Samphire

I like Samphire but its hard to get round here. I live miles from the sea and its not economic to drive all the way there to harvest it. So I was very pleased when I came across a site that sold it for the garden. My next concern was giving it the right growing conditions. I have been told that Samphire needs salt so I have to water it with a ratio of 1 tsp of sea salt to 1 pint of water. These sort of conditions would probably kill any surrounding plants so despite assurances that you can grow them in the garden I have put them in a pot. When they arrived I only had one pot to hand so couldnt space them out much, but working on the basis they are essentially wild I don’t think that the spacing will be a critical consideration as it might be for other vegetables. I have had samphire as a steamed vegetable drizzled with butter and I like the salty taste. The pic is hardly inspiring, but I was very pleased to try to grow my own. I will see how it gets on next year. At the moment at least its holding its own. I will probably put it into a much gigger container after I have moved house, whenever that might be in the current climate! I will find a recipe for pickled samphire and post it up.

Autumn fungi again

Emboldened by my survival eating puffballs and shaggy ink caps, I decided to go for a walk this morning looking for more edible fungi. I was amazed at how many Poles were out looking for them – I gather its a national pastime. I am kind of ambivalent about that, I suppose I worry if too many people pick them they will become endangered. Apparently in the olden days Cornwall was covered in wild daffodils, and then in the thirties, I think it was, the rail companies put on the ‘Daffodil Express’ and large numbers of people from London went down to spend the day picking daffodils, with the result that they disappeared from the landscape. So now you dont see the miles of daffodils that apparently were a common sight in Cornwall. It would be a shame if the same thing happened to fungi. I do realise they drop their spores but deleting stocks of anything cannot be a good idea. On the other hand they were only doing what I was doing! I suppose I convince myself that its very much a minority pastime in the UK so that makes it OK. I found what I hope were Bay Bolete. I say hope because I am still inexperienced. I spend ages cross checking the identification. These seemed to pass all the tests, sticky, blue when cut, spongey pores rather than gills.

Even though I am pretty certain I thought it wise to eat a ‘test dose’ so I ate a very very small amount and the rest are in the fridge. Hopefully I will survive till tomorrow with no adverse reaction. It doesnt help that people keep ‘wishing me luck’! It feels as though I am teetering on the brink of doom! If there is anyone looking at this who is a great expert on this and they take one look and know its the worlds second most poisonous mushroom, let me know asap! And if there is anyone out there thinking they can use my picture to positively identify these fungi for Gods sake don’t!

Bay bolete - sticky, yellow pores etc!!! Found by pine!

 

blue when cut!

update on edible/poisonous fungi/mushrooms

Well, I have made a bit of progress since my last post. Firstly I have now at least heard of spore prints, which no one has ever mentioned to me before. I went out today armed with my book and followed some previous advice I had been given to only eat a very small amount first, even though I am only choosing fungi which are pretty distinctive from now on!

Secondly I have found a good site to help with identification. It seems very comprehensive!

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/