The Books We Are Using

On our first foray we were fairly overwhelmed and baffled by all the latin words, strange beards, and what seemed to be an impossibly large number of different species.  It didn't seem our thing really, but we did enjoy eating the mushies we found so we went back the next week.  On that second day out there were a lot less people (not a weirdy beardy in sight!) so it was better because we could spend time being coached and trained by the guys who do know their stuff.  One fella had a mushroom identification book with him, so my wife Jan was asked to try to identify fungi when we found them.

Somehow this extra involvement made it all more fun and easier to understand.  So we got on Amazon that night and ordered the following books.  They compliment each other really well.  I've never been able to tell an oak from a holly tree(!) but the pictures in the tree book really do the job.  It's good to know which trees are which because species of mushrooms and trees form an alliance. Have a look at the mushies we picked and ate today at the bottom of this post... confidently done partly because we identified the tree.

So driving home from work in the rain I glanced over into the grounds of a local church and saw two great big mushrooms.  After doing some digging (in the ground and in the books!) it turned out they were Orange Birch Boletes, a relation of the Cep/Porcini, and particularly delicious too!  We sliced up the caps and made a mushroom and chicken risotto for tonight's dinner. Bloody lovely!!  I need to find out whether the stems taste nice too.  Anyway, here's the pics: