My First St Georges

    A week ago while on a visit to one of my small local woods I was lucky enough to come across my very first circle of St Georges Mushrooms, in fact two circles withon 50 yards of one another. St Georges were one of over 40 fungi on my "wants" list (a list I may share with you one day), and how lucky was I to find two groups on the same morning.


   St George Mushrooms (Calocybe gambasa), is one of the early edibles and very much sought after by all foragers and are very highly desired by some of the country's top restaurants. As I do with most new fungi I took a sample home first to reserch it and to do all my normal checks such as smell. The smell was one of a mealy scent, I thought a touch like leather or raw flour just as stated in all my books. 


   So after all the checks and feeling as confident as can be, I returned the next morning to gather a few to eat. I fried about five smallish mushrooms that morning with butter, which I must say did taste nice. Then I waited 24 hours before eating the second five, making sure I had no bad effects. I must say apart from when I collected and cooked field mushrooms with my dad as a child, this was my first cooking of my foraged mushrooms,  as I have said before I will only eat a mushroom when I feel I have correctly indentified it to be edible. 



   I hope you all get to to do the same one day soon, but just be careful, research, research and research again befor you slip that knob of butter in that frying pan.



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