There's not mushroom in here, it's ok I'm a fungi to be around!

It’s been a while since I did my last blog, but sometimes life has a horrible habit of getting in the way! Anyway, what have I been up to? I’ve been to Austria and did some hiking in the mountains, and also managed to see some marmots, edelweiss and Alpine Chough. Not a bad haul for one holiday. I’ve also been out in the kayak and helped a friend from work reignite his passion for the sport. Anytime you want to go out again Adam just let me know! I’ve also been trying to get the garden up to scratch for the winter and been sorting out crops for planting now and harvesting what we’ve grown over the summer. In all of this I’ve been aided and abetted by my much better half, Mary. We’ve also not long since celebrated our 10^th wedding anniversary.

Anyway, I have a nice long weekend now (treating myself for my birthday) so this morning I decided to go on a little bit of a fungi foray as it’s that time of year. Mushrooms seem to be a real Marmite thing. You either love them or hate them. The other thing I’ve noticed when I talk to people about wild mushrooms the first thing they want to know is “what ones can I eat?” The honest answer to this is you can eat them all. Once! When I started to learn about fungi (back in the Neolithic age if you ask my sister) the first thing I was told was learn which ones you shouldn’t eat first! Then learn the ones you like.

It wasn’t a brilliant mornings foraging but it wasn’t a total washout either. I came away with a good haul of parasols, a few field mushrooms, some chicken of the woods and quite a nice haul of chestnut mushrooms. The added bonus of course was that I got to spend a few hours walking and driving around the New Forest (and I saw donkeys).

So after a lovely morning pootling around in the Vauxhall Corsa ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle) it was time to head back to Team Flynnie HQ to prepare the mushrooms and get them in the dehydrator. I have to admit I do love my dehydrator and love experimenting with it. I find it fascinating the change that comes over the different fruit and vegetable when you dry them. My favourites and the moment are citrus fruits, bananas, pears and chillies. Once the chillies are really dry blitz them in a grinder and you end up with some amazing chilli powder. Just be sure to wash your hands thoroughly before you touch anywhere sensitive on your body!

Right, back to the mushrooms. They are now destalked, broken up and spread on the drying racks in the dehydrator where they’ll stay at 65c for the next 24 hours. After that I’ll pop them into storage jars and have a good stash of fungi for the winter. And no, there aren’t any hallucinogens amongst them.

Just one final thought for you. If you are heading out in to the New Forest at this time of year do watch out for traffic jams, they can be a real pain!