Identifying the Mushrooms that Became Merry

Jack Buchanan tells the story that he got the idea for creating a kitchen coordinate line with mushrooms after stumbling on a patch of mushrooms in his backyard in Chicago, Illinois. But what could have been those fateful fungi? What did those real mushrooms look like?

To find the answer, I turned to my fungi books. Besides hunting for Merry Mushrooms in thrift stores and rummage sales, I'm constantly on the lookout for real mushrooms around the neighborhood and in the woods.

Not to clog this blog post with pictures of fungi, but look at all these varieties I've "collected" throughout southeastern and central Wisconsin!

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