General Chat

I like them in a stir fry too, Florence, but not so much in a stew.

I sometimes slice them into a salad along with sultanas and pine nuts and all of the usual salad ingredients.

Jem, that's great for your grandson. <3

I worked on a couple of local mushroom farms, picking, early mornings in the dung yard, shifting mushroom beds hither and thither. Not the best day by any means was the day I cleaned the flues in the boiler!!

Glad i won't have to do anything like that again!

In the 60s we used to buy spent mushroom compost from a mushroom grower. We used to get a good crop of mushrooms in the garden from it. I use them all the time.
Jem so pleased that Grandson 1 has found that they help his health.

I love them like Florence! I used to go mushrooming with mum as a child but wouldn't trust myself to not make a mistake now. A local farmer spread spent mushroom compost on his field of turnips one year and had a huge crop of them. Me and a friend had permission to pick them. They were delicious and my friend's dad sold a load in his shop. Then when I was a teenager we found a local mushroom farm where they picked them why you waited and they were delicious. I buy frozen at the moment and add them to lots of things, rice dishes and breakfast. The very fresh ones are best and I'm not keen on some of the battered supermarket ones.

I do love mushrooms and generally use them in a stir fry or veggie stew etc.but the secret is not to overcook them so they go all slimey. They dont need that much time to cook so add them last to cooking.

A friend years ago took me to gather fresh mushrooms as they knew what they were doing and i didnt. they were in a field where there had been sheep.
We filled 2 large carrier bags and went to the local pub in the evening and gave some away. They were so delicious.

And i always chop the stalks too.

Florence in the hebrides

What a coincidence your post is Ann

Only last night, Grandson 1 (who as you know has suffered from serious health issues including fits and seizures for many years now) phoned and told me that he'd been looking into ways to help himself, including going down the natural route.

He's been eating various kinds of mushrooms and says he's noticing a difference in his general health. In particular his joint pain resulting from all the falls he's had due to his fits.

He is also seeing a reduction in his fits too! :-)

I prefer chestnut mushrooms to the bog standard supermarket white ones. Apparently the chestnut ones have more vitamin D. My sister forages for mushrooms, but she knows what she is doing. Properly cooked the wild ones are lovely

I'm not so keen on the button mushrooms, which I think are tasteless, but I love field mushrooms and eat them every week.

Gwyn, my foraging days are long over, but I can buy field mushrooms in the local supermarket.

Maggie
That must have been quite a challenge, eating prickly pear without being pierced.
I saw plenty in Gozo, but never saw anyone tackling them.

Like your family, we ate foraged food. Mum had been brought up in the country, so blackberry picking , wild strawberry finding and chestnut collecting were annual events for us.

When staying , as a child, with relatives in South Wales we once went picking laverbread from the rocks on the beach. The collecting was OK, as long as we watched the tide, but then it had to be washed several times in separate rock pools to rid it of as much sand as possible. It was then carried in baskets across the fields to home, where it was washed many more times before being cooked in a large pan. The smell was dreadful, but when cooled the result was ready to be used for frying in small pats as part of a cooked breakfast.
The present day equivalent, available in South Wales markets doesn't compare and is much more sloppy.

I remember in the 60s when parties on housing estates seemed to be all the rage with buffet suppers. We used to make a cold rice dish with sweet corn, peas, nuts and raw mushrooms chopped into it to eat with salad. Nobody ever had food poisening and the cold rice would be eatenup next day too. (we did have a fridge.

I have to confess to eating raw mushrooms, as a child.
Actually, I've realised, a lot of my time as a child, spent playing, was foraging - and my mum wondered why I never finished my meals :-D
I blame my dad. I was about 3 when my dad showed me how to get to the centre of the prickly pears that grew in Malta, without using a knife, and without ending up with thorn holes in my hands. A bit of practice, and I was an expert! :-D

I’m with your daughter Gwyn. It’s not the taste so much as the disgusting slimy texture. If I am given a meal in someone else’s house I try to quickly swallow a few mushrooms down but I would never have them from choice. My mum didn’t buy mushrooms so I didn’t try them till I was an adult. She didn’t buy shellfish either so II didn’t discover I was allergic to it till I was 19. I can remember coming home from school, aged about 5, and telling my mother that we had eaten stew with horrible white bits in it. It was years before I discovered it was pearl barley which I still hate.

I liked all of my school lunches but for two or three years during summer terms my friends and I used to take packed lunches.

One year Mars Bar sandwiches were the rage, sometimes Mars Bar and sliced banana sandwiches; another year it was beef crisp sandwiches.

Our tastes knew no bounds! :-D

I never had Spam very often, no meat at all since 1975, but I don't think I particularly disliked it. From what I remember of that first school lunch, the only thing I had seen that resembled what was on my plate was Chappie that the dog had.

I like Spam too!

How could I not like it when Mum told me she lived on Spam when she was pregnant with me - during wartime! <3

I am with your daughter, Gwyn, and they get cold very quickly too.

It is interesting that you should say that you had never had some of those things. Ann.

I was only thinking about when I first had school dinners after my nan died when I was five. I knew I didn't like fish but would eat white fish which she had cooked in milk and served with potatoes and veg from the garden.. Having had salad and dog meat for the first lunch, we had had corned beef at home but I had not encountered Spam before, I was equally perplexed by the brown object on the plate with the chips which were what you ate with egg.

It was battered fish but, living jut past the back of Beyond, I had never encountered a fish and chip shop, that was for town folk, so had never come across fish and chips.

They're just as nice with a creamy garlic sauce as they are fried (in butter, like Ann says) with bacon and onions for breakfast.

We all have likes and dislikes Sharron I love the taste, but they actually also soak up the taste of other things they are cooked with like butter, garlic, olive oil, herbs.

rollo as you say mmmmm!

Ann,
I don't remember Mum buying mushrooms, when we were children. They were a foraged seasonal addition.

Sharron
Is that the shop-bought one's or just any?
Field mushrooms have more taste.

My daughter would agree with you though and says they are like slugs on the plate, but will eat them if they are in eg bolognese sauce.

It is just such a shame they taste horrible.

I will eat them if they are on the plate but always swallow them down first to get rid of them. Bleh!