Mushrooms, toadstools, fungus. They may look alike but if you’re an amateur, you should refrain from picking them in the woods. Many fragrant tasty species grow wild and add a pungent flavor to soups, stews and casseroles. Click this link self soothing.

White button mushrooms are grown domestically, offer less flavor and can be found in the produce section of your local food store. But they are not veggies. They reside in the fungus family. While certain species can be cultivated commercially, others grow only in the wild. Although fat-free and low- calorie, mushrooms do offer some nutritional value and add flavor and volume to many dishes.

Although you love their culinary value, don’t run out after the next rainfall and pluck those little toadstools sprouting on the lawn for your morning omelet. Many are highly poisonous, and it takes knowledgeable pickers to differentiate. The more popular types around the world are shitake, morel, oyster, chanterelle and cremini, which are flavorful, more costly and of course favored over the white variety by discriminating chefs. (Frenchmen wouldn’t dream of using our bourgeois white button variety.)

Many species require cooking and should never be eaten raw, such as the morel. Tasty large portobello make an ideal meat replacement and a popular choice among vegetarians. The prized ruffle tops the list in its native France, and other countries pay through the nose to import them. (Those French. Nothing but the best for their discriminating palettes.)

While mushrooms presumably date back to the cavemen, the earliest documented usage goes back to ancient China, where mushrooms were consumed for medicinal as well as culinary purposes. (Long before explorer Marco Polo trekked over to China.) Always on top of the latest food discoveries, Romans enjoyed them as a food, but since all mushrooms are not edible, those inventive emperors employed food tasters to determine which might be poisonous. (Certainly not an enviable job. You never knew which meal might be your last.) Throughout history, mushrooms have been dried and then eaten all winter, which placed them highly in demand.

Asians in particular value mushrooms as a medicine, like the reishi, maitake and turkey tail, and they ingest them frequently for health issues, either cooked or as a tea. With over 65% of the world’s production, China tops the list, followed by Italy and Poland. At 5%, the U.S. is no slouch, cranking out 390,000 tons a year. (That’s a lot of soup.)