do hope that I I'm gonna be so disappointed if I don't have pictures like, I need to know this now. But, yeah, what? It was close, but it wasn't that close. It was probably still like 20 feet away. So it wasn't like it was right next to us, like it was a little distance into the forest, yeah, oh my gosh, so cool. And then, you know, as you're talking about some of these other species, do you ever have the experience where you, like, find something and you don't know what it is, so you leave it, and then you realize later on what it was, and you kick yourself like that huge puff ball that I found that I thought was a soccer ball on the side of the trail. There were three of them, and I left them there because I had no idea what they were. And I went back every year for a couple years after that, looking for it. I never found it again. And I've never found giant puff balls since then. And now I'm just like, I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I left it there.
Unknown:I think that I've had experiences that are similar to that, especially like early on in my foraging journey. Now, at this point, there are times where I can't key something out in the forest, you know, I don't have the right information with me, or maybe I've found something that just hasn't been described, and then I figure it out later. But I think now, if I couldn't identify it in the forest, I probably shouldn't have brought it back with me to eat in the first place. So I usually recommend that beginners and really everybody, because everybody is susceptible to goofing up. We are humans who very often succumb to Dunning Kruger, you know, believing that the little bit of information that we have covers more than than it really does. You know, I will tell beginners like, you know, the most dangerous position to be in is not knowing nothing. It's knowing 10 things, because you're going to think that every thing that you see outside is one of those 10 things that you know, instead of assuming that it's information you don't have with beginners and everybody else, I usually encourage people to try to identify something positively three times before you eat it. My friend Sam Thayer calls it banana confidence, being as confident of the thing that you're foraging as you would be like identifying a banana. We all know what bananas look like, right? And there's like a little variation. You might get a little confused between, like a banana and a plantain, for example, but, but like we know, and we can kind of see the differences. And if you're not confident enough to be able to say yes, like, I know this intimately. I know exactly what this is, or I can positively identify it, you probably shouldn't be eating it.
Jessica Bowser:I believe that that's true, because now, when I see something, I know for certain that it is what I think it is. And if I'm not sure, I don't take it, because I, you know, it's just not worth the risk. Exactly. Yeah, I'll take lots of pictures, and then I'll post them in groups and say, Hey, I think this might be this, but I'm not sure. What do you all think? And then start to get some feedback. And then, of course, check my field guides. But otherwise, I just leave it where it is, because the other thing, I think is, what if I take it and it's not something that's edible, then I've just taken it from the forest for no reason now, it's got to be tossed out,
Unknown:yeah, and it can't like, it is important to, like, handle the things that you find right. Like, you can touch any mushroom you want. And touching and smelling and like observing mushrooms is really important. Sometimes. I think that in modern society, we kind of expect immediacy with everything. So we expect to be able to snap a picture and know what something is, upload it to some kind of an AI that's going to do all the work for us. But identification is work. You have to actually sit down and do it. You have to look at things pretty objectively. I can't tell you the number of times that I have, like, found something and hoped desperately that it was, you know, the mushroom or the berry that I was looking for. Actually, just the other day I was like, checking out this, this tree that looked really unfamiliar to me, and it had all of these gorgeous orange berries on it. And I was like, this could be sea buckthorn, but I don't know if it is. I hope it's sea buckthorn, but I'm not going to, like, just pick a bunch and then try to figure it out. Instead, I, like, looked up all of the identifying features, and it was not see buckthorn. It was a fire Bush, but they look similar enough from a distance, but I got really excited. But like, if I hadn't taken that time and had instead just gone like, oh, it's an orange berry growing on a bush. It's gotta be this. It's gotta be this, I would have definitely ended up with an upset stomach.
Jessica Bowser:Luckily, that's all
Unknown:right, yeah, something worse, yeah. So no matter where you are, you have to take the time. You can't just rely on your gut, because your gut will lie to you. Your gut really just wants snacks. I know mine does, and you can't trust it. I.
Jessica Bowser:Foreign. Any other species for fall, or should we move on to winter?
Unknown:Another one that's, I think, really an easy ID for fall is the Lion's Mane mushroom. And this one also bleeds into winter. So Lion's Mane mushrooms also represent a different sort of morphology, or like mushroom shape, and they have what are called teeth. So they're these really long tubes that kind of look like the mane of a lion. So they're these white, sometimes yellowish, mushrooms that grow on trees. I often find them on Silver Maple but you can find them on other types of trees as well. And because they like to taunt us, they like to grow really high up in trees, you'll sometimes fall. Find them on fallen logs too. But they are really delicious. They kind of taste like crab, yes, and you can cook them like crabs. So I've made like crab cakes. I've made crab Rangoon with with them, and they're absolutely delicious, so they are probably starting to come out right about now, and they're pretty easy to identify. There aren't really a lot of things that look exactly like them. There are other species that are in that that genus that like little family of mushrooms, but those are all edible too. So that's a that's a really good one to know.
Jessica Bowser:Lion's Mane is, like, the mushroom that I'm always looking for that I never find. Like, I found it one year accidentally, and it was a huge, huge, like, I mean, it was enormous. I don't think I've ever seen one that big. And there were multiple, like, on one tree. And so I was so excited. I was pulling out the knife in the bag, and I'm like, super stoked. And my friend is looking at me like, What in the world is wrong with you? And I have never found anything like that again, like, I've maybe find really small ones, or I found a halfway decent sized one when I was hiking in Ohio and staying in a hotel, and there was nothing I could do with it, so I left it there, because I'm like, Well, you know, I can't do anything with this. And it's just, it's almost like, what do we call it in birding, when there's a bird that you really, really want to see, but it always evades you Nemesis bird, like they, yeah, they call it like your nemesis bird. And so I feel like, lion's mane is my nemesis mushroom. If they're
Unknown:incredible, oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah, it's true, though. I and they, they grow in places where you're not necessarily always looking so like most of the ones that I find are really high up in trees.
Jessica Bowser:Yes. And then I had a friend who found one in a neighbor's yard, really high up, and she had to get a ladder, but she knew she needed to ask permission, so she knocked on the door. She could tell somebody was home. Nobody answered. She left a note that person called her back and asked her what it was worth. They wanted to charge her like $100 to be able to come back with the ladder and go up and get the mushroom out of the
Unknown:tree. Oh my gosh, that's not cool, although you should always ask permission if you want to collect something from anybody's property.
Jessica Bowser:That's exactly right. Okay, so we need to move on. Let's talk about winter. I mean, are there mushrooms in winter? Like, what can you really find when it's cold
Unknown:out there are mushrooms in winter? Mushroom season never really ends. There's always something to find. So a lot of the mushrooms that grow in winter are going to be things like, what are your mushrooms? Which are these kind of like jelly. They literally look like ears. The genus is auricularia, and they're these kind of brown. Sometimes you find them and they're like a little crispy, but you can find them and they're kind of gelatinous. And those are actually really popular in a lot of Asian cuisine. So you'll find them in soups. Sometimes they're just called ear fungus, which is such a like, gross, yeah, when you think about it, it's just like a translation issue, I think. But you'll often find them in soups and stews and like a lot of a lot of Chinese recipes, so that's often how I'll use them. You can also make candy with them. So you can, like, boil them in sugar water or juice with added sugar, and then, like, dry them out, and then if you roll them in a little bit of malic acid, then you can make sour ear gummies, which is just like, fun and weird.
Jessica Bowser:I definitely need to get your recipe for Whittier candy, because I keep finding wood ear and I'm sure. People have seen it all the time, and they just don't even know what it is, because it'll be like on a stick, on the ground, on the trail when you walk over. I have tried different things, and every single time, my husband's like, I'm not eating snot, booger mushrooms, because that's what he like the texture of it. He can't get over it. And everything I try, I think it's fine, but he he can't deal with it, and he's always complaining. So if I made candy out of it, I will bet he eats it. You can
Unknown:get a lot of people to eat things that they would never eat. If you say here, this is candy. And I feel like, I feel like this is gonna work. You're gonna have to report back and tell me, but I feel like this is how, this is how you get
Jessica Bowser:him. I think that's right. Okay. What else can we find in winter?
Unknown:So another one of my favorite mushrooms is a mushroom called the Blue it. It has like three scientific names. It's either calibia Nuta, clitas, be nuda or lapista Nuta, but it is this gorgeous purple mushroom. You have to be kind of careful with purple mushrooms, because some of them are going to be in the genus courtinarius, and some of those purple cortinarius can be sickeners. Those are going to have rusty red spores. So you're going to be able to see like along the stem, usually they'll have kind of a little, a little rusty looking stain. So stay away from those. But the wood blue. It has almost like a lilac purple color everywhere. And they kind of smell a little bit like freezer burned orange juice, but they taste so good when you cook them. Usually I can smell them before I can see them, and they'll grow in leaf litter and in Pine Duff. So you kind of have to, you have to, like, keep an eye out for little like lumps in the forest, because sometimes they're underneath, but when you find them, you usually find a lot, and they taste so good. And I've found them all the way into January here.
Jessica Bowser:Yeah, I'm gonna be crawling around looking for some things now I see, like, your videos online, and you're down on the ground, and you're like, Yeah, I'll look for these bumps. And then you lift some leaves, and there they are. And I'm like, Oh, that's so cool. I have to try that.
Unknown:Yeah, this is why I love taking kids on forays. They always find things because they're low to the ground, so they see more
Jessica Bowser:that makes sense. Yeah? Anything else in the winter?
Unknown:Oyster mushrooms are another thing that is really popular in winter, I find them all the way through winter, I have found oyster mushrooms, like in winter, in February in Michigan, frozen. They are delicious. They're very easy to identify. So they grow in these shelves. So you'll see them kind of in a big clump, and they have this really interesting Gill structure that helps you to identify them. So the top of the mushroom, it'll usually make like kind of a pearlish color, almost bluish, sometimes very light gray or white. And then you look underneath, and you've got all of these stems kind of coming to the same point, and the gills travel all the way down the stem. It's a feature that we call decurrent. So when you hear that something that the gills are decurrent, it means that they're traveling all the way down the stem too, all the way to the point of attachment, and they are so just easy to use. So if you're not a meat eater, or you want to eat less meat, oyster mushrooms are one of the best things that you can sub in for meat. I'm not usually somebody who's like batter and fry it, but honestly, batter and fry some oyster mushrooms and then serve it with like, a little bit of, like, an aioli or something so good, just like light and lovely. One of the best, like, chicken sandwiches I've ever had in my life was made from fried oyster mushrooms. It was so good. The texture is incredible.
Jessica Bowser:Yeah, I do enjoy the texture. And I make a mean mushroom barley soup out of oyster mushrooms. And, like, I'm a big fan of soup in winter, and this just sort of beefs it up, because, like you said, it has the texture of meat. It's, you know, it's hearty. And so you feel like, between the mushroom and the barley, that you're getting a lot out of that soup. And it's so good for you. Absolutely. I love that. Yeah, and our oyster is usually pretty prolific, because I feel like, when I find them, I'm not finding a little bit, I'm finding so many.
Unknown:Yeah, so oysters are going to grow on dead wood or dying wood, and they're usually going to grow in big flushes, just like big clusters, yeah, like I've seen, like, a large tree fallen over, and it'll be covered in oyster mushrooms, like, way more than I could possibly carry out. Oh yeah, absolutely. Almost anytime I find oyster mushrooms, I end up like, calling friends and being like, so how many can you keep in your fridge? Like I have so many friends who now know that, like, when they get a call from me, the first thing out of my mouth is going to be, what's the fridge situation right now?
Jessica Bowser:Because you need space. I could completely understand that, especially with oysters. Like, I think of all of the mushrooms that I have stored right now, I think I have more oyster mushrooms than anything else. Like I dehydrate them and then I stick them in jars or containers. And I've got them. I mean, I I've had some going back a couple of years because, oh yeah, it's, you know, you've got so many of them that you're like, it's to the point now where, when I find oysters, I just leave them alone, because I'm like, I don't have space for anymore.
Unknown:Oh, absolutely, yeah. And there's also an invasive oyster. This isn't as much of a problem in Virginia yet, but it's coming where we're going to start seeing the golden oysters, Pleurotus citronopyliatus, which have now been confirmed to be an invasive mushroom. We know about invasive plants and animals, but we don't know as much about invasive mushrooms, and it's because we don't study mushrooms as much, yeah, but, but it's coming. It's already a huge problem in the Midwest. They just absolutely will, like, wreck a tree and completely take it over. And they're very effective decomposers,
Jessica Bowser:yeah, I had no idea that there were non native invasive mushrooms. Yeah. Let's talk about spring and summer, because I think also a lot of people are outside in these seasons, and they want to know what they can find.
Unknown:Then absolutely so in spring, we've got our morels. That's going to be the most popular spring, spring fungus. They're really delicious. They only appear for a few weeks. You definitely get a lot of people out in the woods. They are hard to spot. They are very picky about where they like to grow. You really do have to go and look hard for them. So it is a lot of fun if you want to go hunting for morels and you don't want as much of the frustration of looking for morels. I would definitely recommend joining one of the morel hikes that's put on by the Mycological Society. So you can go mushroom hunting with people who like, know mushrooms, and are going to be able to, like, demonstrate where to find them and what to look for in the spring. I also collect a lot of pheasant back mushrooms cereposcuamosis, and they're pretty easy to ID. They have this like pheasant feather looking top. Sometimes they're also called Dryad saddle, and they kind of smell like watermelon rind. But they're really good if you shred them up and use them like chicken breast. And then moving on to summer, we've got chanterelles galore. We have so many different kinds of chanterelles that grow in Virginia, and they grow for ages. Last year, I was finding chanterelles into November, so I started finding them in late May, and I didn't stop finding them until like mid November, so they were just going on forever. Yeah, this summer was a great chanterelle year, my freeze dryer and dehydrator just everything was going nuts all the time, no breaks. And then we've also got, like, chicken of the woods, which you and I actually found we
Jessica Bowser:did quite a few very nice ones. Yeah.
Unknown:So there are a couple of different varieties that grow here in Virginia. We have the white poured chicken of the woods. So on top, it kind of looks like a traffic cone. It's like darker towards the base, and then it gets lighter towards the edges, and then underneath, it's either going to be this crazy sulfur yellow color, or it's going to be almost like a cream, very pale color. And this is another poly pour. So kind of like our hen of the woods, you're going to find it growing on dead or dying wood. Sometimes it grows in these big shelves. Sometimes it grows in like, almost a rosette. But they're also easy to identify, and they're quite good. They really have more the texture of chicken than the flavor, but chicken tastes like everything, right? Like everything tastes like chicken. So yeah, I use chicken of the woods in a lot of different things, and you can find it in great quantity, just like, just like oyster mushrooms,
Jessica Bowser:yes, oh my gosh. This is the other mushroom that I have so much of. I don't know what to do with it all. There's like, bags and bags of it in my deep freezer and, and I think I was telling you when we were when we were cutting the chicken of the woods that we found when we were together, I was like, my husband's gonna kill me. He's to the point where he's like, do not bring home any more. He got to the point where he was so sick of eating chicken the woods because, and, you know, I was making it in different recipes, so I was switching it up constantly. We weren't having the exact same thing every single time. But he was like, I can't do it anymore. I'm sorry. I'm like, but it's so good and and also. I think that's the difference between, like, going out and finding it yourself and like, just, you know, being handed something, or put having something put down in front of you, or even just going to the store and buying something, you don't get the same excitement and joy out of it as you do when you have found it yourself.
Unknown:Absolutely, yeah, you know, I very much feel that way. Like foraging really connects you to your food in a completely different way. You feel more responsible for it. You're gonna take better care of it. You're not gonna just like, let it rot in your fridge because it was hard work to acquire it, so you have to do something with it.
Jessica Bowser:Yeah, I totally agree. Now, chanterelles are completely different. Those are like, gold on the forest floor. And when I bring them home, I always saute them with with the intention of using them in some sort of a recipe. But never fails, my husband comes in, and he starts picking them out of the pan and popping them in his mouth. And then I get panicked that he's going to eat them all and I won't get any so then I start doing the same. And next thing you know, the whole thing is gone.
Unknown:Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I did really well on trend trails this year, but most years they're not getting preserved. They're getting annihilated. That's right, they're gone.
Jessica Bowser:So I'm glad that you mentioned that there are walks that people can go on. I definitely need to join one of the one of those morale walks, because in all the years that I've been looking, I have never once found one, and I was joking with you that I'm to the point where I don't even want to pick them. I just want to take a picture of it and take a selfie next to one and be like, I found one. But let's maybe shift a little bit into what some of the resources are for beginners, like local clubs, workshops, communities like, how would you recommend learning more?
Unknown:If you go to the NAMA website, North American mycological Association, nama.org, you can find the closest mushroom club or Mycological Society to your area. So you can search by state. Here in Virginia, I think we have two clubs, but our our club, where I live, is the Blue Ridge mycological club brumsey, which is run by Pat Mitchell, who's a great mycologist, and it is so valuable to get to go on walks with people who have spent a large portion of their life dedicated to mushrooms. Because mushroom people love to teach. We love to gab. So we will teach you like what we are seeing. So you can come along and you can hang out with us, and we will spend time with you if you want to do something that's more like a more like a one off, shameless plug I lead walks you can find. You can find those online. I don't have any scheduled for the moment, but it's common. And there are other people in town who lead walks too. So that's like the best thing you can do is to get out in the woods with somebody and get that hands on learning. But then there are also other resources where you can do more independent learning. There are some really great websites. There are Facebook groups you can join, like your state's Facebook mushroom group, and you'll learn a ton, because people will post what they find, and you'll get to like learn by osmosis. That's honestly how I did a lot of my learning at first, there are some great websites, like mushroom expert.com the guy who writes it is really funny, and you'll be able to learn a lot of the characteristics of different mushrooms. And if somebody gives you an ID on one of those groups, you can look it up, and you can learn more about that mushroom and what led them to that ID. There are also books. This is really weird to say, but these days, you actually do have to be careful of some books, because if you just go on Amazon and you buy whatever book shows up first, there's a chance that it could be aI generated. So try to find a book that is for your area, that is written by a person that you can Google, that talks about species that you can find. So one of the books that I really like is written by Appalachian forager, and it is a really great resource for edible mushrooms in this area. There's also southeastern mushrooms, which is another really fantastic book. There are some great books for this area because it is so diverse. People want to study the mushrooms here. They want to learn more and and share that information.
Jessica Bowser:Are there any other tools that people need to get started?
Unknown:The nice thing about foraging is like human beings are equipped with most of the tools that they need to do it just on their own bodies, but I do recommend getting a knife. So I used to forage with, like, literally, a paring knife from my kitchen and a trash bag because I was poor, and nowadays I use a mushroom knife, which I'm a big fan of. They have kind of curved blades, so they're nice for carving away dirt and debris and and then there's a brush on the other end, so that you can brush things away and you can excavate. Or evict unwanted critters who might be hiding inside your mushrooms, and then baskets or bags. So try to get something that has has, like an open weave so that spores, which are kind of like mushroom seeds that are inside of your mushrooms, can still fall out, and you can kind of replant mushrooms as you were walking, I'm personally more of a basket fan than a bag fan, because I don't like crushing my mushrooms, but use what you got.
Jessica Bowser:I learned from you that baskets are really nice. I don't have a basket though, and I'm usually out. That's because I'm usually doing something simultaneously. I'm simultaneously hiking and birding and identifying plants and looking for mushrooms, like I'm doing all the things at once, right? So, you know, I have, like, those nice cloth, I guess they're supposed to be, like farmers market bags or like grocery store bags, but their cloth and they fold up into a little pouch, and I toss them in my pack, so that if I find something, I've always got a bag that's
Unknown:totally pack. Yeah, that's totally fair. I've sort of switched from using a backpack to using a basket for everything. So I feel sort of like a forest. Jane Birkin, you know, because she said she used to carry around a basket because she couldn't fit all of her stuff in a handbag. And then was it Hermes, I don't know anything about fashion, but he, like, made her this, this special bag, the Birkin bag. And she was just like, I still like my basket, though, and that's how I feel, because, honestly, there is no purse that could hold everything I need. Like, give me a big old market basket, and then no matter what I'm out there looking for, it's gonna be fine, yes.
Jessica Bowser:And the mushroom knife, Gabrielle, I'm telling you, you changed my life. I'm so glad. The moment you handed that knife to me and said, use this, I was like, Oh my gosh, where has this been my whole life? I mean, I've been, I've been using just a regular pocket knife, and it's not the same. Plus, yours had a brush on the end of it, which was so smart, because you said, why wait till you get home to clean them, and have to do all the work, and then the mess is in your kitchen. You can do it right here in the field, and oh my god, like I came home with perfectly cleaned trimmed, like ready to go chicken of the woods. I didn't have to do the extra work in my kitchen. And sometimes the extra work is that little thing that makes you decide, I don't have time for this now, or I'm not going to do this now
Unknown:totally, and it's more sustainable to do it out in the woods. Because when you're like, trimming everything in your kitchen, what are you going to do? You're just going to, like, maybe throw it in your compost. Maybe it goes in the trash. Maybe it goes down the sink, and if you're doing it out in the woods, like, I always kind of feel bad for the mushrooms, like the the bugs that I evict from my mushrooms, because I'm like, I'm like, kind of taking your food here. Sorry, but if I'm leaving all the trimmings, then I can also leave the bugs in the trimmings. So it's like, hey, consolation prize, you still get your snacks. I'm just going to take this part,
Jessica Bowser:yes, especially if, when you get home and you open the bag and there's bugs in the bottom of the bag,
Unknown:uh huh, yeah, yeah. I carry them
Jessica Bowser:outside, but and put them at back outside, but I don't know if I'm releasing them into a place that they're going to be able to survive. I just Yeah.
Unknown:The thing is, like, if you put mushrooms into your basket dirty, they're going to get everything in your basket dirty, yeah, and that dirt is going to get, like, embedded in your mushrooms. So I don't put things in my basket unless they're clean, trimmed, ready to go
Jessica Bowser:totally it's the first thing I did when I got home after we were together that day, is buy one online, and it showed up the next day, and I was dancing around my living room. I got so excited. I was
Unknown:so glad. Like, if I could change anybody's life in one small way, I'm gonna ride that high for a while.
Jessica Bowser:Yes, and they're not super expensive, and they're small, you throw them in your pack. Like, I just don't know why I didn't have one all along. So if I had, if I had any advice, you're the expert here. But if I had any advice, I'd be like, get yourself a mushroom nut. You want
Unknown:to if you want to forage mushrooms, it really does make a difference. Yeah. One thing I will say is, like, when it comes to buying stuff, try not to buy things until you know that you're going to actually use them. So a lot of people will get into foraging, and they'll just be like, Oh my gosh. And now I want to buy, like, six beautiful baskets, and I want to get this whole knife set, and I want to get a hoary Hori, and I want to get trimmers and pruners and all of this stuff. And you're like, Whoa. This just turned into capitalism. Maybe we should, like, just see what we already have, see what we can make work like, if you know that you're not going to be really into making, like, juices from your berries, maybe you don't need a steam juicer. Maybe, like, you just need the things to do, the stuff that you know you're going to be into, and then you can add on over time. If you're not going to be gathering a ton of things, maybe you don't need a dehydrator right off the bat. Maybe you can. Just use the dashboard of your car for a while, until you go, you know what a dehydrator would be a good purchase for
Jessica Bowser:me. That makes total sense. I say the same thing about outdoor gear all the time, because people go down those rabbit holes real quick. And you it's just not necessary. Like, you know, acquire the things that you really think you're going to use and invest in those one piece at a time. Yeah, going crazy from the beginning, invest
Unknown:in tools that are going to make your job easier, but you have to know what that job is first. You have to know, like, what are the things that I am spending a lot of time on? One thing that I would definitely recommend if you're going to be foraging a lot of mushrooms is a salad spinner. They are so useful for cleaning mushrooms.
Jessica Bowser:So put that in your book. I mean, you have a whole list of things in your book that you recommend for different different projects, different recipes, different whatever you're planning to do, but the salad spinner one, you said to me when we were together, do you know the salad spinner trick?
Unknown:It's life changing, especially for morels, because they get so dirty. No matter what you do, you're gonna, you're gonna find grit every time, and the salad spinner just dislodges the grit so well, I'm a huge fan. Mm.
