Selfsufficientish.com

I noticed something a bit odd this morning - not sure if it's a problem related to the upgrade or not. I posted two posts this morning, but only one of them showed up on either 'view new posts' or 'view active topics'. This one: http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28986#p...

These are all more-or-less new to me - I have seen shaggy inkcaps once, but they were well on their way to becoming ink by the time I saw them. However, thanks to your excellent photos and notes, I recognised honey fungus when I was out foraging yesterday. Before, I might just have put it down as on...

I've heard (possibly from Andy) that it's possible to eat it to death, but you have to harvest every shoot for five or more years.

I think Geoff's comment about the tree being doomed was specific to the honey fungus (sorry if I've got that wrong, Geoff) - not all fungi are quite so aggressive. That said, whatever the species, just taking the fruiting body off the surface of the tree isn't going to make any difference, so if tha...

If the squirrels aren't eating them, they're probably more effort that they're worth, but you won't know until you try. You may find that dog toy is the best use for them.

Hi Matt,

Nice to hear from you

Is there a reason for making your own when there are green and ethical products that don't use chemicals? Cost! Homemade soap and laundry liquid are much cheaper than bought, of any kind (I really must make some more) and washing hair in water only is obviously cheaper than using shampoo. I'm not s...

If you've already got as far as Ganoderma, I think it unlikely that anyone here will be able to do better on that basis of that photo. I may yet be proved wrong, though - there are more expert mushroomers than I around, and I'm sure one of them will be along before too long.

I'm going to hazard a guess at a polypore of some kind, but that's about as far as my knowledge goes. Could you give us some more clues, such as what kind of tree it was growing on, and where in the world are you?

Thanks :icon_smile: Yes, I should have said, it was only after I'd confidently identified which family it belonged to that I tasted the brittlegill/Russula. For milkcaps, there is an exception. I looked this up to double check, so I'm going to quote directly from John Wright's River Cottage Handbook...

Oh, and on the charcoal burner... there are some brittlegills growing near where I live that look just like Sally's 'obvious' charcoal burner but are not - very strong acrid taste. Most disappointing, especially as there a loads of them

Great to have some more input here :iconbiggrin: 4) Very difficult to tell from the photo I'm afraid. There can be no certainty about this except to say that it is indeed a Puff Ball lookalike. Highly unlikely to be an earth ball due to the fact that common Earthballs do not have a stem. If you cut ...

I'm not sure the other herbs made any difference in the recipe - the mugwort is pretty overpowering. I don't know what an ounce of dried mugwort looks like, but I remember being astonished when I weighed hops (foraged and dried) and discovered just how much volume an ounce of those was. I tried look...

Excellent idea - one of those that's so good it looks obvious when you say it. I shall do that with the remaining overexcited ale. Mind you, it wouldn't have helped much on Friday, as there wasn't time to do that before the party on Saturday. It's the recipe I posted on your wormwood ale thread a wh...

Hi Sally, I've only been studying mushrooms for about a year, so you need to take my IDs as suggestions for further research (i.e. look up the names I've suggested and see if you think the descriptions match), but no. 1 looks like a brittlegill, possibly charcoal burner. No. 2. is probably a blusher...