The Mushroom Hunters: A Hidden World of Food, Money, and (Mostly Legal) Adventure

by Langdon Cook

“A beautifully written portrait of the people who collect and distribute wild mushrooms . . . food and nature writing at its finest.”—Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia
 
“A rollicking narrative . . . Cook [delivers] vivid and cinematic scenes on every page.”— The Wall Street Journal
 
In the dark corners of America’s forests grow culinary treasures. Chefs pay top dollar to showcase these elusive and enchanting ingredients on their menus. Whether dressing up a filet mignon with smoky morels or shaving luxurious white truffles over pasta, the most elegant restaurants across the country now feature one of nature’s last truly wild foods: the uncultivated, uncontrollable mushroom. 
 
The mushroom hunters, by contrast, are a rough lot. They live in the wilderness and move with the seasons. Motivated by Gold Rush desires, they haul improbable quantities of fungi from the woods for cash. Langdon Cook embeds himself in this shadowy subculture, reporting from both rural fringes and big-city eateries with the flair of a novelist, uncovering along the way what might be the last gasp of frontier-style capitalism. 
 
Meet Doug, an ex-logger and crabber—now an itinerant mushroom picker trying to pay his bills and stay out of trouble; Jeremy, a former cook turned wild-food entrepreneur, crisscrossing the continent to build a business amid cutthroat competition; their friend Matt, an up-and-coming chef whose kitchen alchemy is turning heads; and the woman who inspires them all. 
 
Rich with the science and lore of edible fungi—from seductive chanterelles to exotic porcini— The Mushroom Hunters is equal parts gonzo travelogue and culinary history lesson, a fast-paced, character-driven tour through a world that is by turns secretive, dangerous, and quintessentially American.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Nature, Science, Audiobook, Food and Drink, History

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Langdon Cook is the author of The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America (Ballantine, 2013), which Publishers Weekly called "intrepid and inspired," and Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager (Mountaineers, 2009), which The Seattle Times called "lyrical, practical and quixotic." His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Terrain, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Outside, and The Stranger, and he has been profiled in USA Today, Bon Appetit, Salon.com, and WSJ magazine. Cook lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Cook portrays mushroom hunters in North America as quite the bunch, primarily men or women picking with their families, often immigrants from Southeast Asia and Mexico. Testosterone levels are high in the book. In spite of the very high prices these fungi (including truffles) command in restaurants, the professional pickers are usually just getting by.

The author has a passion for wild food and cooking. He picks and camps alongside the mushroomers and also has a friend he accompanies on buying trips. His buyer friend is the guy who makes the money. Cook travels first in Upper Michigan and then over the west coast mostly Oregon and upwards. One trip finds him in the Yukon with every biting insect imaginable and camping next door to meth cookers.

Along the way he talks (probably too much) about his cooking and high end restaurants in Seattle. You learn a little about the different kinds of mushrooms, their needs, how there are mushrooms in all 50 U.S. states—Kansas? I guess so. There are picking tips, but mostly the people interviewed are the focus. As I said, a pretty wild bunch. They are all carrying knives for picking and drinking heavily at night. There were many rumors of gun fights (usually domestic or over women) and some testiness over territory. Laws are frequently ignored. Most of these pickers are foraging on public land including Native American land and the laws differ.

I was disappointed to learn about the worms.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a book that is hard to categorise as it is neither one thing or another. Essentially this is a non-fiction look into a relatively unknown world, the world of the (North American) mushroom forager.

The author has written this fairly thick book in a story-type narrative, weaving in the various elements to make it read like a fiction work, despite it being clearly centred on fact and a lot of research. It is a story of massive disparity and contrast. Wild mushrooms, truffles, morels or whatever you wish to call them are expensive, highly-prized foodstuffs that are invariably found in top kitchens, the best restaurants and served up in elegant homes. Those who search wild, often inhospitable locations, dodging landowners, often armed rivals and hazardous conditions in search of their little pot of culinary gold would most likely never be in such places. If they eat them at all, it will be probably be in their "wild kitchens", devoid of any fussy preparations and fine accompaniments, yet in reality they are more likely to save their finds for the inevitable payday. It is not a good idea to consume your own harvest.

The work is not that glamorous, it is relatively poorly paid, yet it provides a form of back-to-nature enlightenment for many, the successful ones tend to be at one with nature, have an instinct for tracking down their prey and hopefully outwitting their competition. There is variation within what can be a hard job, new types of mushroom come into harvest and perhaps for a short time there is a little price premium as chefs rush to be first with a given trend.

This is a book that this reviewer, at first, was quite sceptical towards despite the quirky promise of its contents. Yet after spending just a little time with this book it became rather well-loved. The author has cleverly penned an intriguing story that just keeps throwing out little nuggets of information hither and tither as you read through it. This is a book you really want to sit down in a quiet corner with, or perhaps use as a means to kill many hours on a long-distance flight. You don't really need to have an interest in mushrooms, North America or food either, such is the great generality of the story! Of course, having a bit of an interest in gastronomy will mean you "get" even more from this book, but any lack of it is by no means a hinder. It is quite rare that a book of this kind manages to serve both types of readers with aplomb! The price is a little high for a general book and inevitably it will be discounted so don't have sticker shock at its recommended price!

The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America, written by Langdon Cook and published by Ballantine Books. ISBN 9780345536259, 320 pages. Typical price: USD26. YYYYY.


// This review appeared in YUM.fi and is reproduced here in full with permission of YUM.fi. YUM.fi celebrates the worldwide diversity of food and drink, as presented through the humble book. Whether you call it a cookery book, cook book, recipe book or something else (in the language of your choice) YUM will provide you with news and reviews of the latest books on the marketplace. //

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mushroom mafia

Who would think that reading about scrounging for Mushrooms out in the forest would be not only educational and interesting but exciting? Cook's book reads like a treasure hunt with scrumptious recipes interspersed. It turns out that most mushrooms grow and are harvested from semi-isolated public lands where it's illegal to hunt and reap them. The result is a complex mushroom underground replete with hippies, ex-loggers, and people perpetually estranged from society and large groups of immigrants. The immigrants mostly to stick together per their country of origin and, bless them, they often learn American idioms, language and customs from the middlemen who buy their harvests.

Cook describes different types of mushrooms and their natural habitats, though the habitats can be illusive, including how what they look like, how they taste. Every so often he throws in ways to prepare them as well as how the restaurant pro chefs incorporate them in their menus. It's part of the movement of eating locally and seasonally. All of this is interesting of course but the real story in "Mushroom Hunters" is the social milieu surrounding the gathering and eating of mushrooms and this is where Cook excels. Picking mushrooms is almost like being in the mafia, the mushroom mafia, with much less violence of course but all the intrigue. Even if you have zero mushroom interest I bet you'll be able to relate to this book.

This review is based on an advance reader's copy provided by the publisher.
(Disclaimer given as required by the FTC.)

[Diane Lockward · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was thoroughly engaged by this book. My head is now filled with the names of wild mushrooms, the scents of mushroom dishes, and the lure of mushroom patches. I had no idea that a mushroom was so much more than a mushroom. I am hungry for mushrooms. You will be, too, during and after reading this book.

[Patricia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not finish, because I grew tired of the cooking aspect of the story, that is, the focus on a chef who had finished culinary school, but then went on to run a business selling foraged things, and the author runs around with men who are great foragers, and I grew tired of the exclusively male orientation to the story.

This is not a failing specific to this book. But as an aging feminist, I make less time for narratives that exclude half the human race.

The book began strong, with brilliant descriptions of the beauty of the forest, the thrill of the hunt for things that grow wild, the adventure of harvesting them in places forbidden such as national parks and Indian reservations. But after 100 pages where the writing kept turning to recipes of how to prepare the gorgeous fungi, and after an exclusive focus on the Pacific Northwest, the book made me hungry, and then I rued the fact that I am stuck here in the northeast with our wonderful array of mushrooms, and naturalists who are trying to classify the organisms as part of the growing world.

So I put the book down, and look forward to learning more about mushrooms in my neck of the woods with people who know how to find them, and cook them, in person.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is pretty much what the title suggests - the mushroom underground. A bit of a journalistic narrative, Langdon Cook goes below the radar with mushroom hunters, who forage (often illegally) and sell the finest product to high-end restaurants. Five stars to the premise! Hell yeah, mushroom gangs!

Fewer stars to the overwhelming maleness of the book! Cook meets some characters, for lack of a better word, who more than a few times spew racism and general bigotry. There is also a hunt where they aren't sure if they are on native lands and ultimately decide they don't care either way, which didn't sit right with me.

Pictures of the mushrooms could have enhanced the text greatly. Not everyone will stop and Google images as they read. By the end of the book, the chapters of Cook's different hunts kind of blended together, making me wonder if this would have been better served as a longform magazine article.

[Rebecca Lerner · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America" is Seattle forager-blogger Langdon Cook's second nonfiction narrative book on foraging in the Pacific Northwest. Readers may remember his first, “Fat of the Land,” a fun read about his adventures as a newbie foraging coastal foods, such as squid. Langdon’s new book is broader in scope, nuanced, and more journalistic than “Fat of the Land“; in an approach that recalls Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” he endeavors with elegant prose to give us a behind-the-scenes view of the mushroom trade.

We meet immigrant pickers, refugees from war-torn countries who grew up foraging in Southeast Asia and find it a familiar career, former loggers who once felled old-growth red cedars and now harvest morels and porcini for a living, and even a truffle-sniffing mutt. And we also trail the path of the main character, Jeremy Faber, a 30-something New York Jew who works as mushroom middle-man, traveling North America year-round, competing with other middle-men to acquire the best fungi from the pickers and then selling it to upscale restaurants on the East Coast. Langdon then eats the mushrooms Faber sells at these high-end restaurants and writes in detail about the flavors he experiences, inspiring our mouths to water with tales of his favorite decadent fungi dishes. I enjoyed the insider secrets, such as that many (most?) chefs who describe truffle-infused sauces are actually lying, employing a synthetic chemical concoction made to taste like truffles instead of the real deal!

Through the perspectives of the people Langdon meets, we also get a robust exploration of the moral and legal dilemmas pickers face when deciding whether to harvest on private land, the tension between them and the forest rangers, the methods they use to assuage them (such as sending over free morels), and the occasional prison time that can result when they get busted.

There can be no doubt that Langdon is deeply enamored of mushrooms. “French novelist George Sand (1804-1876) wrote that truffles are the ‘black magic apple of love.’ Black magic seems about right. There isn’t much middle ground. Either truffles make little impression or they cast a spell,” he writes.

And we learn lots of interesting naturalistic facts too, from the geological history of the Pacific Northwest to tree-and-mushroom species correlations, such as that porcini thrive in a second-growth spruce timber plantation. “Novice Question: ‘Where can I find morels?’ Old-timer answer: ‘Morels are where you find them,” he writes.

Bottom line: “The Mushroom Hunters” is an interesting, well-researched tale that is intriguing and worthwhile reading for any forager. As the holidays approach, it will make an especially great gift for that foodie or mushroom enthusiast in your life.

(This review was originally posted on the urban foraging blog FirstWays.com)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like mushrooms or have ever wondered how they end up on the menus of gourmet restaurants this book is a good choice. It’s uneven and I have some strong gripes but when it’s good, which is most of the time, it’s very, very good.

The author’s writing style is straightforward and approachable and he generally moves the stories along at a good pace. To me the best parts were when he journeys along with Doug Carnell (commercial circuit picker) and Jeremy Faber (buyer & picker). They’re both interesting in their own way and are brought to the reader as real people rather than quirky characters. The brief natural history asides provide a nice complement to the narrative.

While the descriptions of the various mushrooms are nice there are no pictures or illustrations to aid the reader. I can go to google images like the next person but that’s disruptive. Also, there’s absolutely no discussion about how to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous mushrooms. Perhaps it’s too long and complicated but the author could have at least made that kind of statement to address the issue in some way.

In addition, the author drifts into occasional food snobbery (Chapter 5: New Frontier as an example) and waves his pom poms a bit too much whenever self-indulgent super chef Matt Dillon (“We shouldn’t tell our ingredients what to do,” he said to me quietly while unpacking his things. “We should listen.”) (My reaction - “Pardon me a moment while I puke.”) enters the scene.

One last complaint (and I’m a little embarrassed to say it, but here goes): the paragraphs tended to go on for long stretches at a time. They could have been broken down a bit. I’m not sure why that bothered me but I feel obligated to mention it.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really liked this book. It's a fascinating look into the world of commercial mushroom pickers and buyers. I've done some recreational mushroom hunting myself, but I just can't imagine picking 50 to 100 lbs of mushrooms in a day as some of these folks do. Also surprised to find that it is almost a year-around profession which starts with the spring morel pick and goes into January with black trumpets and hedgehogs down in Northern California. These pickers travel around a lot as well chasing the different mushrooms as they become ready in different climates in the PNW (and beyond).

In addition to mushroom hunting the book touches on foodie-ism, the wild foods movement as well as social issues along the coast of Northern California, Oregon and Washington where economic conditions have been poor for decades. This has lead to a kind of "inner city despair in the sticks" with high rates of meth addiction and alcoholism. For some, mushroom hunting is the only way to make a living.

[Rick Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very tedious. You read one chapter you've read them all. Only the names of the mushrooms and secondary pickers change chapter to chapter. Lots of descriptions of meals with mushrooms and one picker and one dealer are followed throughout. Would have made a nice magazine article of 20 pages rather than a book of 280.

[Huntleybrinkley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I really enjoyed this book. I don't know why I am drawn to books about food, but I found this book fascinating. I had never really thoiugt about where the mushrooms really came from, but the stories with Doug and Faber were quite interesting. I also just read the Telling Room about, at least peripherally, a famous cheese from Spain and it's excentric maker,,,I liked this book way better because it gave a full picture including a glimpse into the personal lives of the main characters without getting self-indulgent. I guess the best thing that you can say about a book is that it not only got you thinking, but it made you pay attention to the bibliography so that you could research the topic further. Great job. Oh...I did wish that there were pictures of the mushrooms discussed; the descriptions are great but I still don't know what they look like.

[Dominika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been recently getting into foraging, figuring it's a good skill to pick up with how our political system is going, but also because I have a fascination with food. This is more of an expose on the underground world of gourmet mushroom foraging, focusing on the seedy characters of the tweeker camps that make their income by hiking in the forest and picking the shrooms of the season.

This is fascinating in that it focuses on the unknown, but can be long-winded because it focuses so much on the people involved. There is a section devoted to a different mushroom, what to do with it, the culture of the camps, ect. and while this is comprehensive, there are some aspects that are more interesting than others.

[Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting subject matter and interesting book. Would have given it another star but the way women and minorities were spoken about was disgusting, deeply disturbing and just plain gross. The author needs to do better.

[Dan McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My choice for the staff book club!

Cook, an amateur mushroom forager, goes on a deep dive into the world of commercial mushroom pickers. Often skirting regulations, sometimes trespassing, and always picking as much as they can, this book was a interesting peek behind the chanterelles, morels, and truffles on restaurant menus.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not mushroom fan, but this book makes me want to go out West and try them again.

[BookishStitcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure where I learned about this book, maybe a podcast? I enjoyed learning more about mushrooms and this interesting job.

[Alexa Duchesneau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. It demystified commercial mushroom foraging and gave me a sense of nostalgia for my own recreational picking and friendships.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this one up on a whim thanks to my library's weekly "Hey look at what we just got in!" email. No idea why, just sounded entertaining. I was amused to see mention of the Joel Palmer House in Oregon where I personally first came to understand how delicious mushrooms could be.

Cook deftly uses evocative language and every few pages I found myself hungry even from his simple descriptions of how to treat the various fungi in the kitchen, not even full recipes or dishes. It's got to be hard to write about the same food subject for 300 pages and not get terribly repetitive in the adjective department and yet he did it.

I enjoyed his tales of the hunt, and I thought he was sympathetic towards his subjects almost to a fault. It's obvious he could have had plenty bad to say about them but he couches it all in loving terms, and made me feel a bond with them - even Jeremy Faber, who I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care to hang out with in real life.

Because of the aggressive way the stories hurtled along it felt more like a work of fiction than a documentary, and I think that Cook felt pressed to have a Big Ending. I don't blame him; I found myself wanting one after everything I'd read. Maybe Doug getting arrested, or Faber's business crashing and burning in a spectacular fashion. Instead Cook chose to close with the death of chef and friend Christina Choi and while I don't want to marginalize her passing and what their friendship meant, it didn't feel like the right end to the book for me.

But hey, it's not my book and when you're writing about real life I guess you take whatever endings are given to you.

Entertaining read. I burned through it in a lazy weekend, and probably won't remember much about it by next weekend, but I don't regret at all the time I spent with it.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you go down to the woods today…the meth heads will have the catalytic converter off your SUV before you’ve plucked your first porcini.

The remote forest areas of Washington State, Oregon, California and Idaho are as scary as any you’ll find in story-book fables, but for those prepared to bear the risk there’s money in them thar hills.

For pickers it’s barely a living – just enough to keep the wolf from the door. Theirs is a world of relentlessly tough work, uncertain reward and a nomadic lifestyle that makes for a miserable existence.

Like rotten jobs the world over, it’s populated by people with low skills or no skills, of addicts and immigrants and those who make their living on the fringes of society.

But for a few with a passion for funghi and the business instincts of an NYSE trader the rewards are there.

Langdon Cook brings an anthropologist’s eye to his investigation of this tribal group and just like the mycelium pathways that produce the coveted fruiting bodies, there’s a lot to this murky business that happens underground.

Cook’s journey into this shadowy sub-culture makes for a riveting adventure. He has the social skills to pass muster in rough company, the culinary talent to schmooze with restaurateurs who snap up the treasures of the forest and the storyteller’s gift of taking you along with him.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t tell a morel from a chanterelle, or porcini from trompettes de mort; this is a glimpse into a veiled world that provides plenty of food for thought about how we live and how we behave.

[Carmel Keely · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm torn on this book. I genuinely enjoyed the sections on mushroom hunting, the intricacies of buying and selling, and the chefs who unleash the delicious magic of mushrooms. I also enjoyed reading an alternate perspective on the mess of regulations different areas place on the foraging of mushrooms and other natural resources. It seems like a truely complex issue. There's one statement towards the end that really stuck with me about how with drastically reduced legal options for foraging wild foodstuffs future generations will either fail to learn these skills or will only learn how to flout the law and do it illegally and likely unsustainably. Certainly food for thought. However, I nearly walked away from the book a few times due to the sexism and casual racial stereotyping that added absolutly nothing of value. For instance, when an airport employee fails to respond positively to someone trying to sweet talk her we don't then need a paragraph of speculation on how she will swindle her hypothetical husband someday. Also, there are better ways to discus the numerous first generation immigrants in the northwest foraging trade without tossing in bits discussing how everyone of one ethnicity are trustworthy but this other ethnicity will all try to con you. I understand that the author wanted to give a truthful representation of the individuals he shadowed but he still made the concious decision to include these unnecessary snippets and tangents that are just likely to sour and turn away readers.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This showed me a whole world I did not even know existed and launched me into a desperate search for mushrooms in my own forests. I had no idea mushroom hunting required so much dedication and was prone to illegal activity. 4 stars because it dragged for me a little by the end, but I still highly recommend this!

[K Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for lovers of outlaws and outdoors, foodie cultists and quirky cultures. Very much in the tradition of Michael Pollan, but more than just another survey of mushroom hunters. The book is well-written with quality prose that brings you in touch with the moist, rugged places where mushrooms dwell. Several mycophiles from different aspects of the business are profiled with precision and caring honesty. It got me interested in finding out more about mushrooming and will be going to a fungi foray in the near future.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting non-fiction about the culture of mushroom hunters....foraging through the forests of the west. Surprising how much the culture sounds like the drug trade.

A very good read, with lots of interesting, colorful characters and the struggles to make ends meet in this crazy business.

I gave four stars because the book is just a bit too long. I would have liked it a bit shorter, and a few photos or illustrations would have helped. I never want pictures in my books, but with the variety of mushrooms, it would have been helpful and instructive to me to have illustrations.

[Mathew Carruthers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was just a good book - well-written, thoughtful, entertaining, and informative. I've been a recreational mushroom hunter for most of my life and I learned a lot reading this book. This is part travel narrative and part love song to wild edibles. If you have any interest in wild mushrooms, learning about the commercial wild edibles industry, or travel in the more rugged and rustic parts of the Pacific northwest, then this is a good read for you. If you're not interested in those things, then read the book anyway, you might learn something.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written, compelling book about the people who inhabit every class structure of the wild foods restaurant movement, from Cambodian, Laotian, Mexican and American born pickers to the top level fine restaurants on two coasts. It is a documentary of the lives, the wild foods and the subculture of mushroom hunters. This book will make you crave mushrooms and stay up late losing sleep while you're reading.

[Babs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book on fungi foraging to meet the demands of clamoring chefs and finicky foodies. Quite an eye-opening adventure into the network that provides coveted mushroom varieties to high-end restaurants in Seattle and New York.

The book covers foraging from Northern California to the Yukon with a very interesting cast of characters. Taxonomy, geography, history and recipes thrown in for good measure.

[Virginia Brien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out really great but my interest kind of petered out about half way thru. It was a subtle shift in content I think, less the adventure of Mushroom Hunting.

[Tracy Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

It got very repetitive and I could not sustain enough interest to finish it.

[MacKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a different perspective on where your mushrooms come from! Really interesting but a bit long winded...

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re into mushrooms and have enjoyed books like Omnivores Dilemma, this might be for you. I loved it. I was brought into the world of mushroom pickers, the buyers, and the industry of foraged food. As someone who loves mushrooms and who likes to understand the implications of food choices, this book was for me.

It was mostly about the people, but I also learned a lot about mushroom. Each chapter talked mostly about one edible mushroom, while also telling a story of the people in the industry and places where mushrooms grow.

There is an allure to foraging for mushrooms that the author describes so perfectly. “We were about to embark on a search for a type of food that humans could claim absolutely no credit for. We didn’t plant it, didn’t water it, didn’t husband it—didn’t tend it in any way”(6%).

Apparently, the northwest is a mushroom paradise for many reasons, summarized eloquently in this passage: “We think of the Northwest as a place of water. It is equally a land of fire, with volcanoes through millennia laying down a thick, well-drained pumice that, coupled with ample rainfall, grows enormous trees and a diversity of edible fungi”(2%). I didn’t realize that pumice was so critical to fungi.

Because of its pumice, Mt Rainier is part of the mushroom trail, which the book takes us on throughout this book, all up and down the Pacific Coast. The commercial pickers that follow the mushroom trail throughout the year are referred to as circuit pickers. One of the main characters is a circuit picker named Doug. “Doug is what’s known as a circuit picker. He follows the wild mushroom trail year-round, picking his home patches near Westport, Washington, in the fall, traveling south through Oregon into northern California for the winter, and then marching right back up the east slope of the Sierras and Cascade Mountains in spring, sometimes deep into British Columbia if the pick is good. Along the way he’ll sell his mushrooms to a favored buyer or visit the buy stands that appear ephemerally like insect hatches in rural communities near the patches”(9%).

Many of the pickers used to be ex-loggers because the market for wild mushrooms coincided with the spotted owl causing a downturn in the timber industry on the West coast. Those loggers knew the woods best. Today, the pickers are primarily Asian immigrants.

Things I learned about specific species of fungi:
- [ ] North American matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare) “can be found from Maine to California, and especially in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, where it fruits, often in profusion, in poor, sandy soils along the backbone of the Cascades”(39%). Apparently it’s hard to pick too. “…picking matsutake—and picking it well—was an art form”(47%).
- [ ] Chanterelles - “The temperate forests of the world are flush with chanterelles. They fruit on every continent except Antarctica”(51%). “…the Pacific golden chanterelle is attracted to young Douglas firs”(52%).
- [ ] Truffles - “…all three species of “Oregon truffle” can be found from northern California to southern British Columbia, in low-elevation Douglas fir forests west of the Cascade Mountains”(65%).
- [ ] Black trumpet (Craterellus cornucopioides)- “…on the West Coast it’s a predictably common mushroom in winter among the dense tanoak forests of the coastal mountains”(74%).
- [ ] Morels - “Late in the spring and into summer, the wild-food trade is dominated by what are known as “burn morels”—morel mushrooms that appear in staggering numbers the year after a forest fire”(81%). “…it seems that the morels like the disturbance of the game trail itself, and a slight depression in the ground left by a hoof might be all the mushroom needs to have the proper shade or humidity to gain a foothold”(83%). “They prefer conifers, though not always. What’s known for sure is that, given the right habitat, morels in the West will respond to disturbance. The disturbance could be logging or trail maintenance or road building. Most often it’s fire”(87%).
- [ ] Boletes, otherwise known as porcini- “spring porcini habitat, specifically groves of older grand fir in moist conifer forests with nearby water sources”(83%).

Things I learned about the industry,etc:
- [ ] “…the Continental-sounding portobello is merely an oversize cremini, both of them being the exact same species, the very domesticated Agaricus bisporus”(4%).
- [ ] Ever enjoyed a meal made with truffle oil? “…chefs all over the country were (and are) relying on chemical fabrications such as the rather unpalatable-sounding 2,4-dithiapentane to pack a simulated wallop of truffle essence. The truffle oils are big, brassy come-ons, all molecules and no real truffle, a test-tube aroma, likely concocted in a New Jersey flavor factory”(71%).
- [ ] “There are hundreds of species of truffles, with only a handful worth foraging by humans. The most coveted and expensive of all—indeed, one of the single most expensive foods on the planet—is the Italian white truffle, Tuber magnatum; it is sometimes called the Alba truffle… The starting price in the United States is about three thousand dollars per pound “(65%).