Shrooming Tour

My friend Pat booked me into a mushroom tour as a birthday gift last month and the day arrived on Sunday. Lib and I made our way to Mooruduc Estate Winery arriving fifteen minutes before the requested 9.45, for the tour beginning at 10.00am. We enjoyed coffee and cake and met Jane from Bentleigh who came in our car as we headed off in convoy of about 15 vehicles containing about 30 people to the first of two locations the tour visited.

The gentleman conducting the tour, an extremely knowledgeable person named Cameron Russell whom I'd heard interviewed on the radio a few weeks ago, when he said pine mushrooms are usually safe but there's one similar type that if eaten mistakenly, on about the sixth to tenth time, can destroy your red blood cells and kill you. This fuelled my quest for more knowledge, given that I'd endured the strange incident about a year ago when I had to go to hospital in the middle of the night as blood tests showed possible arteritis.

I asked him before we left the winery about what I'd heard him say, adding that I'd eaten pine mushrooms every year for many years but now had concerns. He allayed my fears straight away, telling me if you pick only the young fresh pinies with the concave cap and not bigger than the palm of your hand you can't really go wrong. As they get older and bigger, the caps tend to rise at the edges forming a shallow cup shape. This is where you can go wrong he said as the dangerous one resembles the older up curved ones. I told him that it had been worthwhile me coming already, and we hadn't started yet.

The tour itself was only two half hour sessions on roadside locations about five minutes from the winery. There were varoius fungi at both. I came away happy my main questions had been answered. I always wondered about eating those brown mushrooms with the sponge underneath rather than gills (slippery jacks) but had only done so once when a lady had been shown by someone who knew and rang me to come round and pick some from the same place. I took them home and cooked them but didn't like the texture although they had a lovely rich flavour. Cameron said they are safe if you scratch them or cut them and they don't go blue or black quickly where you do with oxidisation. They are best dried out thoroughly then powdered and added to dishes when you want strong mushroom flavour.

Field mushrooms out in paddocks, nice rich pink going brown underneath with brownish tops are safe. Mushrooms under trees that look similar can be dangerous. The test is to scratch the skin off and if the flesh discolours yellow, even very slightly, don't eat them as they could be yellow stained mushrooms which will cause 8 or so hours of vomiting and sitting on a toilet. Nice brown ones with no hint of yellow when skinned or peeled means they are 'agaricus augustus' I think he said, and delicious eating, as I have found many times around our house and on my walk under wattles and eucalypts. The main message is, if there's the slightest doubt, DON"T EAT.

There were many other fungi we saw but they were not edible and could be dangerous. It's only really the three above mentioned that I'd eat, the pinies, the slippery jacks if I could be bothered drying and powdering them, and the field mushies with it's similar looking variant of wooded areas provided you are sure it isn't the yellow stained.

We returned to the winery for mushrooms on toast and superb mushroom soup and a glass of wine. On the way home we called into Mornington race track and caught a few races, not staying for the last two as it was too cold.

A great day and many thanks to Pat.