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asukawashere
Stranger
Registered: 10/16/15
Posts: 89
Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
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Is this Hen o.t.W. still good to eat?
#22448994 - 10/29/15 12:17 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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So, I went a-foraging today (and the day before yesterday, and so on—will post more pretty photos when I can be motivated to crop & clean them up). Anyway, it poured last night. Like, seriously poured. We got around 4" of rain, which is about a month's worth of rain in one night. While this bodes extremely well for my 'shrooming prospects in the next week, it does mean that the things I found today are...well, totally waterlogged.
So I found this cluster of maitake (yay for finally finding a local hen that I didn't have to drive an hour to get!), and it appears fairly young and like it should be prime eatin', except I think the deluge caused the mycelium to go on a bit of a happy rampage. Is it still good to eat? Wanted to know before I go visit some friends tonight and bring so to share. It's going to be a PITA to dehydrate the leftovers, but I figure after I cut apart the leaves and squeeze them a bit with some paper towels, they won't be so bad. And the orange slime bit has got to go, obviously. Mostly it's the abundance of mycelium that I'm unsure of. You can see the waterlogging from the darker outside layer around the edges of the cross-slice (I will stress that it is not rotten in any way, just very, very wet!). ^.^
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relic
of a bygone era


Registered: 10/14/14
Posts: 5,623
Loc: the right coast
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Re: Is this Hen o.t.W. still good to eat? [Re: asukawashere]
#22449042 - 10/29/15 12:35 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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i eat stuff all the time that makes my wife dry heave just watching me eat it, but i wouldn't touch that one.
perhaps you should take pieces of it that have intact spore surfaces and put them up against the bark at the base of dying and dead trees. i've done that several times and have finally gotten one to take; got about 15#'s off of an oak stump that is also colonized by Laetiporus.
ETA: just read the rest of your post...that surely looks like it's been eaten to death by beetles, slugs, maybe fungus gnats, centipedes...some critter(s). perhaps it's just the pic, but i find those hollowed out, white, crumbly parts in the parts of fungi (and def hens, too) that have been munched on by bugs.
Edited by relic (10/29/15 12:38 PM)
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Joust
Mycotographer




Registered: 10/13/11
Posts: 13,392
Loc: WA
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Re: Is this Hen o.t.W. still good to eat? [Re: relic]
#22449055 - 10/29/15 12:38 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Yeah i would go find a better fruit
-------------------- ~~~~~~***Psilocybin Mushrooms***~~~~~~ _________A Practical Guide To Psilocybin Mushrooms_________ "Think about the species, not your scale". -NeoSporen "Mr. Joust, I see you don't actually partake in the psilocin, but it looks like it may partake in you!" -Gojira
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asukawashere
Stranger
Registered: 10/16/15
Posts: 89
Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
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Re: Is this Hen o.t.W. still good to eat? [Re: relic]
#22449123 - 10/29/15 12:51 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
relic said: i eat stuff all the time that makes my wife dry heave just watching me eat it, but i wouldn't touch that one.
perhaps you should take pieces of it that have intact spore surfaces and put them up against the bark at the base of dying and dead trees. i've done that several times and have finally gotten one to take; got about 15#'s off of an oak stump that is also colonized by Laetiporus.
ETA: just read the rest of your post...that surely looks like it's been eaten to death by beetles, slugs, maybe fungus gnats, centipedes...some critter(s). perhaps it's just the pic, but i find those hollowed out, white, crumbly parts in the parts of fungi (and def hens, too) that have been munched on by bugs.
I always take my scraps after cleaning up a mushroom and scatter them among the woods in my backyard, in hopes of introducing more edibles to my little patch of woods. 
That said, it really isn't chewed to pieces (looking at the top/up side, which I couldn't be bothered to photograph, it's completely intact). I think the "crumbly white hollow" you're looking at is a natural crevasse that's been overgrown with mycelium... sure there were a couple of bugs in the crevasses (what hen doesn't have those?) but it's not hollowed out/riddled with bugs inside the tissues of the mushroom. I'd probably discard the whole middle chunk (read: plant by oak in backyard) regardless 'cause it's not as tender as the leaves, but the undamaged leaves struck me as still edible... if the crazy mycelium isn't a big deal.
If everyone thinks it's really bad, I'll toss it, though.
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relic
of a bygone era


Registered: 10/14/14
Posts: 5,623
Loc: the right coast
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Re: Is this Hen o.t.W. still good to eat? [Re: asukawashere]
#22449170 - 10/29/15 01:03 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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you'll be the best, final arbiter of what you're seeing and what you're willing to eat. i'll take your word about not being chewed upon by bugs since between this post and others where we've conversed you seem well versed with that sort of issue with wild harvested fungi. it really is hard to tell from the pic and that's why i specifically said "looks like"; i just couldn't tell from the pic.
perhaps the hollowed out parts have a white mold or other fungi attacking the hen? if it doesn't look like a mold and doesn't wipe off, i wouldn't worry about it and would probably use those parts for a cream of mushroom soup.
enjoy!
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asukawashere
Stranger
Registered: 10/16/15
Posts: 89
Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
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Re: Is this Hen o.t.W. still good to eat? [Re: relic]
#22450230 - 10/29/15 05:39 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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It's definitely mycelium, not mold (well, except that orange bit, but I was already planning to hack that off), so since I don't have anywhere super important to be tomorrow, so I think I'll clean it up, cook and eat one leaf, and see if I keel over. If I don't have any problems, I'll cook more and share with friends this weekend. If I do end up puking, well, I'll get over it eventually and I have a couple pounds of chicken of the woods as a consolation prize. Not to mention the 4" downpour means I can probably scare up plenty of new flushes of everything sometime in the next week.
Not really a huge fan of cream of mushroom soup, but I make a mean cream sauce to serve over chicken and wild rice or quinoa (or both LOL). 
Actually, this is probably going to sound extremely weird to most of y'all, but for all my enthusiasm about foraging, I don't actually like to eat mushrooms straight up. I much prefer to chop them into tiny little pieces (or powder dried ones) and use them to add a greater flavor complexity to dishes, rather than have them be the star of the show. And, of course, cook them for friends/family (I am a crazy kitchen monster of some sort).
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