- It's discovery.

It's like a new horizon.

It's like a new frontier.

When we're hiking, we're just so used to looking at big picture things, but looking for mushrooms really forces you to stop and look at really small things.

It brings people together through spending time outdoors.

It fosters appreciation for the environment.

Then it brings people together again through food.

- The more you know, the more you feel comfortable navigating that space and, and I think your exploration and your self discovery can begin.

- My name is Barbora Batokova.

I currently serve as the president of the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Club.

A lot of people are afraid of mushrooms.

That's really kind of my mission.

It's also the mission I think of the club to make people less afraid and you become less afraid by becoming more familiar.

We hold a lot of mushroom walks, we hold monthly meetings as well.

We bring local experts as well as experts from around the country.

So these are all boletes?

These are, boletes are anything with no gills.

- Our members range from the very beginners who only know about the mushrooms you get at the grocery store is all the way to some of the top mushroom identifiers and mycologists in the world are part of our club.

Here.

We've got folks who love to cook and forage and folks who dye with natural fibers and who DNA and just a wide, wide range of different topics that people are interested in here.

- Today, the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Club is Mushroom Cultivation day.

And what you see is people inoculating logs and basically what they are doing is taking their log to an inoculation station.

They are drilling holes in the logs.

Those holes are then being filled with inoculum.

- This is sort of what makes this whole process work.

It's we're drilling holes, so we can put these little dowel rods that have the shiitake mycelium on 'em.

- That is then covered with wax, and the logs are left to mature.

- And then through the course of a year, it will basically overtake that log, use it as a food source, and then maybe next year we'll see a flush of shiitake mushrooms.

So that's the hope.

- With mushroom hunting and foraging, it's so important to get out there and to explore and it's so much easier to do that with people that kind of help you learn along the way.

- So today I led a class of about 18 people and we went to Little Panther Hollow.

We all try to spread out a little bit.

Some people will look in the trees, some people will look on the ground, some people will look under logs.

So it's kind of like looking for a little piece of treasure, like a needle in the haystack.

And it's a slightly guided walk.

People can kind of go off on their own, but yet I'm still available for them to ask me questions so that when we go back to the table, there's a lot more that everyone can see.

- I found a bolete, if I got the pronunciation right.

This is false turkey tail.

- I found a few mushrooms.

I don't know what they are yet.

People don't realize how many things are out there that are, if not new, an undescribed species.

- It's neat being able to identify something that you could actually maybe take home and cook with.

- It's always better to be safe and just cook it first.

- Hi, my name is Kate Lasky - And I'm Tomasz Skowronski.

We're co chef's, co-owners of APTEKA.

Here in lovely Bloomfield, Western Pennsylvania has a tremendous bounty of edible plants, - Tomasz is first generation polish, and he grew up going back to Poland.

Eastern Europe has a incredible tradition of foraging and I think we just saw a way to really showcase what is Eastern European food, especially Polish food, and do that with like a lot of curiosity.

- The context of the food is really important for us.

And so we try and incorporate a lot of that.

They're not just notes, they're not just a garnish, they are the dish.

They're sauteed, they're beaten up, they're seared, they're marinated to really embrace what they are.

Their crunch, their vegetable notes, their floral notes, their fun.

And a lot of that kind of like, those finds have just been things that it's like, okay, there's a fruit that's, you know, on the forest floor, it smells interesting, can I eat it?

And then it ends up in a drink on the bar program.

We're also coincidentally drying mushrooms right now of something that was picked a couple days ago, and that's gonna show up in soups in February, - Whether it's hemlock or spruce or pine or all these things that are all around us in every yard, I think have the potential to be really fun.

And I think it just takes a matter of tasting it.

- Part of learning in general about any sort of subject, whether it's mushrooms or anything else, is finding your people.

- There's so much out there and I love seeing that other people are excited about it.

- I think it's just emotionally nicer to have something that's not close to a road that's not extra dusty.

The possibilities are enormous - And it's a way to keep active and enjoy our local flora and fauna.