Spent yesterday afternoon harvesting winter chantarelles (traktkantarell) as much as we could carry out of the woods and almost all were frozen solid making some unusual sounds in the woods as they fell….
Category Archives: Fungi
Wild Enoki, Oca and Hablitzia scrambled eggs
Wild Enoki, Oca, Hablitzia, wild buckwheat sprouts, Allium nutans with dandelion, garlic chilis mixed with scrambled eggs for a delicious home grown and foraged lunch!
Enoki is one of the hardiest fungi appearing often midwinter in mild winters. Also known as velvet shank (vintersopp in Norwegian, meaning winter fungus; Flammulina velutipes). Many had been reporting finding this species recently, and I too found some when I visited the botanical garden the other day! It’s difficult to believe that this is the same fungi as Enokitake or Enoki, sometimes offered in supermarkets and one of the most popular cultivated fungi in the Far East. The cultivated fungi are long and white as they are grown in the dark in an enriched CO2 environment which gives longer stalks.
Forest bounty
Spending so much time in the 3 gardens I look after – The Edible Garden; The World and Demonstration Gardens at Væres Venner Community Garden and the Allium Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Gardens in Trondheim – I don’t get into the surrounding forest so often. Yesterday, we had a fantastic day foraging fungi in the forest nearby in Malvik and the forest shared with us and these will mostly be dried. The following edibles were picked:
Winter chanterelle / traktkantarell (grows in damp mossy locations in the forest)
Gul trompetsopp / yellow foot (on the edge of bogs)
Chantarelle / Kantarell – a bit late for this, but we nevertheless found a few patches
Rødgul piggsopp / terracotta hedgehog
Piggsopp / hedgehog fungus
(Hydnum rufescens)
Porcini in abundance
At last, after the warm summer the porcinis (ceps / steinsopp; Boletus edulis) are coming up in large numbers in the woods, the best year since 2005! I’d read the reports on Facebook, so now is the time to harvest and dry these amazing fungi in as large amounts as possible to last until the next time, hopefully not another 16 years! Almost all were in good condition. They are often infected with a parasitic fungi that makes them inedible! In addition, we found a large patch of yellow foot / gul trompetsopp or gul trompetkantarell (Craterellus lutescens), at a place I’d picked many some years ago. Not a fungi I find every year. There were also some chantarelles (kantarell) and a few puffballs (røyksopp). The walk home with a very heavy load was thankfully mostly downhill! Now for the biggest job of cleaning them before drying!
Nut disco: new species for Malvik kommune
A new species of fungi discovered growing on an old wild hazel nut in the garden this week, nut disco (Hymenoscyphus fructigenus), not found earlier in Malvik kommune. Thanks to Edel Humstad for the ID.
Standing room only!
I’ve already shown that all the windows are full of drying seeds at the moment, now it’s standing room only as the tables and chairs are now full of drying fungi :) 
Second Winter Chantarelle Haul
The forest has unlimited supplies of winter chanaterelles (traktkantarell) at the moment, so making the most of it and drying as many as we can! They’re now much larger than last time!
Laying down winter chanterelle supplies
It was a busy weekend picking our winter supplies of winter chantarelles (traktkantarell) in the forest. This abundant species is mycorrhizal, associated in Norway with spruce, usually in mossy woods.
Runner Bean harvest
As I wrote earlier, it looks like we may have a glut of runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) this year, the first time for many years. Runner beans are borderline here and last year we only managed to get a few beans before the first frosts. This year, we could have made a first harvest a week ago, but I wanted to keep the first beans for seed for the next couple of years. Yesterday we had bread dough ready and therefore made a pizza with runner beans and a mix of fungi picked in the woods (separate post). The dough was 100% coarse whole grain rye, spelt and emmer (sourdough)! Delicious as always!
Fungal abundance
The forest is now full of edible fungi, witness today’s haul of mostly chantarelles, winter chantarelle, hedgehog fungi (two species) and puffballs (Norw: kantarell, traktkantarell, lys- og rødgule-piggsopp og røyksopp)
