You never know when your last day is gonna be...

 So live now, don't lose your time..

Michael Arnstein, the fruitarian

Mushrooms - how to harvest and eat them raw

In no way this presents a guidance on fungi eating for everybody. I just wrote it for myself and made public. Everybody: consult with a specialist before eating mushrooms, especially raw. Most mushrooms are not edible raw, some of them are poisonous and deadly. Deadly. Deadly. Deadly.

When picking a mushroom: with a knife cut it from its root. Let the root grow again. Also we don't need a root - it is dirty and it is very hard to clean it from dirt.

Worms do not make mushrooms poisonous. Though they can affect taste badly.

Collect only big and fat mushrooms, those with fat leg. Even if err and get rid of thin edible mushroom - we lose almost nothing. Thin mushrooms do not contribute much to our food weight. On the other side, most poisonous fungi are thin and small.

Learn poisonous mushrooms signs. If we should remember only one - this is "death cap". Most deadly.

It has the following signs:

• The cap outside might differ in color: white, green, brown, red etc. So the cap color per se does not tell us anything.
• Gills of the cap are white. They will never turn other color.
• In the top part, under the cap, it has a skirt (ring) on its leg.
• In the bottom part, it has cup (sack or volva). Sometimes need to dig to see it.
• Thin stem (stalk) (usually). Inside, the stem is white (need to cut it to see).
• If we see a sign of bite, that doesn't mean that the mushroom is edible. Maybe that was a bite of a rabbit. Rabbits can digest death cap, humans not. Or maybe other human did bite it and today there is no this human anymore...

Often we are in doubt whether the mushroom is edible or poisonous. We should err on a side of poisonous - get rid of the fungi. It is not worthy to take a risk.

Before eating the mushroom, cut a piece from its cap and see the color inside. Blue color is a sign of rotten fungi, it is very bitter, not good to eat.

Before eating the raw mushroom, try to chew a small piece and do not swallow. See whether it is bitter or not. If yes, get rid of that.