Taste of the future: mushroom burgers

Portobello burger served in Honolulu

I was pointed today to a news article that praises burgers made with a mixture of beef and mushrooms. Apparently, you can mix up to 50% of mushrooms into beef mince without sacrificing the flavour.

Wow. The wonders of twenty-first century life. And mushrooms, of course.

I totally approve of this development. Meat is an important part of our diet, and eating it allowed our distant ancestors to grow larger brains, become more intelligent, and ultimately build wonderful things like computers and mushroom farms. Unfortunately, it also makes the twenty-first century man edge ever closer to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Mixing meat with mushrooms seems like a viable half-measure: it seriously reduces the calorie content of the patty, and therefore your waistline is more likely to stay unexpanded.

After all, if it doesn't, you could always go for hardcore:

16 kcal per 100 grams. No half-measures here!

Image credit:
Grilled portobello mushrooms burger

Mushroom cities in the Pacific

Concept art for the floating city

I came across this article today, describing the sorry state of the Pacific ocean, which is gradually turning into a rubbish dump, and also a lifeless desert, due to extreme overfishing.

Why write about it in a mushroom blog? Because, according to the same article, fish and mushrooms are the only two wild foods that humans still consume regularly. There is literally nothing else! And, apparently, we are running out of fish, as well as ocean itself.

However, it pleases me that there are dreamers out there working to solve the garbage issue: Shimizu corporation who proposed a concept of a carbon-negative city, freely floating on equatorial ocean currents, recycling all those discarded plastics into building materials and energy.

These cities cannot yet be constructed with the current state of technology, but Shimizu's R&D people are very busy developing them. In 25 years, these will become a reality.

Come to think if it, the place seems to be a very nice retirement spot. And don't those towers look just like giant mushrooms?

Image credit:
Greenfloat city, Shimizu corporation

Mushroom gangs

Perhaps not very
appropriate for an article
about edible fungi!

There has been a couple of near identical articles recently in The Telegraph and The Daily Mail about unscrupulous mushroom pickers (coming "mostly from Eastern Europe" of course, where else!) going around fields and forests in Hampshire and stripping "huge tracts of land" bare of fungi, getting huge profits from this year's bumper harvest.

The Daily Mail has a photo of several baby porcini illustrating their article, whereas The Telegraph proudly displays a very nice image of panther caps, which are both very toxic AND psychoactive. Ironically, the latter article contains urgent advice to its readers to arm themselves with guide books, and never ever pick fungi that cannot be identified with absolute certainty. Perhaps they should follow their own advice and start with their photo editor?..

Image credit:
Amanita pantherina

If you are normal...

Some mushrooms
are better left alone

... you go searching for mushrooms. No, really - according to this article. I read it with a mixture of pleasure and annoyance. Pleasure - because people in the US are finally recognising that not all mushrooms are evil, and that wild mushroom pickers are not necessarily prospective patients of psychiatric hospitals (the title definitely suggests that it is a possibility).

Annoyed, well - so many reasons. Firstly, why do you have to pay 200 bucks a day to hire a mushroom guide? Seriously, you pay me that much, and I'll show you ALL my mushrooming spots. Any takers? Hmm, ok, moving on.

The main annoyance is the tone of the article of course - hey, look, these weird Russians, they don't even know how to cook mushrooms properly! Also, the reference to WWII was rather inappropriate. "anti-tank trenches[...], which are ideal for mushrooms". Those trenches were created during the Siege of Leningrad. I'd find some other place to pick my mushrooms, just to avoid those ancestral memories. Of course, you cannot expect an American to understand that. After all, they still believe that they won that war...

Image credit:
Anti-tank obstacle and plaque: "Front line of Leningrad defence. 1941-44"

Which kind of chanterelle?

Early chanterelles

A recent news article raises an interesting issue, which is that many mushrooms that we normally think of as a single species, are not. Kathryn Perez and Matthew Foltz proved by DNA analysis that golden chanterelles growing in Hixon Forest in Wisconsin are in fact three different species, and not merely colour variants.

Chanterelles are mushrooms that I collect every foraging trip, and one thing I have been puzzled about is how long their fruiting season is. It starts in mid-June and continues until mid-October, and sometimes even later if there is no ground frost. No other fungus in the local forest covers even half of that span.


Over these four months, it does not fruit everywhere though, but rather there are "early" and "late" spots, and the mushrooms from these do have a difference in appearance. Early chanterelles are typically smaller and lighter in colour, with cream stems and wavy false gills. Later in the year, I see only yolk-coloured, larger fungi.

Late chanterelles

Previously, I thought that the difference in shape and colour is explained by the variance in conditions in which these chanterelles grow, temperature- and humidity-wise, but I realise now that their emergence in different spots probably does mean that they are distinct species.

Not sure about one thing though - the article says, "Documenting the new species, their locations, and physical differences including taste, will be of interest to the culinary industry". I am no mycologist, but I have cooked a lot of chanterelles in my life. You can trust me on this: these mushrooms might look different, but THEY ALL TASTE THE SAME!

The politics of porcini

This or a parliament session?
The answer is obvious!

I came across this amusing article today. Long story short, Claudio Burlando, an Italian politician, skipped a parliament session in order to go foraging for ceps in the woods near his home village. And how did he get caught? By tweeting the pictures of two basketfuls that he brought home.

Once the secret was out, the scandal picked up with true Italian passion and, I must add, equally true political absurdity. The incident was characterised as "shameful", "scandalous" and "a vigorous controversy". Hey, we are talking about porcini here! It's not prostitution, drugs or corruption. Keep things in perspective, for goodness sake.

Reading further, I learned that A) signor Burlando booked his day off weeks in advance, because it was the date of his annual family reunion; and B) the parliament session was convened at a very short notice, on a day when it is not normally held.

What can I say. All evidence considered, I fully approve of his behaviour. And as for his fuming colleagues - I'm sure they are just jealous of his haul. I know I am!

Image credit:
Boletus edulis

Fungi and bacteria speed up tree growth

Now we know why trees
grow so tall

Today's news article contains a report that a special mix of bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi speed up tree growth and therefore can be a significant tool in reforestation.

The figure of 40% is most impressive: in the study, fruiting trees reached maturity in 3-4 years instead of 6-7, and non-fruiting varieties displayed similarly vigorous growth.

Strictly speaking, it's not news that fungi and soil bacteria are beneficial for plant growth, but such significant increase in growth means that the researchers managed to stumble on a lucky combination of the two.

Great work. If only the article authors would spell "mycorrhizal" right!

Image credit:
Oak forest

Magic mushrooms in hospital

A better kind of magic mushroom

I try to avoid, as much as I can, writing about hallucinogenic mushrooms. Partly because I disapprove of taking drugs in general: it is difficult enough to understand this complicated world even without confusing your brain with foreign substances. But also because fungal drug abuse is a cliche similar to lethal mushroom poisoning.

This blog aims to promote fungi as a valuable natural resource with great constructive potential, and the fact that some representatives of this kingdom can be toxic or hallucinogenic does not support the concept. So I try to pretend that these topics do not exist. Ignore them, and maybe they'll go away.

However, in cases when humour value of a news story is such as this one, I just have to write about it.

In a nutshell: a mental patient was kicked out of a hospital for consuming magic mushrooms that he found growing in the smoking area. Given the £5m cost of the facility, you have to wonder how it happened that the patch wasn't concreted over. I've heard that funny mushrooms can be used for treating certain mental conditions, but somehow I doubt that the medical facility in question is that advanced...

Image credit:
Magic mushrooms

Losing a few dress sizes - easy

These guys will help you lose
weight... in all the right places!

Today being Thursday, the fungi news day, I surfed the web for anything mushroom-related, and went across  two sets of stories. The first one was cultivating mushrooms with discarded coffee grounds is becoming a profitable business in several UK cities. Hmm, I'm more of an information-producing type than goods-producing one, but it is one line of production I might be interested in. After all, there are lots of coffee shops in my town that could supply me with free substrate, and there are also a fair number of restaurants who might be interested in organically produced exotic mushrooms...

The second set of stories was about the latest diet craze, apparently endorsed by numerous celebrities that lets you lose inches off your hips while keeping your bust the same size. Also, lose weight.

Now, mushrooms are very low calorie food, so no wonder that substituting them for meat allows you to shed pounds. At 16 kcal per 100 grams they are at the same level as salad leaves, celery and cucumbers. In fact, they are a negative calorie food because it takes more energy to digest them than they yield as the result. If you don't believe me, go to a seaside town and watch a herring gull as it deals with a discarded sandwich. It would eat bread, ham, cheese, drops of mayo, everything. Except salad and cucumbers, which it carefully puts aside. I'm sure if there were sandwiches in existence with raw mushrooms and celery, they would be scorned, too. Birds have no time for zero-calorie food because their digestive systems are small and their exercise routine is such that professional human sports don't even come close. Lifting your body off the ground using just muscle power is no joke.

Anyway, back to the humans and their news stories. I wholeheartedly approve of a mushroom diet. In fact, I got a pack of baby button mushrooms today so that I could eat them tomorrow at lunch. However, I just wish those journalists would stop calling mushrooms "vegetables". As in:

"Not only do mushrooms help with weight loss – the super vegetable can help improve your looks too."

What can I say...

MUSHROOMS ARE NOT VEGETABLES!

Image credits:
Button mushrooms, Agaricus bisporus
Paris Tuileries Garden Facepalm statue

And now, some good news

The best thing ever

The Scotsman reports:

"If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a mushroom surprise. Fungi experts are predicting a bumper year for wild mushrooms in Scotland this year thanks to a hot and dry summer."

Indeed, the recent trip has been a fungal paradise. Being an experienced mushroom hunter, I was not really surprised as I am aware of the fact that hot dry summers provide excellent conditions for the mycelium to accumulate nutrients, which, with the arrival of cooler weather and rain, translate into beautiful ceps and orange birch boletes and chanterelles. I am going to the forest tomorrow, despite the forecast for torrential rain, and it had better be worth it!

Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll be back next week, with further reports from the fungi harvest frontline.

Deadly webcaps, again

Deadly webcaps: GILLS

This has been on the news, and therefore it must be true.

An "experienced forager", who "had been collecting mushrooms for many years" fed deadly webcaps that he mistook for ceps to himself, his wife, brother-in-law and brother-in-law's wife. Result: all four eaters in hospital for weeks, with varying degrees of kidney failure, one of them needing a transplant. Luckily, the children, who were also invited to sample the poison, wouldn't have any, otherwise they would have almost certainly died.

Deadly webcaps. Mistaken for ceps. You've got to be kidding me.

Ceps: TUBES

*HEADDESK*

In this post I have already wondered how a deadly webcap could be possibly mistaken for a chanterelle. Now I wonder no more - at least, both mushrooms are of similar size, and they both have gills. After all, I've observed small children to confuse dogs with cows, so why not. But ceps and deadly webcaps? It's like mistaking a chicken for a pig! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just go into a quiet corner and cry. Today the world's stupidity is a bit too much for me.

Image credits:
Deadly webcap, Cortinarius rubellus
Ceps, Boletus edulis

Valley fever

Naussicaa film poster

Lately, I seem to keep returning to the topic of fungal disease and parasitic fungi, far too often for my liking. This blog is supposed to be about the love for fungi, but, well - life is never simple.

So I came across this news item about "valley fever", a potentially fatal illness that is endemic in Southern US, as well as parts of Mexico and Argentina. It's caused by a parasitic fungus, and while about 2/3 of infected people suffer no symptoms, in some of them coccidioidomycosis, as it is known in medical science (try saying that after a few glasses of wine!), causes breathing difficulties due to fungal growth in the lungs, and sometimes even death, if the fungus spreads to the brain.

While reading the article, I kept thinking that I'd encountered this somewhere before. Not in the real world as it happens, but in Hayao Miyazaki's 1984 animated film, "Naussicaa of the Valley of the Wind". In the fictional world of the film, people have to wear masks to protect themselves from spores that rot their lungs. Interestingly, these spores are spread by a fungal forest that is feeding on pollution and ultimately cleaning it up - something that fungi have been demonstrated to be able to do.

In the film, people live on an "island", surrounded by fungal forest on all sides, and they have nowhere to go. So they stay and fight (and eventually, make peace) with giant mutated insects, fungi and their neighbours. But in real life, why don't they just leave?..

Fungi on London Underground

Occasionally I wonder if I am the only one who is so crazy about mushrooms. Then I come across an article like this one, and it becomes very clear that I am not alone in the universe.

In short, it tells about a few mycologists who went on fungal foray in London underground, in order to find out which of the lines is the mouldiest. The winner by a small margin was, unexpectedly, the newest, Jubilee line, where unfortunate commuters breathe in 1 fungal spore a minute, and unlike other lines these spores are not from penicillin, and why that has to be so, remains an unsolved mystery.

So, what made those people to look for fungi in the underground? Perhaps, Nils Norman's vision of Piccadilly line in 2050? After all, in its bottom left corner it prominently features Hammersmith Mushroom Facility. Not too far from Green Park, where it intersects with Jubilee line. Hmmm, I wonder what those unknown spores actually are...

Golden frog hotel and restaurant

In yesterday's post, I briefly mentioned a project to save Panamian golden frogs from deadly fungus that is threatening to wipe out the entire species. Here is a short video of how it is done.

They put the frogs up in a hotel room and feed them crickets and bugs that are collected at nights by research project staff. I admire these people's dedication, but am I the only one who also finds this hilarious?

In any case, enjoy the video, and see you next week. I am planning to go foraging again on Sunday, and if I'm very lucky, I'll be bringing home some ceps. I'm greatly looking forward to it!

Mushrooms in Ghana

Cultivated oyster mushrooms

It's usually not good when fungi make it to the news. This week has been no exception: the two notable stories that circulated the web recently were that 15 people got mushroom poisoning in Serbia (fortunately, it was not fatal), and a man in Ohio mutilated himself while high on magic mushrooms, while claiming that "mushrooms made him do it". Evil mushroom alert! Run for your lives!!! Yeah, right.

Thankfully, it is not all doom and gloom. Offsetting these is a story about mushrooms growers in Ghana who cultivate oyster mushrooms, but were experiencing shortage of suitable spawn. The difficulty with it is that it needs to be prepared in sterile conditions, and the existing laboratory facilities in Accra, at Food Research Institute, did not produce enough. Therefore, a research project at Techiman was looking at expanding farm production to include a second crop, shiitake. The project started in 2011 and is now almost ready to supply the 7,000 mushrooms growers in the country with the spawn and logs.

Cultivated shiitake

It's great news for the farmers, as with two crops instead of one they'll be able to reach their full economic capacity. This means less poverty, and more great food for their buyers. Now, these are mushrooms I totally approve of.

Link to the original story - Mushrooms in Ghana

Image credits:
Oyster mushrooms
Shiitake mushrooms

Decontaminate! Decontaminate!

Mould problem in here would be rather a more serious
issue than in your bathroom

As if following up from yesterday's post, the fungus-related news item this week is about space.

Meet the robotic European cargo ship Albert Einstein, unmanned disposable space vehicle that has just delivered food, personal items and spare parts to the International Space Station. It docked last week, but was only opened on Tuesday, as the partner nations were discussing what to do about a potential mould infection in its cargo bay.

It's not known if the cargo actually had fungi in it. It was just that Russian side stated that decontamination procedures had been unsatisfactory, and therefore the 6 members of the crew will have to clean all of 21 bags of goods that they'd just received. Curiously, one of the packs contains some special delicacies for the Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano. Tiramisu is mentioned, but perhaps he also asked for some "funghi porcini"? Could it all be just an error in communication?

Hope it won't come to this

Trying to find more details on fungal space infestations, I found an instructive article about Space station Mir (with a couple of unappetising photos). Also irrelevantly, but rather hilariously, I came across a game that takes the idea of evil fungi to the extreme: it features mutated flesh-eating sentient space mushrooms which you have to avoid on your way to a moon base. So keep vigilant, ISS crew - that is one fungus I definitely do not want to become a reality.

Image credits:
The inside of ATV-4 Albert Einstein, NASA TV via space.com
Lost in space fungus

Fungi for better cider

Scientific research in progress (spot a PhD student)

This week I came across a podcast about a research project conducted by a university lab in Sheffield and sponsored by Heinekken, the producer of Bulmers cider. This project looks at fungal relationships of apple trees in the attempt to find varieties of fungi that will increase the yield and quality of their fruit.

Mycorrhizal association between plants and fungi is a symbiotic relationship benefitting both partners. The plant provides the fungus with the sugars from photosynthesis, and the fungus carries soil nutrients to the plant roots, allowing the plant to feed from a much larger area than its roots actually cover.

The fungi are not all equal, and some species will give their symbiont plant more than others. The goal of the project is to find out, which ones. There are about 160 potted experimental subjects, all apple trees of the same cider-producing variety, most infected with specific species of fungi, and some in sterile soil. In the course of the next three years each of them will be evaluated for fruit yield, general health, and pathogen and pest resistance. One PhD student, Despina Berdeni, is charged with their care and making the required measurements. There are certainly easier ways to obtain a doctorate! I hope she and her lab get some free cider from Heinekken for all their hard work.

The full podcast can be found on the Planet Earth Online web site.

Image credit:
Horse-driven apple crusher in Jersey

Good news from Vienna - biofuel breakthrough

Trichoderma harzianum under
the microscope

When people think about fungi, they tend to regard them, first and foremost, as food. This is justified to some extent since historically fungi had little more to offer, except perhaps their beauty (or, indeed, ugliness) that was captured in art from medieval times to our days. This is a fascinating topic in itself, and I will surely return to it in another post, but today I wanted to write about the uses of fungi that have become available with modern technology.

In a previous post I looked at an article that presented fungi as an alternative to plastics, in the form of either biodegradable packaging or insulation material. It seems like there is currently a trend for engineers and scientists to explore the possibilities for non-food uses of fungi, as this week there was another news item, this time from the University of Vienna, reporting their success for synthesising biofuel from cellulose with the aid of a fungus of the Trichoderma genus.

Rather expensive biofuel

Biofuel can be easily produced from starchy plants, but this puts its production in competition with growing these plants for food. Cellulose, on the other hand, is present in common waste products like straw and sawdust and seems like a much better alternative. Unfortunately, breaking it down into small sugar molecules that can be subsequently turned into spirits requires special biologically active substances called enzymes. Microscopic Trichoderma fungi can produce these enzymes, but only when yet another special substance, inductor, is present. And here we have a problem: this inductor is 60 times more expensive than gold, which makes the resulting spirit cost about the same as 10-year-old Laphroaig. You wouldn't fuel your car with that if you have any financial sense.

Luckily, the researchers came across a strain of the fungus with a mutation that kept the switch for the enzyme in permanent "on" position, removing the need for the inductor. Such fungus could not have survived in the wild as it would be equivalent to a bird that keeps laying eggs non-stop. Yay, a domesticated fungus! Not a chanterelle sadly, but it's a good start. Subsequent genetic analysis isolated the responsible gene, which allowed to understand the mechanism for the molecular switch, and - voila!  - it seems like we are one step closer to averting the impending oil crisis, and that is very good news indeed.

Full text of the article can be found on the Science Daily web site.

Image credits:
Trichoderma mycelium
Laphroaig distillery

Alternative to plastics?

This is what a fungus really looks like

Like most people, I start my day by browsing news sites. After looking through headlines for top stories and confirming that our planet is still more or less in one piece, I go on to see if there's anything new happening in the world of fungi. I usually find stuff in the category of nature news, sometimes in the category of crime news, and occasionally under weird news. My favourite items though are on innovation and technology. I love learning about the possible ways in which fungi can change the world, and one such piece was published just yesterday.

Many people think of fungi in terms of their fruitbodies, forgetting that the most important and persistent part of the organism is the mycelium, or hyphae, that live in the substrate under our feet. Mycelium itself can be edible, so it is rather unjustly ignored. However, the article in question brings out a different use for it, namely, as an insulation and packaging material. Apparently, it's cheap to produce, it's less toxic, more vapour-permeable, fire-resistant (as shown on CSI New York) and very, very eco-friendly. It is manufactured by a company called Ecovative Design and they claim that it provides a viable alternative to structural insulated panels made with plastic foams.

Town of the future: a typical street

It looks like there are still issues that need to be resolved before people start routinely insulating their houses with fungi (most notably, how do you prevent them from getting wet and turning into rot?), but it's certainly a development that has potential. Who knows, maybe in 10-20 years all new builds will be Ecovative's "Mushroom houses". I personally can't wait for that to happen.

The full article can be found on the Earth Techling site.

Image credits:
Hyphae as seen under an overturned log
Smurfs decoration

The first thing you need to know about fungi...

Now this is some good advice

Recently I saw a feature on BBC news, about a woman who decided to improve a can of soup with a deathcap fungus (Amanita phalloides) that was growing in her back yard, with predictable results.

The story is tragic, but eating any kind of amanita, or indeed any wild mushroom if you don't now what "amanita" means, is in my mind equal to violating such safety rules as "look before crossing the road" and "don't pour petrol over open fire". Deathcaps are not to blame. This mother-of-four was killed by her recklessness and ignorance.

Unfortunately, the video that goes with the article does nothing to address the issue. In it Mark Lloyd, chef and forager, gives some sensible advice, "if you don't know what it is, don't eat it", but also makes two statements that made me scream "someone is wrong on the internet" and run to the nearest networked computer to write this post.

"They <deathcaps> are wild plants". No, they are not. They have a kingdom of their own, Fungi, and are distinct from plants, animals, or bacteria. They have chitin rather than cellulose in their cell walls, which indicates that on the great tree of life they are closer to animals than plants. They also have a unique lifecycle that is unlike that of any other multicellular organism, but I'll leave this subject for another post.

Woolly milk cap and saffron milk cap.
Which one would you eat?

"A mushroom that grows in a certain area, under a certain tree, is perfectly fine, and if it grows under a different tree, it will draw toxins from that tree and become poisonous". Now, I'm not sure what's going on here, since this is presented as one of the "tricks" that you need to know before you go mushroom hunting. A not-so-subtle way to get people onto this chef's foraging courses, perhaps? The truth is, fungi can draw nasty substances from places like busy roads, or toxic and radioactive waste dumps, but not from plants. Instead, you can have two very similar species of mushrooms that are associated with different trees, one of which would be safe to eat, while the other may cause a stomach upset or worse. An example of these could be woolly milk cap and saffron milk cap, or yellow staining mushroom and field mushroom. Therefore, it is not a "trick" but a matter of proper identification.

There, it's off my chest, I can breathe again, until next time.

Image credits:
Deathcap warning sign, public domain
Woolly milk cap, used under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Saffron milk cap, used under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.