Said Iso Rabins, who founded a company that teaches classes on how to forage for mushrooms (and other wild edibles), quoted in "Mushroom Boom: How to Plan a Foraging Adventure on the West Coast/Thanks to an unusually wet winter, mushroom hunters in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond will be greatly rewarded. Here’s a primer for first-timers" (NYT).
The NYT is stirring up travel ideas for East Coast people to go to the West Coast and compete with the locals looking for things growing in the wild. It's the opposite of locavorism... is that the word? I'd like to suggest locavoraciousness... a word I just coined.
I mean, don't the locals treasure their foraging spots? And here's a man who's commercialized what I would think would be carefully shielded lore. Or is that a silly concern when we're talking about the San Francisco Bay area? But isn't this NYT article at least playing with the concept of getting close to nature? That doesn't fit with getting on airplanes and flying thousands of miles! And what about the damage to the environment when you fly? I think you ought to take an on-line class in foraging, and the class should focus on how to forage within walking/biking distance of your home. Bring back "Stalking the Wild Asparagus."
For my Wisconsin readers: Here's what you need to know.
ADDED: A reader shows me that DuckDuckGo returns some earlier uses of "locavoraciousness," so I withdraw my claim of coinage. And I vow to check DuckDuckGo before claiming any coinage in the future.
Posts
59 comments:
I bet the author never mentions trying to find land that is public, not private.
As in Wisconsin, here in Iowa, going out and foraging for food is a revenue stream for the state. Lots of people come into the state to forage for deer, and mushrooms, and pheasants. As our host notes, competing with the locals for land.
I've been chasing people off our land my entire life. I final just sold hunting rights on a yearly basis. The renter keeps people of my property.
"All of us, at times, we might work too hard
To have it too fast and too much
And anyone can fill his life up
With things he can see but he just cannot touch"
This is the norm for the wealthy, and especially those in the large cities.
"Do as I say, not as I do."
"Rules for thee but not for me."
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Al Gore, Bernie Sanders, and Obama possess far more real estate / jets / physical assets than they "need."
California's environmental movement has long been a hybrid voting block of utopian-Thunbergian Greens and the opportunistic wealthy who actively suppress growth and limit resources to keep others anyway.
Well. There goes one of the few things I enjoy doing in the spring. Now everybody and their brother are going to be; "Where did you get those?"
Fuck off.
i'm curious how many people will Die, eating mushrooms they picked
Every state, every region has it's natural products one can forage for their dining table. Check with the best local restaurants and you'll see at least one or two of them that do the foraging for you and feature those local delicacies when available.
I remember years ago in Michigan during the spring it was the season for morel and/or chanterelle mushrooms found up north. Some restaurants would feature morel dinners (morel mushrooms are delicious). Also- a neat and rare Michigan spring treat: Fiddlehead Ferns.
New Yorkers don't need to travel to SF. New York is a beautiful and vast state. Upstate and into Western NY, I am sure there are plentiful things to forage for and bring back. Or...just find a restaurant that does the foraging for you.
Here in Florida I'm sure there's plenty of weird stuff to pull and eat. But like manyl things in Florida, they come with a story and a police record.
the concept of getting close to nature? That doesn't fit with getting on airplanes and flying thousands of miles! And what about the damage to the environment when you fly?
Well, at least we have Jimmy Carter to thank for this!
There goes the neighborhood.
My family was heavily into "Stalking the Wild Asparagus". We foraged for and ate (and sometimes I still do) day lily pods, dandelions, wild jerusalem artichokes, morels, ditch asparagus, and cattail roots. Day lily pods taste like sugar snap peas.
Sounds like a great idea: inveigle a bunch of out-of-state neophytes to drop in to a whole new ecosystem where picking a lookalike fungus will stop your heart before you can say Jack Robinson. When one of these clueless tourists does fall over, shrug and offer condolences.
50 years ago to the day I was an expert edible mushroom hunter in North Florida. We hosted friends from all over America in the early 70's joining midnight cow pasture raids looking for psilocybin 'shrooms to make trip tea. We encountered helpful farmers and angry farmers. Farmers concerned for our souls. Farmers wondering if they could cash in - they could and did. We were cornered by angry bulls and ran for our lives diving heedlessly through cow shit to get under the barbed wire to safety. The current tourist encouragers are late to that game...
I'm a big fan of foraging for mushrooms and have done it since childhood, but flying somewhere do do it sounds like a recipe for disappointment.
Most common scenario: You will hike all over the place, not the best places to hike for scenery or interesting terrain and find nothing.
Next most common scenario: You will happen onto some delightful and rare species like Morels and now what? You can't eat all of them on this visit. You don't have the equipment or time to dehydrate them. You might be able to freeze them but shipping on dry ice is not exactly easy to arrange.
We found a morel stash that so far has gone unmolested after 3 seasons, and that’s with the hunting guides stomping around the property…
Eataly in the Back Bay has a few baskets of morels every year. They come from one of those states that allows export and sale of them, or so the sign says…PA maybe?
Pick the wrong mushroom and there are consequences. Liver Failure, illness, all kids of nasty stuff. Unless you really know what you are doing, this is one thing NOT to participate in.
I encourage NY city dwellers to come to the Idaho wildernesss and hunt for morels in the habitat that also supports poison oak, meat bees, rattlesnakes, hornets, coyotes, elk, wolves, moose, and bears, all at an altitude of > 5000 feet.
I agree Owen that hunting mushrooms without expertise can be dead!y. Amenita mushrooms kill your liver but I've never heard of a mushroom that gives you a heart attack.
NYT normalizes survival skills.
I’m a little leery of full on foraging- this story about Indian Poke Veratrum Viride was what did it…
I'd like to suggest locavoraciousness... a word I just coined.
I prefer the word I just coined: Locavoritude
:)
I run trails and love seeing mushrooms during the Spring and summer. Last summer I found one that was larger than a beach ball. I get slightly annoyed because it's too hard to try and identify mushrooms for non edible purposes.
Just another article about the elite sense of entitlement by the denizens of NYC. There are the same people who consider themselves citizens of the world. Can’t have patriotism. So what if people are dying on the streets, drug use is sky high, illegal aliens can’t find work, and the government/teachers union corruption is rampant. Just pay people to use drugs in select places, shove homeless and illegals into taxpayer-paid hotels, and send your kids to private schools. NYC hasn’t solved any big problems in generations. Why try? Just fly to the west coast to pick mushrooms and drink wine. Soon the elites of WEF will lock in control of the world’s economies in a giant shift of income from the many to the few and life will be properly ordered. Sort of a massive version of the Biden crime family.
Unless those New Yorkers are planning to walk or bike or fly or sail (using a sailboat) to the edible-mushroom-rich west coast they will be killing the earth with their carbon emissions. Or so I've been told.
Leslie Graves mentions foraging for, among other things, dandelions.
That gives me the idea of putting a sign up this spring granting anyone permission to forage for dandelions on my private property (i.e., my yard). Forage away to your heart's content!
It's like how people travel to any revival tat breaks out. A symptom of acedia is frenzied travel.
What Rusty said,,, I knew a state recognized "Mushroom Genius" who had license to survey all mushrooms anywhere in the state for the DNR. He revered the mushroom patches and cautioned against their despoilment. The very least of actions he recommended was to "salt" the spores of the harvested shrooms into their originating patch. Newbies tend to trample those sacred grounds.
Nobody @ 8:27: “…heart attack…”. Sorry, my ignorance is showing (again). I used that possible outcome to make the rhetorical point. Next time I’ll say “nuke your liver…”
Althouse said...
I'd like to suggest locavoraciousness... a word I just coined.
Do the locavoraciousness with me.
I encountered mushroom hunters a few years ago on some property we have in northern Michigan. They claimed to be on public land. I asked "Did you check?" Of course not was the implied answer. All they had to do was ask.
If you are not a prepper and storing dehydrated foods, foraging experience is probably good to have in your toolkit
If you go to the south pasture at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the spring after a good rain, you can get all the psylociban mushrooms you could ever want.
Enigma said...
"This is the norm for the wealthy, and especially those in the large cities.
"Do as I say, not as I do."
"Rules for thee but not for me."
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Al Gore, Bernie Sanders, and Obama possess far more real estate / jets / physical assets than they "need."
Magnum PI Robin’s Nest Now Controversial Obama House
"The Obamas were recently in Hawaii to check on well-underway construction at their new multimillion-dollar Hawaii mansion nearby Honolulu, together with its seawall that is causing so much controversy. Nearby neighbors in the Waimanalo community are concerned that it will further erode the fragile beachline fronting the stunning turquoise ocean.
As you recall, the property was purchased by close friend Marty Nesbitt, in 2015 for a cost of just under $9 million. Previously it was also the home where the Magnum PI mansion was located, nearby Waimanalo Beach. It was torn down as a result of disrepair in 2018.
Former President Barack Obama became known for spending Christmas holidays on Oahu, in a rented home at Kailua Bay, near Kailua Beach, during his presidency. In recent years, they have come to spend yet more time in Hawaii.
More recently, it came to public awareness that a plan was underway to retain a 100-year old sea wall on the beach at Obama’s coastal estate. That however was not in the interest of environmentalists and neighbors due to beach erosion. The issue is that the sea wall can further contribute to the beach’s erosion by impacting the natural flow of the ocean.
Three homes are in construction at present on the beachfront compound, which includes two swimming pools and a security fence. The property sits nestled nearby the Koolau Mountains with a spectacular view of Waimanalo Bay.
An apparent loophole in the law permitted the 2015 sellers of the massive compound to obtain an easement on public land for a one-time payment of $61K, just before it was sold. They asked officials for a 55-year lease of the public property underneath the century-old sea wall, which in turn gave the new property owners, the Obamas, the right to keep the concrete structure in place. That led to the building permits that are resulting in the current construction. While more than 100 such easements were created in the past two decades, they are nonetheless controversial, according to environmental experts, and are a primary cause of beach loss. Many consider such easements to be a planning loophole by the county in terms of environmental sustainability.
It appears that at one time, it was believed that these structures were a well-intended way to preserve coastal properties and were not the main cause of beach loss. Now, however, it has become clear that in fact they are contraindicated in relation to preserving Hawaii’s natural coastlines. Such structures do not protect the shoreline, however, and in fact directly result in existing beach loss by interrupting the ocean’s natural flow, according to scientists. These are at odds with modern laws.
As a result, the beach fronting Obama’s property is virtually devoid of sand due to the coastal damage.
Marty Nesbitt, who is now chair of the Obama Foundation board, addressed the issue of the sea wall being the main case of beach loss, saying “it was consistent with and informed by the analysis of our consultants, and the laws, regulations, and perspectives of the State of Hawaii."
"At some point, you've made too much money." I guess that point hasn't been reached yet for the Obamas.
Oh FGS. Are NYTimes so bored that they have to start foraging for mushrooms?
(As IF I'm gonna tell people where I find morels near my house)
If someone forages up something not really edible and dies, is the Time liable?
@Leslie, my brother had all the Euell Gibbons books. I rolled my eyes at that, as I went to the grocery store for produce.
This description of day lily pods and tubers sauteed in butter sounded good. https://honest-food.net/dining-on-daylilies/ Day lilies grow wild along roads so you could get a supply without stripping your own yard of future blossoms. (Do not eat regular or "Easter" lilies, they will kill you.)
I've tried nasturtiums, dandelions and Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot) - all OK. When I was growing up there were apple trees and wild grape vines everywhere but these I think have been replaced by sterile hybrids because the fallen fruit attracted bees.
All the dandelions in North America were brought here by pioneer women because it was an important remedy before there was a way to get greens year round in stores. Dandelions reproduce by cloning their seeds so a DNA study could trace those in your yard back to the area from which the original pioneer woman who brought the seeds came.
Yeah, I have no interest in foraging for my food.
To most ER docs, who have seen the nasty consequences of both, eating found wild mushrooms is kind of like riding motorcycles: Would love to do it but that ain't gonna happen.
"That doesn't fit with getting on airplanes and flying thousands of miles! And what about the damage to the environment when you fly?"
Althouse! Remember the Althouse theorem! People don't believe what they profess to believe.
But progs do believe others should act according what progs profess to believe.
This is a lot like the "Wild caught" salmon hypocrisy. The same people that sneer at people who eat farmed salmon don't want to talk about the nets that are drug through the ocean scooping up their superior wild caught salmon.
A bunch of upper middle class snooty shitheads shopping at Whole Foods that blame the world's ills on everyone else.
I hope a lot of these people go look for mushrooms. They will find bupkis.
I knew people who gathered mushrooms to make money. The stuck up city slickers that are going to get tired of walking through the forest a half mile off the road will have issues competing with them.
The mushroom hunters can make good money and it is quite competitive to the point of violence and territories being claimed as well.
Recently I keep making double comments. When I "Publish", I get the page that says the comment did not go through. I go back and "Publish" again. This is what I've always done but recently this has started to result in double comments. IDK.
The nutritional value of mushrooms is utterly negligible. On the other hand, eating the wrong one will kill you. So I guess if the readers of the NYT wish to eat wild mushrooms in the California hills, I'm all for it.
Temujin said...
New Yorkers don't need to travel to SF. New York is a beautiful and vast state. Upstate and into Western NY, I am sure there are plentiful things to forage for and bring back.
I'm guessing this is why the NYT is directing New Yorkers to California to forage. Wouldn't want to run into any savages in the wild.
Around here, it’s Springtime Fiddleheads.
I’m just to tired w/working to forage for fun. I do plant a garden.
His liability insurance must be very expensive...
In college my hobby was wild foods. It was a fun excuse to go into the woods. However, many mushrooms look alike but some are poisonous. If the book says you need to examine the color of the spores or such, don't.
Articles like this try to persuade people to get on a cross-country flight in order to accomplish practically nothing. Isn't the NYT Travel section (not Jimmy Carter) responsible for huge amounts of carbon emissions? And for what? Mushrooms??? I demand climate reparations from the NYT.
I fly when I have to for business or for significant personal reasons, and I do it because it's so convenient and relatively safe. (3000 miles in 5 hours, incredible!) But I have a gripe that goes beyond pet peeve. I hate the smell of the plane's interior. It's always a mix of decaying plastics, disinfectant, jet fuel, coffee, airplane food, and poop, among other ineffable unnamables. Temporary anosmia would be a blessing.
Dinner's Ready - a few licks of Sonoran Desert toad (Bufo Alvarius) and along with a nice bowl of Psilocybin Mushrooms
Low in calories to boot.
Wildswan, i found that using Preview, then publishing from the preview window, solved that problem.
Savages...
Time was, when wandering around in the Nor Cal woods was likely to get you accosted by heavily armed "farmers".
I'm positive that's still true. New Yorkers, stay away! For your safety!
Go forage up in Mendocino. See what happens.
I'm glad of any opportunity to promote a book by Gary Alan Fine. In Morel Tales He writes about mushroom hunters, and it's a fine ride and a fine read.
G.A.F. is the opposite of everything many commenters grouse about sociologists: most important, he writes well, and doesn't push an ideology. He has published books about chess players, little leaguers, and art gallery-goers, to name just a few; full of ah-hah! discovery moments. Any field he visits, he brings back what we'd have to glean a dozen or so novels for.
You don't lick the toads. You smoke the venom. And then you hold on to your hat! But only figuratively, because if you ever had a hat you will no longer be sure about it, or even sure you know what a hat is...
I was doing some archaeological work up in the Cascade foothills of WA state a few years ago and one of the Mexicans on the construction crew would go grab a bunch of lobster mushrooms that were ubiquitous in the nearby woods and eat 'em. I tried a couple. Had the Spousal Unit nearby checking me for signs of impending death, just in case. They were decidedly Meh in my opinion, but then I'm not a mushroom aficionado.
Oh great, the 1970s are back. Just keep them out of the Ramp hunting.
But then the latter is in the "Dirty" South so many from New York City will be appalled like the women in the short below. Imagine being horrified at mashed potatoes and biscuits. Grandma will get you with the biscuits if you go South
https://youtu.be/chubzqep0Wo
"Recently I keep making double comments. When I "Publish", I get the page that says the comment did not go through. I go back and "Publish" again. This is what I've always done but recently this has started to result in double comments. IDK."
Try hitting reload on the error page.
In northern CA, my kids worked at a nursery where, after a forest fire, the owner would take them to pick morels which bbq up pretty good.
When the NYT starts to talk about its trendyzens growing corn or wheat, call me. What they're speaking of now is, go out and find these cute little garnishes to put on top of your rich-people food so you can feel virtuous and part of the real world.
"Try hitting reload on the error page" -Althouse
But copy-save your reply first, so you don't have to replace it after it disappears
I am an extremely enthusiastic mushroom hunter, and have been for more than 10 years. Believe it or not, one of the things that got me into it was a post here on Althouse, when our hostess found some yellow morels on one of her morning walks back in 2012 or 2011. I wanted to learn more about it, and my dad knew a mushroom farmer, so I asked him why he didn’t grow morels instead of ordinary button mushrooms. That was the day I learned the difference between saprobic and mycorrhizal fungi, and it has been a very deep rabbit hole ever since then.
I've seen a young girl die of mushroom poisoning. She was the only survivor in her family so didn't die within hours, but two days later of liver failure.
This was in Africa, where people know which herbs/ wild plants/ mushrooms are safe, but they made a mistake nevertheless.
Strangers who harvest mushrooms, especially those who are city dwellers and doing this as a trendy activity, are asking for trouble. It's not like they are locals who harvest from a traditional harvest area.
Post a Comment