Eating Mushrooms Eating Mushrooms Without Killing Yourself M ushrooms are a joy to pick and to eat. As I write these words thousands of wonderful little Chanterelles, Cantherellus lateritius , pictured at the right, populate the forest floor around my home, and I wish I could share with you the delight I feel each year when this species firest appears, and how great they taste softly saut ed and introduced into my omelets. Despite my enthusiasm for mushrooms I am keeping this page's title as it is because you really can kill yourself by eating the wrong mushrooms. Moreover, some of the poisonous species can even occur in North American backyards. One must just stay alert and use common sense.
Mushroom picking is a tradition going way back.
It's part of our human heritage, and there are simply few things more pleasant than spending a Sunday afternoon roaming hillsides with a basket in hand, as on a gigantic Easter-egg hunt. Well, let me tell you that there are no tricks for revealing this fact. The only certain way you can know whether a mushroom is edible or not is by knowing its exact identity, and by knowing that that species is edible. Experienced mushroom hunters have developed a process for fudging the matter. If they find an unknown species, they'll simply taste a tiny bit.