Allotments 4 All

I've just discovered giant puffballs in my garden! I appear to be a bit behind the slugs but have one picked (about 10 inches diameter) which is perfect under the slug holes & there's a couple more on the way...

We've lived here for 6 years & never had them before. I knew there had to be an upside to this miserable weather!

Anyone else getting mysterious mushrooms appearing?

I once made creamy mushroom penne with a giant puff ball. It was gorgeous! :P I noticed a lot of mushrooms are appearing everywhere now but not sure if they are edible...

OOOH! It's been one of my ambitions to find a giant puffball since I was about 15  ;D

Saw a recipe for one in some sort of 'foraging around the countryside' book that me dad had!

By the way ... I do have OTHER ambitions. It's not my ONLY one!

Here's a piccie of the cross-section, with £1 at the bottom for scale. Cool, eh? The hole in the middle is from where I tentatively stabbed it with a bamboo, not knowing what it was to start with! Could've been ectoplasm.

It's good to have an ambition in life, Trixie... Now, about that mushroom soap?!?!


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Hmmm yes Ollie! I can see a 'range' being invented! Frothy Funghi Flavoured Foam Bars  ;D

And that puffball looks good enough to eat! What on EARTH were you doing poking it with a bamboo stick!! Never mind ectoplasm, it could have been a WW2 landmine  :o

I picked my first field mushrooms yesterday  :D  There is normally giant puffballs where I take my dogs but there where the dogs all rush to its like not picking the blackberrys at the bottom!! :o

Me dear old dad recommended this bloke for mushroom identification

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/

I think I will make mushroom-hunting my next obsession  ;D

I've got to do SOMETHING now my little lad Alfie is at school full-time  :'(

Cleared a bit of the border back at the weekend and these appeared this week! Edible? I can remember pouring water from a mushroom punnet there as it's next to the greenhouse.

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t87/ninnyscrops/DSCF0219.jpg

I found a few last year out when I was driving in the country side and cooked them, Got recipe from River Cottage web site. Try ed breaking a few up and planting around the allotment  where I thought it would be the  most humid. No luck, I contacted a guy on a website  who was an expert and he said it wasn't the bit above the ground you need to transplant but the large clump below the soil. I have driven up and down the roads and haven't seen them this year but have a spade in the boot in-case.

Please bear in mind that they are only fit to eat while the flesh is white. Once they show yellow or worse, they should be discarded.

My cooking method:

Slice into pieces 1cm thick, dip into egg batter then fry with bacon. Yum Yum.

We had a crop of these in our side lawn next to the cow meadow about 10 or 12 yrs ago.  We gave some to mushroom fiends, and cooked the rest in a variety of ways - butter and garlic, sauces and mushroom stew till sated and couldn't face any more.  They were enormous and delicious.   Haven't seen one since even though the ground has been left undisturbed apart from planting a hlly hedge along the boundary 5 years ago.  Maybe we'll get lucky this year with it being so cool and damp.

My lecturer at uni (mycology) did tell us they were safe to eat but not to bother as he'd tried them and it was like eating boot leather. Obviously he didn't cook them the right way.

Well, having now researched the matter further, I can safely say that Kea's lecturer had boots made from slugs!

Really quite an unpleasant & disappointing experience. IMHO as always.

Quote from: ninnyscrops on September 05, 2007, 20:52:57
Cleared a bit of the border back at the weekend and these appeared this week! Edible? I can remember pouring water from a mushroom punnet there as it's next to the greenhouse.

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t87/ninnyscrops/DSCF0219.jpg

Any chance of a pic of the underside? Leave the entire stalk in place, and show the whole lot. It's hard to identify them from a top view alone.

If any more come up will post piccy of underside and stalk, but the slugs have beaten me to it with this lot!  From memory the gills were a light brown and the thick stalk was white with "fur" from ground level for about an inch.

Ours had neither stalks nor gills so maybe we picked them a bit younger.  They tasted fab and had a good texture - not at all slimy or leathery - and went wonderfully well with garlicky herby butter.

Check out River Cottage web site for the recipie from HFW.

Pullballs arrived in my garden after digging in loads of stable manure, but I've seen lots of them on the verges around the local small lanes.   Must be migration via the horses.

They only grow in the small cool strip in my garden, the sun blasted bit obviously kills off the spores.  They're small, but tough, forcing their wasy out of gaps in the paving too.  Never thought of eating them, but it's fun to "puff" when they go over ( holding my breath of course).

Cheers

I picked a small giant puffball at the weekend from by Hadrian's wall.  Fried it when I got home and thought it ok, would eat it again if I came across any :-)

I must get up there again; I walked the length of it once, years ago, and i want to spend some time up there looking at the remains again.