I think I've always thought that mushrooms were a little neat, but it wasn't until September of 2023 when my similarly mushroom-inclined friend asked me to join them on a foray that I really started to enjoy them. Neither of us had gone on one before despite having had a passing interest in the subject for a while. While we didn't make any major finds ourselves, someone else on the foray found Chicken of the Woods and let everyone else take a chunk home to try it, and after that I was absolutely hooked.

Since then, I have taken up regularly foraging and growing my own mushrooms. I have so far found the following notable mushrooms:

• Chicken of the Woods (eaten, made 'chicken' nuggets)
• Chanterelles (eaten, sauteed with butter and garlic and served with noodles)
• Jack-o-lanterns (found on the same trip as the chanterelles, good teaching moment)
• Hen of the Woods (eaten, sauteed with butter and garlic)
• Hedgehog mushrooms (not eaten sadly)
• Lobster mushrooms (russula variety?, diced, boiled, eaten in a sandwich)
• Crown-tipped coral mushrooms (eaten in a soup, way too buggy and bland to eat again)
• Pheasantback mushrooms (eaten, sauteed and served with noodles)
• Some likely psychoactive Gymnopilus species (not eaten)

As of writing, I'm currently growing wine caps and blue oyster mushrooms but have not had the opportunity to harvest.

I have yet to successfully forage any kind of bolete, morel, or puffball mushroom and I'm always keeping an eye out for them when I am out on my hikes.

For me, going on mushroom forays brings to me the same kind of excitement that I felt playing Pokemon games growing up. There's definitely a "gotta collect 'em all" mentality to it that makes me want to keep going out there and seeing what turns up. I frequently daydream about creating some kind of mushroom Pokedex app (more gameified than iNaturalist).

Below, I have included some of my favorite mushroom photos that I've taken:

Late April of 2026, I started a new grow project! So far in my amateur mycologist journey, I have followed this technique.
The link provided can explain it better than I can, but simply, the process I follow is like this:

1. Inoculate Ben's Original Rice bags with liquid culture of choice (in this case, wine caps and blue oysters)
2. Keep these bags in a big box heated to approx. 76 degrees fahrenheit using a seed starter heating pad
3. Wait like ~2-3 weeks for the mycelium to spread and colonize all of the spawn
4. Once colonized, mix with pasteurized substrate appropriate for that type of mushroom
5. Wait for the mycelium to colonize at least 75% of the substrate (tbh I skipped this with this most recent project)
6. Put the now-colonized substrate into fruiting conditions
7. Wait for mushrooms to start pinning
8. Mist regularly after pinning begins
9. Harvest when ready :3

So far, as of 6/5/2026, the blue oysters are doing great and are really starting to take off, but I haven't seen much activity from the wine caps. Below is a picture of the oyster mushrooms ~48 hours after I noticed pinning: