The Wild Path

Learn how to hunt for edible and medicinal mushrooms in Southern California! We will spend the morning looking at a variety of mycorrhizal and saprophytic mushrooms that can be found in our region. We will learn how to find them, study their identification features and about the range of edibility between species.

After our trip in the field, we will return to the kitchen for a wild food lunch, and brief introduction to cooking mushrooms and extracting mushroom compounds for medicine.

Location will be selected closer to the event date depending on rain and fruiting conditions, but will take place near the eastern side of the Santa Monica Mountains in Ventura county.

Your Instructors:

Olga Tzogas started her love affair with Fungi and plants over 15 years ago, with the help and guidance of family, teachers and community. In 2011, Smugtown Mushrooms was started, which provides cultivation supplies to grow mushrooms, indoors or outdoors, for food or for medicine. Olga has taught hundreds of folks how to grow mushrooms, make medicine and learn about the glory of Fungi and the natural world. Alongside the collaboration of the collective, The Mycelium Underground, Olga helped create the New Moon Mycology Summit in 2018. She was a core organizer for the 2016 Radical Mycology Convergence and the MycoSymbiotics Mushroom + Arts Festival aka MycoFest from 2015-17. Annually, Olga returns to her ancestral homeland to guide small groups immersed in land based and traditional knowledge of the country of Greece, highlighting the fungi and plants there.

Jess Starwood is an author, herbalist and chef with a Masters of Science degree in Herbal Medicine & Holistic Nutrition and is the author of Mushroom Wanderland: A Forager's Guide to Finding, Identifying, and Using More than 25 Wild Fungi. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Science in Integrative Health and the owner of SunRaven Apothecary. She has been featured in NatGeo, The Guardian, and the Orange County Register. Jess holds board positions for the Los Angeles Mycological Society and the Arizona Mushroom Society, and Culinary Committee member for the North American Mycological Association. Website: jstarwood.com & thewildpath.org

Cancellation/Refund Policy:
Tickets are non-refundable unless otherwise specified in writing. If you need to cancel, credit will be issued for any event or class within 1 year from cancellation.