Last week on the blog I shared the recipe for the sweet to eat Chocolate Beet Whoopie Pies that I made for Valentines Day.
One special ingredient I used when making these treats is an uncommon pantry item Omar and I call our "Honeymoon Honey". Today I am going to tell the story of how this Honeymoon Honey came to be.
After getting married last summer, Omar and I enjoyed a three week honeymoon traveling in Mexico. The last stop on our trip was a two night stay in a tiny mountain town in the state of Oaxaca called San Jose Del Pacifico. This small community is a destination for mushroom enthusiasts due to its geographic position as a high alpine region. Omar was told that the forests surrounding San Jose Del Pacifico were laden with wild mushrooms. So naturally we had to spend a couple of days here see what we could find.
We arrived in San Jose after a five hour bus ride traversing narrow, winding, and very bumpy roads all the way from the Oaxacan coastline up to this high mountainous region with an altitude of 8,000 feet above sea level. We arrived at dusk and found a small casita just off the main drag to sleep in for a couple of nights.
Walking around the very small "downtown area" (really it was just the main road with about three restaurants and five souvenir shops), it was evident we had entered mushroom territory. Mushrooms seemed to be the theme of this town. Everyone of the little shops sold mushroom chocolates a whole array of mushroom knicks and knacks from mushroom key chains, to tee-shirts, to spotted mushroom hand-knit hats. Mushroom soup was a menu item at each of the restaurants we walked into, we even tried a mushroom tamale (not my favorite thing). Omar was in heaven.
The following morning we saw a couple of women delivering large baskets full of some of the biggest mushrooms I have ever seen to the restaurant where we were eating breakfast. Omar's mushy senses were tingling. It was time for us to venture into the forest and discover what mushrooms might be hidden within.
After breakfast, Omar and I enjoyed a self-guided foray through the woods just south of town. About two minutes into our walk were befriend by a stray dog who we affectionately called "perrita" (I'm not sure if this is a real spanish word but if it were it would translate to little girl dog). Omar and I aren't really dog people but there was something special about perrita. It was almost as if she was our spirit guide, forging our path as we romped around the woods collecting a colorful array of flora and fungi.
We had been walking for about an hour and hadn't found anything too notable. Our luck was about to change when we encountered a young man who appeared to be meditating beneath a tall pine tree just to the left of the trail.
Omar's intuition advised him to approach this man and ask for guidance. Coincidentally, this man was also named Omar. And this Omar knew where the mushrooms were. Speaking in Spanish, he told us to stay on the path. He said if we continued walking we would come across a small wooden house and near the house there would be mushrooms.
Sure enough this Omar was correct. There beside a small, rundown wooden cabin we found our very first Amanita muscaria also known as the fly agaric mushroom.
For those who don't know, Amanita muscaria (AM) is the classic red capped mushroom with white spots, sometimes referred to as a toadstool, these are the most recognizable mushrooms in folk art and stories.
Yet neither Omar or I had ever come across one in the wild before. Needless to say we were both overjoyed to have discovered a small collection of these beautiful mushrooms together.
There is much mystery and lore surrounding the cultural significance and history of Amanita muscaria. Evidence of this curious mushroom being used and revered by ancient cultures around the globe date back as far as 50,000 years making Amanita the oldest hallucinogenic mushroom known by humankind (Masha, 2022).
The mystical history of Amanita spans across cultures. According to Baba Masha M.D.'s book on the subject, Microdosing with Amanita Muscaria: Creativity, Healing, and Recovery with the Sacred Mushroom (2022),
"The psychoactive Amanita mushrooms have a well-attested entheogenic use among Siberian, European, and Pan-American shamanic people and are specifically implicated in the mysteries of ancient Greece (the Mysteries of Dionysus) and Rome (Mithraic Mysteries), and as the original Vedic plant-god Soma, and the Avestan haoma among the gnostic Manicheans and early and mystically inclined Christian of later periods."
Since these mushroom possess psychoactive and hallucinogenic qualities when consumed it is not surprising that Amanita muscaria were used by early peoples in rituals to commune with the divine. We now understand that the psychoactive/hallucinogenic effects of Amanita muscaria on the brain are due to the active compounds these mushrooms contain. Dr. Masha cites ibotenic acid, muscimol, muscarine, and muscazone as the four main active constituents that cause psychoactivity as these substances directly impact the central nervous system and cause shifts in perception, mood, and cognition.
I think that it is important to note that any substance that has the capacity to affect our nervous system and brains should be approached with caution, intention, and a certain amount of reverence. As Sandra Lawrence writes in her 2022 book, The Magic of Mushrooms: Fungi in folklore, superstition and traditional medicine,
"Ingestion results in reactions that run the gamut between euphoria and exhaustion, and can be very unpleasant. Any vivid dreams and sensations of weightlessness are cancelled out by less enjoyable symptoms, including incoherent speech, vomiting, diarrhoea, rapid breath, slowed pulse, dizziness, drowsiness, headaches, seizures and, possibly, coma or even death."
So why then would Omar and I feel so determined to bring these potentially hazardous mushrooms home with us?
For starters, I think that anything consumed in excess can be potentially harmful. But, with a keen understanding of moderation, intention, and careful dosing, the medicinal benefits of certain plants and fungi can have profoundly positive effects for our bodies and brains. Shout out to Moms in Support of Microdosing, Ohms Collective's campaign to de-stigmatize the intentional use of plant medicines in small quantities as part of a healthy lifestyle. #momsinsupportofmicordosing
Dr. Masha's Microdosing with Amanita Muscaria is a great resource for those interested in learning more about the potential benefits of using Amanita as medicine. Particularly noteworthy is his chapter outlining the discovery of AM's positive effects on treating various addictions ranging from amphetamines and opioids, to cocaine and caffeine, to e-cigarettes, and even video games.
Microdosing Amanita muscaria is also reported to have a positive impact on emotional and mental wellness and even healthy sleep. Users have reported beneficial qualities including balanced mood, mental calmness and clarity, reduction of PMS symptoms, increased creativity, stress resistance, and decreased anxiety just to name a few. (Masha, 2022)
I would also like to note here that Amanita muscaria holds no illegal status in either Mexico or the United States. That is, these mushrooms are not schedule-1 controlled substances like the psilocybe cubensis mushrooms that are psilocybin containing and have gained popularity in recent times. I believe this is due to the fact that Amanita muscaria cannot be cultivated in a lab or at home, unlike the many varieties of psilocybe cubensis. Amanita muscaria has a symbiotic relationship with pine trees and can only grow in the wild.
So for all of these reasons, Omar and I were intent of bringing these specimen back home with us. But, we knew that we would need to dehydrate them in order to do so.
In the dehydrated state, Amanita muscaria mushrooms are safe for consumption.
However, they are quite toxic and can be very harmful when consumed raw. It is essential to exhibit caution when wild harvesting these mushrooms. Wearing gloves when possible or thoroughly washing hands with soap and water after touching the raw mushrooms is key to avoid accidentally consuming any of the toxic alkaloids. I would like to point out that simply touching these mushrooms with bare hands will not result in adverse effects. However, if one were to touch an AM and then put their fingers in their mouth that could be enough to make one sick.
Thankfully, Omar, mycologist that he is, knows his stuff and shared this awareness with me as we went about harvesting the Amanitas.
So how did we go about dehydrating our collection of Amanitas?
The good old fashioned way...in front of a wood fire.
The little casita or cabin that Omar and I were spending the night in came equipped with a fireplace. And since it was a cold and rainy night it was the perfect setting to light a fire and dry the fruits of our foray.
Omar carefully shredded the Amanitas into small pieces and set them on a flat wooden plank in front of the warmly glowing fire. As the fire blazed I swear to you the two of us got giddy off the vapor of these mushrooms as they dried! It was honestly one of the most fun nights of our honeymoon. We both felt so happy, giggly, and energized.
After a night in front of the fire our Amanita muscarias were fully dry and safe to eat. Instead of eating them we decided to pick up a jar of raw local honey to stir our dehydrated Amanitas into and safely transport them back home.
Remember, our intention was to microdose these mushrooms. It was not of interest to us to consume the dried Amanitas on their own. Instead we wanted to dilute the potency by concocting an infusion. Ho
ney is a natural preservative, therefore it functions to maintain the medicinal qualities of mushrooms or any other herb that might be mixed with it. Additionally, overtime, the medicinal qualities of the mushrooms seep into the honey.
Herbal honey infusions are very traditional form of medicine. Honey on its own boasts a wide array of medicinal benefits such as containing high levels of antioxidants and touting anti-inflammatory properties. When a dried herb or mushroom is mixed into it, honey will extract and take in the nutritional benefits of that herb or mushroom and act as a carrier to deliver these nutrients to our bodies possibly even aiding in our body's absorption of the these nutrients.
And since honey is so sweet to eat it can make the less delectable medicinals (ie. dried mushrooms) much more palatable.
Omar and I waited until we arrived home to California to try our Honeymoon Honey. And over the past seven months we've enjoyed imbibing in the honey on occasion and in microdoses, no more than a teaspoon at a time. We've found the effects to be warming and glowy. In our experience, consuming Honeymoon Honey has brought about feelings of happiness, silliness, and adoration helping us to feel giggly and loving in the sweetest of ways.
It was for these reasons I felt inspired to mix a little Honeymoon Honey into the Valentine's Day treats I baked. The results were pure delight.
And there you have it. The story of Omar and Chrissy's Honeymoon Honey.
Until next time, Be Well and Stay Curious!
With so much love from,
Chrissy Dasco-Uribe
Co-Founder/CEO
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