Wild Puffball Mushroom
I am so excited, once again I have found a Wild Giant Puffball Mushroom in the wooded area of our yard. This is the strangest looking thing to come across if you don’t know what it is.
Wild Giant Puffball Mushrooms are one of the best mushrooms I have ever tasted. Although they look totally different from the ones you buy at the store, they have a similar taste.
Click HERE to read my post from last year when I found my first Giant Puffball Mushroom in our yard. I have step by step directions of how to prepare and cook them and there is a printable recipe card.
http://www.InDianesKitchen.com
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Categories: My Garden, Vegetables/Slaws/Salads
In Dianes Kitchen 
Yum!
Sent from my iPad Ed Campbell [Eideard]
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Thanks Ed!
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I have seen a lot of people posting about finding these, even in my area. I have never come across one though. Enjoy your puffball. Diane.
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They will keep coming back in the same spot if you let one die off and turn to spores. I only picked one from that spot last year and was totally shocked another one grew. Now I doubt I will get one next year since I picked the only one again! 🤣
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So cool! How smart you are, Diane!
Blue Rock Horses Frederick County, Virginia bluerockhorses.com
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Thanks Mitzy my dad used to find these and we would eat them when I was a child. When I worked I was given one every now and then but to find one in my yard was so exciting!
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We just found one the other day!
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Yippee!!!! I always feel so lucky to get one. I know you enjoyed yours as much as I did. 😋
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It’s a great surprise to find one
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I have never found one except in my yard. I would love to be walking in the woods and find one but I’m not complaining!
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anywhere is great!
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Very cool. I just saw these mentioned on FB, by a young man who works to regenerate soil, get people gardening, etc. He had a huge puff ball, as big as a beach ball.
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Yes they only grow with good organic soil and the right conditions. Mine was growing near decomposing wood. They amaze me because they can double their size in a day or so. They can also get full of bugs if left to get too big.
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Gold growing right in your own yard! How magnificent!
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I know right! Two years in a row too. Best part of it is that my husband dislikes mushrooms…..all mine!
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Even better!
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It looks so neat!! I would have thought it was a rock and passed it by.
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What’s funny is the root. It is about the size of a piece of cooked spaghetti, so strange.
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it is fun to find one of these giant puff balls , and they do make good eating. Puff balls are edible, and a treat. However, there are numerous varieties of wild mushrooms, some which are edible and some that are NOT. My late husband was familiar with mushrooms, and he loved finding the puff balls…he would slice them and fry them, and they were yummy. But everyone should be aware of the danger of eating wild mushrooms that are poison, and can and do cause death of poisoning.
I am not an expert on wild mushrooms, and won’t even attempt to harvest them. I might eat puff balls, but I never really cared for the taste, but my husband loved them.
By the way, my late husband did not die of poison mushrooms … i just sayin’… 🙂
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Excellent advice and I’m glad your husband didn’t die from eating them! Lol
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He used to dry the puffballs then turn them to powder, and used for flavoring. He also liked them fried with meat. He cooked a lot when I was in school, a retired firefighter, he knew his way around a kitchen. 🙂
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Oh how lucky were you! I have dehydrated mushrooms but I never thought to powder them. I do that with jalapeño peppers though. Anyhow, when I get puffballs it’s never been more than one and that one never has a chance to be powdered! 😂
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yeah, he was quite the guy…although he had his moments. 🙂 I would never in my wildest dreams have thought of drying mushrooms!
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I dried mine only because my husband doesn’t like them. That way I could use them anytime I was cooking just for me.
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Those puffballs he would slice and dry in the oven, but they had a really bad odor. He also dried apple chips (really quite good,) and anything els
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I loved the dried apple slices too but I doubt I will make them again, they took forever! I had 3 apple trees and cut them down. I would have gotten along well with your husband, we thought a lot alike.
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Yes, I think so. He was a firefighter by profession, and farmer by avocation. He grew anything that would grow, even some species that wouldn’t grow here in northern Ohio…like cotton and tobacco one time. He had about 30 apple trees at one time…grew and sold thousands of heads of cabbage…and everything else. I grew to hate green beans! The words “Hey, Mrs. D…look what I brought you in the baskets/crates today.” 🙂 I did help somewhat, but I am not Mrs. Farmer’s Wife. haha
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Being a farmer is hard work! I’m with you, I could never be a farmers wife other than I would have food ready. Lol We do get some brutal weather in Northern Ohio, I love that he tried growing tobacco and cotton.
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Our fire department was full-time, but the guys had great freetime so many of them did farming. When Bob became chief he continued, then when he retired he really buckled down. Apples and cabbage were his main crops. He had a farm stand in front and the kids used to run the stand…came in handy later for college money.
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I use to drive to a farm stand just because they did that! I thought it was such a fantastic life lesson for the kids and amazing contribution for the childrens education. Kudos to you both.
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Bob was of the opinion that children should have work to do…chores. So he made sure that as they were growing up they had goats and geese, etc. to care for, and crops to pick, etc. Once my daughter was up in an apple tree trimming, and she commented that all of her friends were in Myrtle Beach on spring break (high school.) He said “well, that’s a shame…you up in a tree working while they’re playing on the beach.” Actually the kids say they hated it at the time, but now they are grown they look back at those times fondly. 🙂
My oldest son especially treasures his farmhand days…even though I once “ruined his life” by not letting him ride his motorcycle out to the Grand Canyon. (He was 17) LOL
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I didn’t let my son ride at all until he left the house at 18. The funny part is I used to ride until I had kids. lol
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sometimes personal experience is the best safeguards. Joe didn’t actually keep the motorcycle long, too many idiots on the road he said.
It was his drum set that almost drove his sisters to distraction…
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😂🤣😂
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I haven’t eaten or seen these mushrooms. I have to believe they are delicious.
Best wishes
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Thank you Ultra they are very delicious. Have a great week. 💕
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Looks amazing, vegetarian sci-fi chips
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Hahaha delicious vegetarian sci-fi chips. Lol Thank you Barb, I hope you are doing fantastic!
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I am jealous! My wife and I found about 3.5 lbs of Shrimp of the woods yesterday along with a lions mane and some common puffballs…but I’ve never seen a Giant Puffball. Congratulations and enjoy!!!
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Well I am jealous too! I have never seen shrimp of the woods, common puff balls or lions mane, I actually had to google it! Lol
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It’s amazing you can harvest this from your own backyard. It looked like a ball of dough at first! The finished meal looks delicious!
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It is not normal to find them in your backyard, they are usually in a large woods. We have an old railroad section that is abandoned right at our property line that has turned into a wooded area and it popped up by an old decayed tree. Thank you!
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We love foraging for mushrooms! My favorites are the russulas. This year we found 34 pounds of chanterelles along with chicken of the woods and a few others. Enjoy!
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That is amazing!!! What did you do with them? Did your give some away or preserve them? I have dehydrated mushrooms to preserve them.
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I am a big fan of mushrooms. It looks delicious. 💙
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Thank you Suni!
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I would be too scared to eat any mushroom growing in the field (because I have no knowledge of how to differentiate between the good and the bad ones)! But I must admit, I’m a little bit jealous of this giant puffball mushroom that grows in your garden!
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I have eaten puffballs my entire life so I am certain this type of mushroom is edible, however, I wouldn’t pick any others and eat them.
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Wow, that’s some mushroom…I love shrooms every which way but you are correct, Diane to warn against foraging and checking for sure before you eat my daughter in law forages and gets some wonderful mushrooms 🙂
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I have never foraged for mushrooms except with my dad as a child. It scares me to death that I will eat one that will make me sick or kill me. However, puffball mushrooms are so easy to identify and when you pick them they have that tiny little root feeding that huge mushroom ball, so I will eat them.
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I don’t forage I leave it to my daughter in law she is teaching Lily… It is great that you can identify the puffball and they grow in your garden..
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How cool! I would love to go mushroom hunting one day (with someone who knows what they’re doing).
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This is the ONLY mushroom I will hunt. Today I took 2 small ones that dried up and put the dried spores in my flower bed hoping they will grow there next year, fingers crossed!
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Neat– I hope your experiment works!
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Me too, thank you!
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OMG I think we had these on our property here in Spring Creek, Nevada but I was afraid they might be poisonous. My late Pomeranian would make a made dash to try to gobble them up. I’ll have to research where they grow. Yours look incredibly delicious!
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Thank you Barb. I had two small ones grow in my flower bed. I let they die off and I put them in a better spot, stepped on them so the spores went into a new spot. I am hoping more grow next year.🤞🏻
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