BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 03:17 PM

Has anyone eaten the Philosopher's stone?

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: sapper82
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 04:10 PM

My children know that if they find a puffball they are to bring it straight home!!
Lovely cooked with smoked bacln!

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 02 Oct 05 - 06:19 PM

Here's a TRUE deadly mushroom story - my 3rd grade teacher and his first wife picked some in Upstate NY, don't know what kind. she died, he survived (after being quite ill) and when I was in Highschool, he married my 9th grade English teacher. happy ending!

As for storing mushrooms for future use - only way I ever managed was to preserve them was to flash fry them in roasted garlic flavored olive oil and then store them in more oil - or - drying them in a dehydrator. Freezing fresh mushrooms results in slime.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: bobad
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:24 PM

Ate another one tonight and it was even better than the first.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:34 PM

Do you have a giant puff ball Mine in your backyard?

would it not be ever so much more fun to wait until they dry out and then toss them off an overpass at unsuspecting vehicles? That's what we used to dowhen I was a child.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: bobad
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:47 PM

No I don't have a giant puffball mine in my backyard, my wife plucked this one off of someone's lawn bicycling home from work.

And no,it's much more fun and gastrinomically satisfying to eat them.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: GUEST,dragged up.
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:47 PM

We used to drop pink and white marshmallow sweets on to the roofs of red routemasters, as they went under a low-over-the-road foot bridge. We never had a telly.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: bobad
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 07:53 PM

Pity.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 08:37 PM

Guest, dragged up: I grew up rather isolated on the farm, and sometimes rather desperate for entertainment, but I don't think I ever got down to where I would have thought that was exciting...

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 03 Oct 05 - 10:37 PM

Dried out Puff balls explode when you drop them on cars. That's fun - just aim for the roof though if you don't want to go to jail.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 07:08 AM

Dropping puffballs on cars is very dangerous to car-owners who may swerve or emergency stop and only the terminally stupid do it.

Phallus impudicus, (technically amanita phalloides) the "stink-horn" produces and evil dark slime over the "glans" which is effective to attract flies to spread the spores.

According to all the English fungi books I have read, the only two really really dangerous fungi in the UK are amanita muscaria and amanita pantheris (the death cap and the panther cap).

Fly Agaric (the red and white spotted one) is hallucinogenic and somewhat dangerous, but so unmistakable.

No-one has mentioned "Poor Man's Beefsteak" - or "Horse Mushrooms" - or "Yellow stainers". I've never tried the first, but have eaten both the others with no ill effects (some people have different metbolisms and get very gyppy tummy from them) although I find the taste can be overpoweringly strong if you use them incautiously in stews.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 07:45 AM

frogprince it was damned exciting!

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Pied Piper
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 11:28 AM

I've never tried Giant Puffball but ther's some lovley Shaggy ParasolMushrooms in the local Churchyard.

Yum Yum

PP

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 11:28 AM

In Oregon about 25 years ago some kids dropped a goodsized rock from an overpass onto a car. Went through the windshield (windscreen) and hit a woman passenger. She will be forever disfigured- and that's after multiple surgeries.

After that there were some copycat efforts (Have you noticed that people are insane?) so the state put up tall fences on the overpasses.

I'm glad this is not a kids' forum. I doubt we'lll go out and do the stupid things that kids might.

Subject: RE: BS: I Ate A Giant Puffball
From: frogprince
Date: 04 Oct 05 - 02:23 PM

Maybe if I saw what the "pink and white marshmallow sweets" were really like, I would get the idea... I get a picture of, like tossing gumdrops; wheee?

Somewhere around the time of the Oregon incident that Ebbie mentioned, someone in the detroit area dropped a cement block through a grade school teachers windshield. She went through years of reconstructive surgery, only to get infection after one operation and die.

I can imagine myself, as a fool kid, tossing something like puffballs at cars. A kid who would never think of throwing something like a rock would do it, never thinking through the risk of startling a driver into an accident. God, where would you go from there? On one hand, how could you just let the kid off with little or no consequences? on the other, how could you treat him the same as an animal who heaved an obviously deadly object?

How did we get from fun eating mushrooms to this grim stuff?