In #mushroom news, because I've been getting into learning how to forage and use mushrooms, I found wood ear growing on one of my cut walnut logs stacked in the chicken yard!
Now I just need to figure out if I can move that log somewhere (like the basement seed starting room I've been meaning to set up for winter) and encourage it to grow more mushrooms.
I'm going to investigate the entire woodpile soon to see if I actually have some more viable mushroom logs.
I learned from my reading that wood ear mushroom is a powerful anticoagulant, so people who are on blood thinners or have other issues where they shouldn't ingest blood thinning substances should be careful ingesting too much wood ear.
It's apparently used in some Chinese cuisine in the United States, and there is a thing called Szechuan syndrome where light-skinned people can get petechiae on their faces from eating too many of these in a dish.
I'm making a powdered "tea" out of the wood ear I harvested along with my turkey tail last week. That idea is from Christopher Hobbs.
The turkey tail is in the process of a double extraction right now (water decoction and then an alcohol soak). I'm thinking I may take the marc and dry it also to make a tea powder out of it when I'm done with the alcohol soak. I really don't want to waste any of that mushroom fruiting body at all. Most of the valuable constituents will have been soaked out by the water and the alcohol, but there's still some good fiber and beta glucans left, I'm sure.
Turkey tail can be chewed kind of like a gum. It has a very pleasant, mild flavor. I'm one of those herbal folks who is known for just sticking something in their mouth right off the ground. It hasn't killed me yet... but I also never do it unless I'm 1000% sure of what I have in my hand.