Me and Marty discovered Shaggy Parasols and Puffballs at Ashridge NT.

Below are some Puffballs They can be white or tan, but should always have no stem, be firm, and be solid white (WITH NO GILLS) when you cut them open. The Common Puffballs we picked (Lycoperdum perlatum) had a sweet little white ‘crumble topping’.

Shaggy Parasols (Macrolepiota rhacodes) are similar to Field Parasols, but they live on woodland edges in semi shade. The cap is smaller, but its still a big mushroom.

NEVER pick Parasols which have caps smaller than 10cm across. Some of the smaller Lepiota are deadly poisonous!! Many of the smaller species have reddish scales on the cap.

The beech trees were dripping with mast (beech seeds) so I went a bit mad collecting them.

Above is the beautiful old-growth beech forest at Ashridge. As the forest is so old, a big mycelial network has built up under the soil. Ashridge is one of the best places in Bedfordshire to hunt for fungi.

Back at the boat I knocked up a Puffball & Kale Omelette. Lovely mild roast dinner gravy flavour…and home grown kale too!

Below you can see the beech nuts with their triangular hulls. If you want to store them before using them, leave these outer hulls on.

If you want to use them straight away, you can peel the hulls off with your fingers OR rub them off between some towels. The bowl below shows dehulled beech nuts ready for toasting.

In the end I had quite a crowd of other curious parents helping to shell the beech nuts! I toasted some of the nuts in a dry pan and sprinkled on rosemary and salt. I fed them to my neighbours in our garden potluck!

Beech nuts consist of 20% protein and a whopping 50% fat. This makes them buttery and very moreish. If you want to gain fat for winter, beech nuts are the way!

It’s vital to cook them as this removes the mildly poisonous saponin glycoside from their outer brown skin. Just a few raw nuts won’t hurt, but a large handful of raw nuts will give you a bellyache.

You can make beech nut butter and oil if you can be bothered. They are so oily, they will get stuck in a mill made for dry seed though. It takes 1 kg of beech nuts to make a quart of a litre of oil. Now that’s a labour of love for you. It has a high smoke point and is very tasty.

xx Hedgewitch Kat xx