FFSC Events Archive

Autumn beckons and we await the first fungal fruitings! In the meantime, the FFSC Culinary Committee welcomes you to celebrate the season with our annual Fall Mushroom Dinner. Chef Bob Wynn and the Culinary Committee are cooking up a scrumptious menu for the evening. Menu is evolving, and will feature multiple hors d’oeuvres served with an autumnal aperitif, followed by Porcini Chicken Paprikash with vegie version, choice of noodles or rice and haricots vert beans with craterellus for the main course. Dinner will come to a sweet ending with Sticky Ginger Toffee Pudding and cream. Mmmmmm...

For more info about this event, visit our Fall Mushroom Dinner page.

Phil Carpenter is leading a series of Fall Mushroom Identification classes.

October - November in a series of 4 classes.

Classes will be held at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum on East Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz from 7-9 pm.

Participants must be club members and registered. Contact Phil prior to attending. The class is free, so the membership dues are the only fee for non-members. Come with fresh mushrooms from field or lawn, forest or mountains. Also bring your text: a copy of Mushrooms Demystified.

Christian Schwarz is a mushroom enthusiast and taxonomist and citizen science advocate from Santa Cruz, the land of milk (caps) and honey (mushrooms). He graduated from UCSC, and now spends his time photographing, teaching about, and making scientific collections of macrofungi. He is coauthor of Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast, and is slowly building a mycoflora for Santa Cruz County. Fungi satisfy his curiosity with their seemingly endless forms (from the grotesque to the bizarre to the sublime). Besides mushroom taxonomy and mycofloristics, he’s an excitable birder and mediocre fisherman.

NAMA is our parent organization. Announcing the 2017 NAMA Foray to be held in northwestern Wisconsin: The Northwoods Foray!

Plan to attend! Limited to 350 and you must be a NAMA member. Registration to this event will include lodging at Lakewood Resort, all meals, and all programs, presentations, and forays.

Visit our Alaska Long Distance Foray page for more details about this event.

We would like to THANK the people who have been helping with culinary events and we would like to INVITE members who want to be involved with the culinary events to a Sunday meeting and lunch.

The new season will begin with new leadership from Bob Wynn. Bob has been a part of culinary for almost forever and he knows that many hands are needed to make the events a success.

We will begin with a meeting to discuss new ideas or variations on old ideas and to make plans for the New Year. We will follow the meeting with a light lunch. Bring your favorite beverage if you plan to stay for lunch.

Please RSVP so we can make appropriate plans for the lunch. Feel free to bring a guest because we usually will put them to work.

Please bring your ideas and show your support for the culinary committee.

Sunday, July 23, 2017 starting at 10:30

Visit the Spring Long Distance Foray page for more info.

Visit our Suds & Shrooms page for details.

Anna Bazzicalupo grew up in Naples, Italy. She did her undergrad and masters degrees in Scotland.

As a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in May Berbee's lab, she is interested in the taxonomy and systematics of Russula of the Pacific Northwest. Her work involves using this complicated group as an example of collaboration between mycological societies and academia, towards the better understanding of the systematics and taxonomy of our local mushrooms. She has been working on the Benjamin Woo Russula collection from the Burke Museum, to barcode the Russulas of the Pacific Northwest.

"Russula Pers. (Russulaceae) is a cosmopolitan, ectomycorrhizal genus of fungi that are notoriously difficult to identify to species. Species diversity is high but the field characters used to define species seem to be plastic and to overlap across the genus. A comprehensive monograph with keys and descriptions of N. American species has yet to be written. To help resolve western N. American species, we sequenced, databased, and analyzed Benjamin Woo’s collection of over 1000 Russula specimens. For 30 years, Ben Woo, an expert amateur founder of the Puget Sound Mycological Society and Pacific Northwest Key Council, carefully sampled and documented Washington and Oregon specimens. We used Woo’s exceptional collection of Russula diversity to: i. improve delimitation of regional species; ii. use the improved understanding of the genetic and field character variation within species to begin a broader revision of the genus. This study matched specimens to species in Europe, species described in the Pacific Northwest, and species that are potentially new to science. There are shortcomings of species delimitation with barcode sequences, but we provide a starting point for a more comprehensive view of species delimitation in challenging groups of fungi. By combining photographs, sequences, and notes from the Woo collection I am now in a position to: i. Improve knowledge of regional species; ii. Make the specimens more accessible for future research through my searchable, web-accessible database; iii. begin a broader revision of this genus." SCMS webpage

Dr. Cornelia Cho presents: “Mushrooms from a Korean Perspective”. Although the dynamic is shifting, thanks to the popularity of Korean Dramas and the current chef romance with our ingredients, many people in this country still don’t know much about this culture as distinct from the other East Asian countries of China and Japan. A mushroom club president and a woman of Korean ancestry, she will share her heritage, its particularities and Korea’s cultural, culinary and medicinal relationship with the fungal kingdom. It should be a fun time for all.

Dr. Cornelia Cho graduated from the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine in 1983. She works in Decatur, Georgia specializing in Pediatrics. She is President of the Mushroom Club of Georgia, and has a long interest in the medicinal aspects of fungi.

This event is canceled.

Douglas will talk about the tiny and small neglected mushrooms that exist in his talk: “Sympathy for the tiny guys”. Mushrooms forays and fairs often focus on large and attractive mushrooms, mostly with a focus on edibility, and the ability to survive for days on display. But the vast majority of diversity in the fungal kingdom are small to tiny mushrooms, which often go unnoticed. This talk will be a quick survey of what is out there, for mushrooms that are 2cm or less in size, with focus on colorful, and strange examples. Hopefully this might inspire people to stop and try getting on their hands and knees once in awhile to see what is out there.

Douglas Smith has been involved in mycology for many years, looking for and photographing mushrooms on several continents. His photographs have been featured in many field guides, journals, and magazines, such as National Geographic. A constant figure in the Bay Area mycology scene, he is an expert in many fungus fairs, and organized forays.