Mushrooms and a celebrity

For my sins, I work for a major multinational organisation. My days are spent sat at a desk, basking under artificial lighting, tinny air conditioned oxygen pumped around me and my head buried in a computer screen. Not exactly my dream job, but it keeps a roof over my head and supports the family. It does however, occasionally have it's perks.
For the second year running, they have organized a fungi foray around the grounds with John Wright. Ok, so "celebrity" might be pushing it slightly. I should probably just say "that guy who's occasionally on the telly and has published some books".
I've had the pleasure of attending several foraging courses with John at the Kingcombe Centre, and he's an absolute pleasure to listen to. His impressive knowledge is imparted with humor and plenty of random stories, and the brief hour the foray around work allowed was much too short.
We did however find an impressive array of mushrooms on the work grounds, including several edibles: Shaggy Inkcap, Shaggy Parasol, Cep, Clouded Agaric, Honey Fungus, Beefsteak Fungus, Deceiver and Snowy Waxcap from memory. Most of these weren't new to me (only the last 2 in fact), as I regularly walk the grounds and surrounding areas looking for edibles in a lunch hour, and had even stopped doing this for a week beforehand to make sure there were mushies left for the walk. What it did provide though was an expert to confirm identification of a couple of mushrooms I'd found (and picked for this exact purpose) the day before from a new spot. It also gave me an opportunity to buy John's latest book, The River Cottage Booze Handbook, which I'll cover in another blog post once I've had a read.

Having got confirmation, I returned to the spot today to harvest a few for the pot (or should I say pan).

Please meet, for the first time for me at least.....

The Trooping Funnel 

And the Common Yellow (or Ochre) Brittlegill

I am not going to put identification guides up on this blog (at least for now), as there are much much much better sources than my random ramblings. Not only that, but I'd be worried for your safety if you relied on one blog as a mushroom guide. I've found many edible mushroom species in the 3-4 years since I started foraging. However I've eaten a lot fewer than I've found, mainly because even a 1% uncertainty is too high a risk to take.

There are old foragers, and there are bold foragers. There is no such thing as an old, bold forager.