A Giant Discovery.

My son next to a giant puffball mushroom.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I have been preoccupied with teaching classes and experimenting with a bunch of different primitive skills.

Anyway, today my son and I went for a walk in the woods, and he spotted two giant puffball mushrooms (Calvatia gigantea). The larger of the two is pictured above. Unfortunately both of them were too old to eat. I have found other species of large puffballs before, but these were my 1st giant puffballs.

If you are interested in learning how to start identifying and harvesting mushrooms I recommend Michael Kuo’s 100 Edible Mushrooms. It covers both ID and cooking very well. I like that it starts with a few mushrooms from the store, then moves to some beginners mushrooms, then a lot of intermediate and advanced ones. He is also pretty honest about which ones don’t really taste that good.

I also recommend Theresa Marone’s Abundantly Wild. It is a great cookbook for foragers. It covers a ton of plants, and about 10 common and fairly easy to ID mushrooms.

What ever you do, don’t get the book Mushrooming Without Fear. It is terrible and somewhat dangerous.

Thanks for reading,
Nate