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"This painting could have been a photo."

is the art equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email".

ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ve been selected to showcase my work in the upcoming RAW San Jose showcase Venus on February 7!
Here’s a little preview of what you can expect to see from me at the event. I’d love to see some familiar faces, and meet some new ones!
You can purchase a ticket to the showcase directly from rawartists.com/martinj. I can’t wait to see you there! 😃

If you apply Occam's razor to "Occam's razor", it becomes "the simplicity principle".

@hajistar oh, I didn't realize you were running a mushroom farm. Sorry, I thought you were a newbie. 😅

@hajistar the spores were visibly white as there were some natural spore deposits on overlapping caps. Looking at the spores is critical to identify some species but not for this one.

@hajistar yes, they have many lookalikes and I was disappointed more than once before after finding and picking the wrong kind of Lactarius (milk caps). I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area and it's about peak season for candy caps right now. I can identify them fine now that I've encountered them several times. The nice thing is that each mushroom has a strong scent once dried, making them really safe to consume (except for food allergies in some people; like for all new foods, it's advised to not eat too much at first). The characteristics to look for when identifying are those listed in the books for Lactarius rubidus: rubbery cap, watery latex, characteristic smell when fresh (and more). Burning a piece of fresh mushroom with a lighter reveals the maple syrup scent that's otherwise only present in dry specimens.
Regarding eating: the general recommendation for all wild mushrooms is that they should be cooked. Some species can be eaten raw, but I don't know about candy caps. Many species lose their bitterness when cooked and some lose their toxicity, while others taste great even raw and are deadly. There's not much to worry about for candy caps, though. There are no deadly species in the Lactarius genus and the whole genus is easy to identify due to the presence of latex.

The hardest part in all that is to find them. I usually find interesting mushrooms when I *don't* look for them!

Candy cap in the neighborhood. The owner of the patch had no idea! They're very fragrant mushrooms once dried. Their smell is reminiscent of maple syrup. They go for about $1/g on eBay ($30/oz)!
mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Lactar
ebay.com/itm/374436001206

Really thought this was some AI sci-fi art at first. Photo from anti-mining action in Germany by @mariusmichusch

This is how 2022 ends: not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a sploosh. It's very wet in #PaloAlto today.

This is Adobe Creek. If you're familiar with Palo Alto you'll know that it often has just a trickle of water even in the winter.

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