Tag: wild food

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Very honoured to participate this this years RADICAL MYCOLOGY CONVERGENCE in Portland, Oregon, USA October 2023

Radical Mycology Convergence Oct 2023 Courtney Tyler – view my bio here: https://radicalmycologyconvergence.com/pages/teacher-bios

I am excited to announce I will be presenting this October at the Radical Mycology Convergence (@radmycology).

I will be offering 2 workshops: Medicinal Mushroom Extracts and Mushroom Coffee.

I’m also extremely honoured to be on the Medicinal Mushroom Panel and at this event with teachers I so respect and have learned so much from such as @radmycology Peter McCoy, @christopherhobbs1 , Robert Rogers, Kevin Feeney, William Rubel, @amanitadreaming and so many others!

You can learn more about this special event at radicalmycologyconvergence.com. #radicalmycology#rmc2022

#fungi#wildmushrooms#medicinalmushrooms#mushroomcoffee#herbalmedicine#foraging#wildfood#wildfungi#mushrooms

You can view the full schedule of workshops here: https://radicalmycologyconvergence.com/pages/workshops

Thank you Peter for this opportunity of a lifetime. I couldn’t dream up a better mushroom festival offering than this! I am very honoured to take part! And excitedly checking the schedule for all of the workshops that I also hope to attend!

https://vimeo.com/700538467
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Books, books, books! Recommendations

There are soo very many books that inspire me and that I learn from. Here is a small selection of books and authors whom I admire and respect. Among many others! I’ll do more posts with other books to share with you another time as well.

This is one book post of many: as I am a huge book-aholic! It’s an addiction that I am happy to feed. There are more book posts here in my blog and on Instagram.


I get asked so often to recommend books and resources that I like to learn from. The following are some excellent places to start! 

Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal. The book focuses more on medicinal plants, how to identify, harvest, process, recipes. A great place to start from and a beautiful book, full of recipes and methods to use these local wild plants as medicine. (Plus, having met them a couple of times- they are beautiful people!)

River Cottage Mushrooms by John Wright. A great beginners guide to edible fungi and their dangerous lookalikes. I also enjoy listening to his other Foraging books on Audibles. 

Edible Mushrooms by Geoff Dann highly recommended.

Trees in Britain by Roger Phillips (also any or all of his Foraging books, he’s a legend, who sadly just passed recently). If you’re interested in mushrooms, you’ll soon learn that you need to know the trees!

The Forager Handbook by @miles_irving_wild_food High end and Chefy recipes and an excellent resource of edible wild foods found in the UK and Ireland. A fellow Association of Foragers member. Not a beginners book I would say but it’s a great compilation of wild plants and elaborate recipes.

Eat Weeds Cookbook by @eatweedsuk Robin Harford. Another Foraging wild food legend and fellow AoF member. His website is comprehensive and I’d recommend signing up to his mailing list.

Extreme Greens Understanding Seaweeds by Sally McKenna a great book with seaweed ID and delicious easy to use recipes to incorporate seaweeds into your every day diet.

New Wildcrafted Cuisine by @pascalbaudar I love all of his books, a pioneer in new wild food processes including Fermentation. Follow him on Instagram and you can also sign up for his online classes.


@alysf Alys Fowler The Thrifty Forager. Beautiful simple to follow book, she has another one about preserving also. Great for urban foraging.


Botany in a Day @thomasjelpel I’m excited to be learning more about identifying plant families with this book. He also sells a card game to help learn these skills.


#foraging #wildfood #fungi #wildmushrooms #fermentation #preservation #selfsufficiency #books #workshops

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Apprenticeship with Judith Hoad 2013

I feel very fortunate to have crossed paths with and spent time with the formidable Judith Hoad. I first met this woman in 2003 when I was studying Naturopathy at CNM in Dublin.

She made a strong impression and years later I tracked her down once again and this time committed myself to a long drive up to the wilds of Donegal for a long weekend every month for six months.

Myself and four others were amongst the last to attend Judith’s “Natural Medicine for Householders” course around her kitchen table, next to a warm wood burning range at her off grid cottage way up there in the wild lands of rural Donegal.

It was a transformative experience for me, and one that I can say with certainly changed the course of my life. The exposure to her intentional off grid and simple living was eye opening and sparked my passion in living in alternative ways.

We spent many afternoons around Judith’s kitchen table, learning from her hard won wisdom of experience. Judith was nearing 80 years old and had learned all she knew the hard way, experience, intuition, books but limited access and certainly no internet.

She generously passed on her knowledge to us, as we sat in rapt attention. She is a tough taskmaster and you have to have thick skin at times if she gets cross! And at the same time, we learned about the food that grew in her garden, both cultivated and wild. We learned how to make salves, creams, lotions, tinctures and decoctions.

We were served delicious healthy soul food full of love and care and received her cookbook of favourite recipes at the end of the course.

Ill always be grateful for having had this opportunity.

I have very few photos of that time but here are a few:

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Jelly Ear Mushrooms- a local and abundant medicinal mushroom

Hmmmm? What’s that you say? Can’t hear you from my Jelly Ear!

(Even if it’s the biggest Jelly Ear I’ve ever spotted!)

These abundant, edible and medicinal fungi were a bit challenging to me before, I must admit.

The gelatinous texture isn’t one that I was accustomed to eating but it’s grown on me! The distinctly ear lobe shape didn’t help either. 😂

This mushroom can be found commonly growing on dead or dying Elder trees. Sometimes you can hit the jackpot and find branches heaving with them.

Another name for this fungus is Auricularia aurícula-judae, Wood Ear, Black fungus, Cloud Ear, Judas Ear or more controversially Jews Ear/ although this name is no longer recommended.

These can be harvested throughout the year, and can even be found shrivelled up on the tree after a dry spell. They dry down very small and rehydrate readily when needed. Love finding them plump and fat and juicy but you can collect the dried ones too, saving you the job of drying them out!

I harvest, clean, slice and dry these to preserve them for use throughout the year. Then rehydrate when needed.

If cooked fresh in a frying pan they can be quite explosive!

I enjoy them most sliced into a Chinese dumpling with other wild greens and aromatics.

Another favourite amongst the Foraging world was dreamt up by @fergustheforager many years ago and takes the intact dried jelly ears and rehydrates them into a liqueur then covers them in chocolate.

This mushroom has been used medicinally since the Tang Dynasty 618 BCE in China, often added to dishes to help improve breathing, sore throats, to reduce colds and fevers, to enhance well being and to boost circulation.

One to look out for on your wild food or herbal medicine journey.

#jellyearfungus #medicinalmushroom #foodasmedicine #fungi #fungus #forager #wildfood

Jelly Ear Mushroom
Jelly Ear Mushroom
Jelly ear mushroom looking like an ear
Courtney and the jelly ear
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Gift Vouchers for an experience – Offering experiences that grow your curiosity & connection w/ the wild through woodland walks. Come explore the alchemy of wild food, fungi & medicine with Courtney Tyler.

Should you be looking for a perfect gift for someone you love and tired of buying more things?

A gift of an experience is something that will never be forgotten.

I offer experiences, events and workshops in wild food, herbal medicine, fungi, medicinal mushrooms, foraging, and more.

Here is a link to buy a gift voucher which will be sent to you immediately upon payment, to print off and gift! Should you prefer a certain value that isn’t there, just get in touch!

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Chaga- A medicinal mushroom, “Would you like a cup of mushroom coffee?”

Mushroom coffee? This question is often met with a look of suspicion or disgust, but happily it is also becoming more mainstream.

I’ve been drinking mushroom tea- or if brewed dark and bitter, I like to call it mushroom coffee.

How I make it:

The chaga mushroom is hard and woody. It is best to break it up into smaller chunks or a powder, although some prefer to use it as small chunks, maybe the size of an average coin.

I do not tend to follow any exact recipe but I might add a tablespoon of powdered or dried mushroom to about 500ml of water.

I might throw some other medicinal mushrooms or herbs such as turkey tail mushrooms into the brew at the boiling and simmering stage, or maybe birch polypore, reishi, artist conk, lions mane, dandelion root, ginger, liquorice or whatever I have on hand. Or keep it simple and just use chaga or any one of these ingredients.

It can be decocted -brought to the boil and then simmered for at least 20 minutes, (or for much longer depending on if you’re sitting next to your warm stove for long stretches of time!) I then strain out the hard and woody mushroom material and drink the liquid. (Don’t toss the mushroom material, it can be re-boiled many times over until it loses its properties.)

I mix it with my milk of choice and a spoon of honey sometimes.

Alternatively I use this medicinal mushroom broth to add to miso soup, as a stock for any other soups or sauces. I use this broth to cook my rice in. Or I mix some of this into my ‘real’ coffee. Get it into you any way you can! You could also add some to your favourite smoothie recipe.

This mushroom has a lot of reported positive health benefits. It is full of anti-oxidants and has been reputed to have anti-cancer benefits among many other things. But beyond all of that, I find it a delicious way to get medicinal mushrooms into my wellness regime and is as satisfying a process as brewing a cuppa coffee.

Here is a link to some dried chaga chunks in my shop should you like to try this for yourself: https://www.hipsandhaws.com/product/wild-chaga-mushroom-medicinal-mushrooms/

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Gourmet edible mushrooms- dried morels for sale

I’ve just added a new dried gourmet mushroom to the shop- the delicious morel mushrooms. Verpa bohemica.

Absolutely bloody delicious!

Rehydrate in boiling water (DO NOT toss that precious liquid- keep that as mushroom stock for a sauce!) then cook and add to your favourite recipe.

25gram is the quantity that is shown in the photo. If you would like mulitples of this please just add more to the cart. The link to purchase these from my shop is here: https://www.hipsandhaws.com/product/dried-gourmet-morel-mushrooms-verpa-bohemica/

You can hear me discuss mushrooms more in some of my podcast interviews which can be found at this link: https://linktr.ee/Hipsandhawswildcrafts

I teach various workshops around the many edible, medicinal, toxic and entheogenic and artistic qualities of fungi and medicinal mushrooms. You can book into these events at the same link as above.

€5.50 flat rate shipping throughout Ireland, the UK and Europe. €10 flat rate to the USA and Canada. Ask for shipping quotes if you’re elsewhere!

25 gram dried morel mushrooms – gourmet edible mushroom
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Fly Agaric and Friends: Explorations in medicine, food, and magic with Fergus the Forager and Courtney of Hips & Haws Wildcrafts, and guest mushrooms (Kent, UK)

A foray coming up in Kent, UK with, interestingly, an emphasis on Amanita muscaria. “So you think you’re changed, do you?” said the Caterpillar.“I’m afraid I am, sir,” said Alice; “I can’t remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!” 

What: Fly Agaric and Friends: Explorations in medicine, food, and magic with Fergus the Forager and Courtney of Hips & Haws Wildcrafts, and guest mushrooms

Where: Kent UK and a local native woodland with diverse flora, fauna and fungi 

When: Saturday 29 October 2022 10am until 9pm (11 hour day) 

There is a fantastic array of wild food and fungi in October, prime mushroom season! We will enjoy a long ramble in a beautiful woodland in Kent interspersed with wild local seasonal food to drink and eat and a forage for wild mushrooms including Fly Agaric.

We will learn about the allure of the iconic Fly Agaric mushroom and how to safely use it as medicine and as food. There will be demonstrations including lacto-fermentation of mushrooms.  We will also learn about any other wild fungi that we come across. 

We will provide lunch and an elaborate three course wild food dinner with some exciting ingredients for the meal, as of course Fergus is incredible talented and experienced as a wild food experimentalist. He has over 30 years experience as a wild food forager, so your more advanced questions can be answered too.  

We will be starting and ending the day in a location later to be announced to ticket holders. You must dress appropriately for a day spent outdoors, hiking boots and rain gear could be helpful. Sorry for this event no young children or dogs. You must be physically fit for a day spent wandering the wilderness with hills and uneven ground. Please bring snacks and or food to share if you would like. And a foraging basket or knife (if you have one). 

How Much: €220 (Euro) £190 GBP (but payment is taken in euro) Early Bird/ €220 (Euro) £195 GBP Full Price/  Elaborate Wild food Lunch and 3 course dinner are included.  

To Book this event please click here: https://hipsandhawswildcrafts.clr.events/event/131802:-uk-fly-agaric-and-friends-explorations-in-medicine-food-and-magic-with-fergus-the-forager-and-courtney-of-hips-haws-wildcrafts-and-guest-mushrooms-saturday-29-october-2022-kent-uk

We will be in touch with you before the event takes place to share further relevant details with those that have booked their place. 

Here is a link to a podcast with Robin Harford after our last event: 

https://www.eatweeds.co.uk/ep32?fbclid=IwAR2g9N17GLqp0fPCwCBYxxPIK0KCU9SRbodS9E0rWFQghS6JThabLp8i5o0 

Here’s another podcast with me speaking about this incredible mushroom with Manchan Magan on RTÉ

https://podcast.rasset.ie/podcasts/audio/2020/0909/20200909_rteradio1-almanacireland-toadstool_c21832393_21833271_232_.mp3 

And a longer interview with Courtney on Welcome to Mushroom Hour: https://www.welcometomushroomhour.com/blogs/podcasts/ep-98-hips-haws-wildcrafts-irelands-wild-mushrooms-herbal-medicines-explorations-of-amanita-muscaria-feat-courtney-tyler

Here are some reviews after last years event:  

“Wow, wow, wow!!! Hips & Haws Wildcraft events are a special opportunity to connect with beautiful people in an amazing space. I was fortunate enough to have the privilege to attend a Fly Agaric event hosted by Courtney and Fergus the Forager. From the moment I arrived I felt an instant inspiration and warm welcome. We foraged in the near by woods in fun filled explorations, while learning and connecting with the many species of fungi available. The preparation and dishes we were treated to after our journey in the woods was a unique blend of heart warming tastes and enjoyable community spirit set outdoors. For a revitalising experience amongst a vibrant loving group a Hips and Haws event is the place to be.”-Riain O’Táth 

“I was lucky enough to join Hips and Haws Wildcrafts on the amanita forage day yesterday. It exceeded all expectations I ever had. Right from the beginning the communication before the event was so helpful and made the whole day run smoothly as it ran like clockwork. I arrived and was warmly greeted and welcomed to the space along with the group. We spent the day covering so much foraging information but it felt so relaxed fun and full of adventure. I’ve attended a good few similar themed foraging events in Ireland at this point and this was possibly my favourite due to the amount of work and effort Courtney and Fergus put into the packed schedule. It was more than just an ID and forage day… it was so much more! We not only learned about identification/ foraging but then info how to cook/preserve in many different kinds of ways like: lacto-fermentation, sweet dishes, ice cream, rice balls, savoury dishes, dumplings, pasta sauce, soup and more.After learning all that we had a big feast in all the mushroom themed foods.I cannot wait for the next course it was truly out of this world! Thank you for the most incredible day. -Ashleigh Connors  

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FAQ’s /Terms and Conditions:

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All ticket sales are final, we do not offer refunds or rescheduling. 

This is in order to care for our energy in organising and running events as well as due to the fact that otherwise this place could have been offered to someone else.
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**COVID precautions in relation to ticket sales: all ticket sales are final according to the policy above. However if you are exposed to Covid or in quarantine, you may choose to gift your ticket to someone else in your place. 
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If we have to change the date of an event due to severe weather warnings or government guidelines, or for any other reason- we will issue you with a voucher which can be used on a future workshop.