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Snow Fungus is a weird and wonderful creation. Give it a feel, it's tantalisingly tactile. Everyone has a moment of joy when they jiggle that jelly. I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine .  It looks ethereal, like a bouquet of blooms. It's ready to adorn the forest fairies; a voluminous ruffled gown. It's also ready to adorn the dinner plate. It's pretty flavourless, basically the tofu of the mushroom world, but has a great texture and will absorb cooking sauces and

Commercially grown Enoki are just sad. They're not supposed to be white and long. When confined in a plastic prison, they stretch taller and taller, searching for the sun. Their natural pigment never develops without light. They're doing time in the hole, poor little things. They were born to be wild. In nature, Wild Enoki are dressed to impress. They flaunt glossy orange caps, opening wide like parasols. Their short stems are wrapped in a sumptuous velvet coat. Quite the co

I snacked on bushfood as a kid. But my full descent into foraging was all via mushrooms. Years ago, I found some little brown mushrooms growing in my backyard—caramel brown, with a nippled top. I was worried they looked similar to some hallucinagenic mushrooms I’d seen on a 60 Minutes exposé. Somehow the stars aligned and I stumbled exactly where I needed to be: a mushroom ID group on Facebook. The group’s mycologist admin hit me with a mouthful of a taxonomical name. Turns o

Mushrooming is usually a treasure hunt in the forest. You wander through the wilderness, taking in every detail, until you uncover a whole bounty of mushrooms hiding beneath leaf litter. Ah, the excitement of a haul! A basket overflowing with abundance, enough to host the most glorious dinner party. But foraging for Porcini isn't like this. They're so elusive in Victoria, t here's a one in a million shot you'll stumble upon one. Expect a sad, empty basket. T he lucky few who

My poor friends put up with my seasonal personality disorder. The summer version of me hosts cocktail parties and spends afternoons sprawled on the beach. But by mid-autumn, my inner mushroom nerd is fully unmasked. I'll try to recruit everyone for expeditions to what's affectionately dubbed the ' fuck no forest'—Ivan Milat’s picnic spot of no return. It’s a leech infested damp pit. Turn left and you'll be threatened with rusty “no trespassing” warning signs, turn right and y

Congratulations, you’ve just been served—by the little lawyers of the mushroom world. Clusters of Coprinus comatus,  known as Lawyer’s Wigs, love to congregate in passerby places: roadside ditches, the local dog park, and beside graffiti tagged bus shelters. These mushies work pro bono—popping up freely among grassy areas. No need for day-long foraging expeditions; just grab a shopping bag and take a stroll around the block. The flavour of Lawyer’s Wigs is delicately mild,

Foraging is all about being in step with the earth, following the seasons. Summer sunshine, autumn rain, winter rebirth, spring flourishing. You discover the beauty of impermanence—that nothing stays forever, but everything finds its way back. In Autumn, a forage begins with a hot cup of tea and a twilight adventure. Reaching grassy hills as dawn breaks, soothing waves of green fading into the distance. The sky takes on an otherworldly hue, and mist settles in valleys below.