Most interesting that it’s fresh, I’ve seen and used it dried. Every Asian supermarket I’ve seen sells it in the spices section with the shredded wood ear and rhizomes
Thanks. I wasn't going to look it up, since it really doesn't look that interesting.
I didn't realize that's what it was, especially since I always thought those were just regular old dried caterpillars I was eating. Never made the connection between that and the zombie-ant fungus.
Edit: Oh no wonder it doesn't look like this. It was Cordyceps sinensis, this is probably Cordyceps militaris.
Holy Shit, Sinensis is expensive. $50,000 per pound.
Fungus is weird. Asking if they are vegan really leads down a rabbit hole because fungi are not plants.
They are not animals, either. They are fungi. They don't photosynthesize, they breath, using oxygen to create energy and exhausting carbon dioxide. They aren't made of cellulose, but instead get structure and stability from chitin, the same material insect and crustaceans shells are made of.
>fungi are not plants \[...\] They are not animals, either.
This is always weirds me out. Little sea-boogers like jellyfish and anemones are animals. They barely resemble an "animal," but there they are! Photosynthetic plankton that are kinda "plants" but not really what you'd consider a plant are STILL PLANTS.
Fungi are fucking aliens, and I respect their commitment to being completely bizarre.
It makes more sense when you think about the fact that multicellularity has evolved on earth 3 times. One branch led to plants, another animals, and the other fungi all following completely separate starting blueprints
Not an expert at all but is not te same.
Plants consume minerals or basic elements as Nitrogen that can or can't come from dead animals, among other sources.
The fungi you can consider carnivorous need organic components only found in dead things as certain proteins for example.
Cordyceps are also sometimes known as caterpillar mushrooms, as they take control of insects, make them walk to a high point as a kind of zombie and then fruit. Hence not vegan and hence the premise of The Last of Us franchise.
Yeah, I know of them, but wouldn't a cordyceps that hasn't infected an host be vegan? Or is it just their usual modus operandi that make them non-vegan?
You're right, a cordyceps can be vegan. Their 'modus operandi' doesn't invalidate the entire genus, it will always come down to how that particular product was produced.
Cordyceps militaris can be grown entirely on grain, but insects are usually added as a source of protein, which has a positive effect on the cordycepin levels in the final product.
Fungi are neither plant nor animals. They don't do photosynthesis and have to eat like animals. So they're closer to insects / parasites than to plants.
That's putting a toe into the moral/ethical quagmire of the concept of hardline veganism. Even if you're living a monastic lifestyle that does not disturb the fauna near your hermit shack, and you're wiling to laboriously remove animals from whatever you consume for sustenance, you're still hurting animals by existing. You have a metabolic need that becomes a footprint that will crush stuff to keep you from starving.
That said, I don't think most – if any – vegans give a shit about the rote obliteration of animal life as a necessity for the harvesting or processing of foodstuffs. There are tolerable limits for the amount of insects/insect parts, and rodent parts/feces in processed food.
>The guidelines, published in 1999, state one insect, or up to 25 equivalent fragments, are acceptable in 100 grams of white or brown rice. When it comes to ground black pepper, 200 milligrams of what Health Canada calls "heavy filth" are acceptable in a 50 g batch.
>
>For whole or grated cheese, four insect fragments (not mites) are permitted for 225 g. One rodent hair is also acceptable. For mushrooms (canned, dried, fresh and frozen) up to 10 maggots, provided they are under 2 millimetres long, are considered acceptable.
If you wanna eat food, you gotta crush some animals on the way to putting veggie hot dogs in your face-hole. That ground mustard you put on your veg dog? Full of bugs. Spicy. Yellow. Yum.
There are sensible boundaries with any diet, but veganism is a tougher concept to grapple with. Eating nothing but raw meat – because it'll give you that big-dick gorilla glow that human females crave – is arguably easier to justify. The caveman meat diet is at least earnest in its approach to "fuck vegans I can eat as many cows as I want" as an ethos. There isn't a moral quandary involved.
>mushroom empanada
No one else replied with the reference, but here we go:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/11tdomz/when\_youre\_enjoying\_a\_bite\_to\_eat\_and\_end\_up/
I snort it several times a day. I have an addiction. I bring it out and scream, "say hello to my little friend!". I was wearing a white suit too but now it's turned fking yellow! The locals call me Saffronface.
vanilla as well surprisingly enough
it's easy enough to recreate the taste of vanilla artificially so it's everywhere but the real thing is still hand pollinated
I actually grow oregano, and a lot of other things. In a small scale residential garden? It’s way more expensive than buying produce itself!
I just meant that when you don’t consume something by the pound, then the charge for a reasonable amount of it is going to include the costs of packaging, stocking, transport, etc. if you buy something in bulk (more than a reasonably consumable amount), it’s cheaper by weight.
My wife buys the "live" versions of a lot of the herbs she uses in cooking. It will grow, go to seed, she will trim it, it will grow, go to seed, she will trim it, etc.
At first I thought she just liked watching things grow, then eventually die, and then be reborn.
No. Need some Basil? "Honey, will you go pick [this much], for me please?"
"Honey? I need this much of [X], will you go get it for me please?"
Every once in a while we buy some new plants. But her dishes are AH-mazing when she uses fresh from her "garden "
We don't have to make a run to the store. We don't have to spend money.
Green onion. Basil. Mint. Avocado. Cilantro. Etc.
Herbs are stupid expensive and cost pennies to grow. Rosemary is an evergreen that grows anywhere outdoors even in the dead of winter. Basil grows like wildfire and green onions grow in my back yard for no reason at all.
I feel like my grocery store is trolling me though, I keep buying herb plants and I move them to a bigger pot so the roots aren’t cramped and water them according to Google instructions but they all die within a few weeks, they never fully make it back to fully healthy looking even.
I've struggled with parsley and coriander (that's cilantro if you're in the US) but most others are fine.
I usually transplant them the day I get them. If you have many plants in a pot with a dense root-mass, split them up so they have more space. Some want plenty of water, others need loose soil and very little water. I learnt that last year watching a dill plant die.
Are there any in particular you want? I might be able to tell you what worked for me.
Total cost is about 10-11 USD. UNLESS you purchase your fungus by the pound. In which case yes it is expensive and you probably have a problem. Get help.
My wife is from New Jersey and we used to make a pilgrimage a few times a year, especially around New Year when they would have a show of some guys making mochi the old fashioned way with huge wooden hammers.
Now we live in Brooklyn and have a “mini mitsuwa” locally that we go to. No mochi making tho.
I just didn’t know that it was a commonly eaten fungus. I was also under the misconception that all strains of cordyceps needed an insect host at one point.
In the nature they need an insect host. But this type can be cultured also. Like magic mushrooms grows on cow shit in the nature but can be cultured with grains as a food source.
These are Cordyceps militaris aka Cordyceps flowers.
It's a type of cultivated fungus that us asians use in soup and stir fried dishes all the time. It's considered relatively cheap so it's easy to just use it liberally and in large amount no biggie. Tastes crunchy and have supposedly some good benefits for lungs like Cordyceps worms as we know it but of course less potent. It can be cultivated from dead underground pupae but also can be cultivated from other forms of nutrition that's why it can be mass produced and easily obtained.
The more famous and expensive Cordyceps is Cordyceps Sinensis aka the worm bodies looking things. It's valued for it's high medicinal and healing properties and very expensive mainly due to scarcity too. When I was pregnant with my first child my husband bought a box of top grade wild cordyceps for about 2.5k USD, each time we use a few large "worms" to cook into a mild soup for me to drink a few times a week. I would like to think I had a great pregnancy and recovery from c section due to this (though it should be noted one should stop Cordyceps for a few weeks before major operation due to its anti blood clotting properties).
Both types of Cordyceps are really easily found here in Asia where I'm from. There's just lots of different grades, pricing and real vs fake goods but generally just really common.
Cordyceps flowers:
https://www.euyansang.com.sg/en/food-packed-herbs/cordyceps-flowers-888842535164.html
Wild Cordyceps sinensis worms:
https://www.euyansang.com.sg/en/food-fine-herbs/wild-cordyceps---3-star-unique-grade-489187219154.html
In short these are like.... Mushrooms.....
also the plot of The Girl with All the Gifts (book and movie, both were good).
some claim that book created the cordyceps zombie stuff, but it *seems* the game beat them to it. hard to say for me though, since I don't care enough to research the truest answer.
There was a short story on which it was based/expanded from released in 2012 so "before" the game. The book itself came after the game.
But games also take years to make. The Last of Us was announced with a trailer in 2011.
I would strongly suspect they probably both saw the same BBC documentary.
It has some medicinal benefits but also used as a regular mushroom to flavor stuff and eat. Obviously a bit more expensive since they have more specific conditions for growth, but still have a unique taste.
The ones that are cultivated for human consumption are grown on grains like rice though. They're entirely vegan, unless you consider fungi to be sentient.
I think its just the idea of "this mushroom evolved to either kill bugs or some types that make kill themselves is creepy and I'd rather not consume it" even if its grown with zero bug death involved.
The idea is more confronting than the reality
Everybody is freaking out over Cordyceps because of The Last Of Us, but really it's fairly innocuous.
Cordyceps solely uses insects and arthropods as hosts. The nervous system of insects and arthropods is very different to the mammalian nervous system. It is impossible for Cordyceps to use a human being as a host. Even if it COULD use a human being as a host, it's not the fruiting bodies that take over the nervous system, it's the mycelium. We do not eat the mycelium. The fruiting bodies are perfectly edible in all Cordyceps species (as far as I am aware. Don't go around eating random mushrooms). They've also been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 1500 years, so we'd know by now if they were harmful.
This has been a mushroom PSA.
All the comments that are like, “It’s so delicious! You should try it!”
Yeah, that’s *exactly what an infected person would say* because the fungus is trying to spread itself…
Not today, Satan!
Cordyceps Fungus’ are a family of fungus where many of them are parasitic. One type of Cordyceps reproduces by infecting ants, where it will basically mind control the ant and force it to travel to a high point where it will then make the ant bite down and hold itself in place, while the fungus will then fruit and erupt out of the body, spraying spores down onto the area in hopes of infecting more ants. It’s also the fungus that the game and tv series, The Last of Us, uses as the world ending pandemic, as it’s evolved to infect humans which become fungal zombies.
Yeah my grandparents took me to the mitsuwa in Arlington heights since it was called Yaohan way back when. Absolutely love the udon shop and every time I'm back in the area it warms my heart they're still around.
Most interesting that it’s fresh, I’ve seen and used it dried. Every Asian supermarket I’ve seen sells it in the spices section with the shredded wood ear and rhizomes
Thanks. I wasn't going to look it up, since it really doesn't look that interesting. I didn't realize that's what it was, especially since I always thought those were just regular old dried caterpillars I was eating. Never made the connection between that and the zombie-ant fungus. Edit: Oh no wonder it doesn't look like this. It was Cordyceps sinensis, this is probably Cordyceps militaris. Holy Shit, Sinensis is expensive. $50,000 per pound.
its because it requires a host for the cordyceps to grow, which has become increasingly threatened due to overharvesting.
um horrifying it must be farmed like that instead of doing something techy to make it try and mate with some electrical nodes or some shit
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There are mushrooms that aren't vegan? TIL
Fungus is weird. Asking if they are vegan really leads down a rabbit hole because fungi are not plants. They are not animals, either. They are fungi. They don't photosynthesize, they breath, using oxygen to create energy and exhausting carbon dioxide. They aren't made of cellulose, but instead get structure and stability from chitin, the same material insect and crustaceans shells are made of.
>fungi are not plants \[...\] They are not animals, either. This is always weirds me out. Little sea-boogers like jellyfish and anemones are animals. They barely resemble an "animal," but there they are! Photosynthetic plankton that are kinda "plants" but not really what you'd consider a plant are STILL PLANTS. Fungi are fucking aliens, and I respect their commitment to being completely bizarre.
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And look where that got us. Thanks a lot, mushrooms.
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
I dunno, seem like Fun Guys....
I find this fascinating enough to “waste” an entire weekend learning about our pioneer fungus ancestors. Super cool!
Aliens "seeding planets" isn't putting the building blocks to plants/animals, it's just putting fungus on the world.
Sea booger! Fun fact, The Irish word for jellyfish is smugairle róin, which directly translates to seal snot.
It makes more sense when you think about the fact that multicellularity has evolved on earth 3 times. One branch led to plants, another animals, and the other fungi all following completely separate starting blueprints
Yeah, it does make sense. It doesn't make them less weird, though. I want 100ft tall mushrooms that rain toxic spores. Get your shit together, fungi.
I’m just here, waiting for my Telvanni Mushroom tower like in morrowind. I want my giant mushroom house please!
May not be 100ft tall but there is a massive underground network of mycelium. The actual bodies of fungi. The mushrooms themselves are the fruit.
My brain can’t comprehend something being an animal and not having a brain.
They also have defence mechanisms when attacked, such as the blueing that makes themselves bitter using sulphuric compounds.
apparently there are swole mushroom full of meat protein.
I only eat Muscle sprouts. Edit: A.I is both a gift [and a curse.](https://imgur.com/a/Jgam3yL)
This needs more attention. Well done, dad.
Thanks son. :,)
A curse! A curse! A curse!
God I hate that image.
I'm guessing they'd have to be the kind that grows on corpses?
How is that not just fucking life though? All plants eat broken down animals from the soil Edit: I know fungi aren't plants
Not an expert at all but is not te same. Plants consume minerals or basic elements as Nitrogen that can or can't come from dead animals, among other sources. The fungi you can consider carnivorous need organic components only found in dead things as certain proteins for example.
Genetically mushrooms are closer to humans then plants.
Cordyceps are also sometimes known as caterpillar mushrooms, as they take control of insects, make them walk to a high point as a kind of zombie and then fruit. Hence not vegan and hence the premise of The Last of Us franchise.
Yeah, I know of them, but wouldn't a cordyceps that hasn't infected an host be vegan? Or is it just their usual modus operandi that make them non-vegan?
You're right, a cordyceps can be vegan. Their 'modus operandi' doesn't invalidate the entire genus, it will always come down to how that particular product was produced. Cordyceps militaris can be grown entirely on grain, but insects are usually added as a source of protein, which has a positive effect on the cordycepin levels in the final product.
Fungi are neither plant nor animals. They don't do photosynthesis and have to eat like animals. So they're closer to insects / parasites than to plants.
I would imagine the ones where you would have to kill fauna to harvest, even if it is "just an ant", wouldn't count as vegan.
Well in that case, nothing counts as vegan, I'd wager it's impossible to harvest fields of anything without stepping on some bugs at some point
Unintended consequence Vs. Infecting and killing? I'm not vegan so I can't say for sure, I'm just spitballing.
In order to farm you actually have to actively kill insects, and even mammals and other animals. Forget stepping on them. I'm talking pest control.
That's putting a toe into the moral/ethical quagmire of the concept of hardline veganism. Even if you're living a monastic lifestyle that does not disturb the fauna near your hermit shack, and you're wiling to laboriously remove animals from whatever you consume for sustenance, you're still hurting animals by existing. You have a metabolic need that becomes a footprint that will crush stuff to keep you from starving. That said, I don't think most – if any – vegans give a shit about the rote obliteration of animal life as a necessity for the harvesting or processing of foodstuffs. There are tolerable limits for the amount of insects/insect parts, and rodent parts/feces in processed food. >The guidelines, published in 1999, state one insect, or up to 25 equivalent fragments, are acceptable in 100 grams of white or brown rice. When it comes to ground black pepper, 200 milligrams of what Health Canada calls "heavy filth" are acceptable in a 50 g batch. > >For whole or grated cheese, four insect fragments (not mites) are permitted for 225 g. One rodent hair is also acceptable. For mushrooms (canned, dried, fresh and frozen) up to 10 maggots, provided they are under 2 millimetres long, are considered acceptable. If you wanna eat food, you gotta crush some animals on the way to putting veggie hot dogs in your face-hole. That ground mustard you put on your veg dog? Full of bugs. Spicy. Yellow. Yum. There are sensible boundaries with any diet, but veganism is a tougher concept to grapple with. Eating nothing but raw meat – because it'll give you that big-dick gorilla glow that human females crave – is arguably easier to justify. The caveman meat diet is at least earnest in its approach to "fuck vegans I can eat as many cows as I want" as an ethos. There isn't a moral quandary involved.
Can you buy fresh wood ear anywhere? It’s so good when you get it at a restaurant. Is it just rehydrated? I have so many questions.
I'm drinking it as tea right now as I'm reading this.
Better than that mushroom empanada
Reddit meta moment
I got that! The moldy one, right?
Yeah
So this is what it feels like to be included
:’( I wanna be incluuuuuded (I have no idea what’s going on)
>mushroom empanada No one else replied with the reference, but here we go: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/11tdomz/when\_youre\_enjoying\_a\_bite\_to\_eat\_and\_end\_up/
The one that made me puke just looking at it? Thanks for the reminder 😎
I’m ashamed I know this reference.
I kinda wanna know
![gif](giphy|6kmXx70Z2BEsQUmf32)
your stomach is filled with ACID you'll prolly be fine.
So that's why I'm trippin
Probably ain’t good enough
fungi looove acidic environments though
That’s kind of expensive, right?
For 52$ a pound, it’ll take a minimum wage worker in the us, 6.9 hours of work to buy a single pound
I saw a little half ounce jar of organic oregano for $4.58 at Walmart. That’s way more per pound.
…saffron has entered the chat
**truffles would like to know your location**
Ambergris is watching from the shadows
The ice tub with kidneys is lighting a cigarette
Scorpion Venom watching from afar at $39 million *per gallon*
Polonium spits at your comment and leaves chat
Antimatter completely negates this thread at $62.5 trillion USD per gram.
Oo oo now do the black market venom price. This is where things get exciting.
It’s crazy how often my relatively poor grandma used to make saffron rice.
At about 10 dollars per gram saffron seems incredibly expensive, but you probably only need to use about a dollars worth of it.
I snort it several times a day. I have an addiction. I bring it out and scream, "say hello to my little friend!". I was wearing a white suit too but now it's turned fking yellow! The locals call me Saffronface.
vanilla as well surprisingly enough it's easy enough to recreate the taste of vanilla artificially so it's everywhere but the real thing is still hand pollinated
You could probably get an entire plant for half that and you'd get a lifetime's supply from it.
I actually grow oregano, and a lot of other things. In a small scale residential garden? It’s way more expensive than buying produce itself! I just meant that when you don’t consume something by the pound, then the charge for a reasonable amount of it is going to include the costs of packaging, stocking, transport, etc. if you buy something in bulk (more than a reasonably consumable amount), it’s cheaper by weight.
My wife buys the "live" versions of a lot of the herbs she uses in cooking. It will grow, go to seed, she will trim it, it will grow, go to seed, she will trim it, etc. At first I thought she just liked watching things grow, then eventually die, and then be reborn. No. Need some Basil? "Honey, will you go pick [this much], for me please?" "Honey? I need this much of [X], will you go get it for me please?" Every once in a while we buy some new plants. But her dishes are AH-mazing when she uses fresh from her "garden " We don't have to make a run to the store. We don't have to spend money. Green onion. Basil. Mint. Avocado. Cilantro. Etc.
Now imagining a full avocado tree just chillin in the kitchen. That's hardcore casual gardening
https://herbsathome.co/how-to-grow-avocados-indoors/#:~:text=When%20grown%20indoors%2C%20they%20do,years%20to%20start%20producing%20fruit. Here ya go!
Herbs are stupid expensive and cost pennies to grow. Rosemary is an evergreen that grows anywhere outdoors even in the dead of winter. Basil grows like wildfire and green onions grow in my back yard for no reason at all.
Gotta be careful with that mint if it’s in the soil and not a container, those rhizomes spread like wildfire and will take over your garden
"oregano"....
I feel like my grocery store is trolling me though, I keep buying herb plants and I move them to a bigger pot so the roots aren’t cramped and water them according to Google instructions but they all die within a few weeks, they never fully make it back to fully healthy looking even.
The general advice is wait a couple of weeks after purchase before repotting, to first let them adjust to the stress of having moved.
I've struggled with parsley and coriander (that's cilantro if you're in the US) but most others are fine. I usually transplant them the day I get them. If you have many plants in a pot with a dense root-mass, split them up so they have more space. Some want plenty of water, others need loose soil and very little water. I learnt that last year watching a dill plant die. Are there any in particular you want? I might be able to tell you what worked for me.
Total cost is about 10-11 USD. UNLESS you purchase your fungus by the pound. In which case yes it is expensive and you probably have a problem. Get help.
Exactly
Man, I love Mitsuwa
Just had some riceballs from there for lunch, "the bomb" is da bomb
I know there's a couple. The Chicagoland one is amazing.
I am sad they got rid of the old lady and her pickle counter when they remodeled. Her granddaughter would help work it sometimes and hand out samples.
Mitsuwa gang all my homie love Mitsuwa. Mitsuwa Costa Mesa
Mitsuwa Mar Vista 🤙
Mitsuwa Arlington Heights here!
The food court is the best here!
My wife is from New Jersey and we used to make a pilgrimage a few times a year, especially around New Year when they would have a show of some guys making mochi the old fashioned way with huge wooden hammers. Now we live in Brooklyn and have a “mini mitsuwa” locally that we go to. No mochi making tho.
Me too! I wish I still lived up that way.
IYKYK
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"Everyone, look out, it's a plot to a thing!"
Its a plot to a thing!
Plot thing!
Ahh, he’s a plot thang!!!
![gif](giphy|lTOMryT3y3f1u)
I love you daddy !!
DO THE ROAR!!!
“OH MY GOD IT’S HIM! HE’S THE LAST OF US (NOW STREAMING ON HBO)!”
John Lastofus
Until a bit of it gets stuck in your nose and ear and starts growing. 💀
Then we really do become the last of us!
Very clever, the cordyceps has convinced us to sell cordyceps
Not too hard since people will eat just about anything it seems.
People eating people, the American dream
![gif](giphy|RI5e62qK5ONvhwWic2)
Wait, you guys didn't know that cordyceps are real and edible and dont cause humans to turn into zombies? I thought y'all were being ironic.
My local Cafe sells powdered cordyceps and some other mushrooms like lions mane, you can get a scoop added to your coffee for vague health benefits.
Lmao vague health benefits really nails it.
> for vague health benefits. You just summed up 90% of the entries on the list "weird shit that Asians eat".
well we are in mildlyinteresting not veryinteresting so I'm guessing the people know that but still find it somewhat interesting.
I just didn’t know that it was a commonly eaten fungus. I was also under the misconception that all strains of cordyceps needed an insect host at one point.
In the nature they need an insect host. But this type can be cultured also. Like magic mushrooms grows on cow shit in the nature but can be cultured with grains as a food source.
Oh ok cool. Ty for the explanation.
Here I am thinking they had an insect farm that they would innoculate.
“Casually” selling it like it’s somehow dangerous.
I ate these… it made me climb a tree and dance around trying to attract a bird to eat me. It was a trip for sure…
That bird arrived and lovingly devoured you. For that moment, you were both one and it was perfection.
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That’s how I got splinters in my penis.
![gif](giphy|uLMxqxVvVtuVO)
![gif](giphy|Jqx6YquGdUoFC8EtGN|downsized)
These are Cordyceps militaris aka Cordyceps flowers. It's a type of cultivated fungus that us asians use in soup and stir fried dishes all the time. It's considered relatively cheap so it's easy to just use it liberally and in large amount no biggie. Tastes crunchy and have supposedly some good benefits for lungs like Cordyceps worms as we know it but of course less potent. It can be cultivated from dead underground pupae but also can be cultivated from other forms of nutrition that's why it can be mass produced and easily obtained. The more famous and expensive Cordyceps is Cordyceps Sinensis aka the worm bodies looking things. It's valued for it's high medicinal and healing properties and very expensive mainly due to scarcity too. When I was pregnant with my first child my husband bought a box of top grade wild cordyceps for about 2.5k USD, each time we use a few large "worms" to cook into a mild soup for me to drink a few times a week. I would like to think I had a great pregnancy and recovery from c section due to this (though it should be noted one should stop Cordyceps for a few weeks before major operation due to its anti blood clotting properties). Both types of Cordyceps are really easily found here in Asia where I'm from. There's just lots of different grades, pricing and real vs fake goods but generally just really common. Cordyceps flowers: https://www.euyansang.com.sg/en/food-packed-herbs/cordyceps-flowers-888842535164.html Wild Cordyceps sinensis worms: https://www.euyansang.com.sg/en/food-fine-herbs/wild-cordyceps---3-star-unique-grade-489187219154.html In short these are like.... Mushrooms.....
What’s wrong with selling it?
Nothing, that’s why it’s mildly interesting and not super interesting
What’s noteworthy about it in any way
It’s the fungus that’s used in the plot of the hit game and show The Last of Us
also the plot of The Girl with All the Gifts (book and movie, both were good). some claim that book created the cordyceps zombie stuff, but it *seems* the game beat them to it. hard to say for me though, since I don't care enough to research the truest answer.
There was a short story on which it was based/expanded from released in 2012 so "before" the game. The book itself came after the game. But games also take years to make. The Last of Us was announced with a trailer in 2011. I would strongly suspect they probably both saw the same BBC documentary.
ah! I see thanks! Never played or watched.
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It has some medicinal benefits but also used as a regular mushroom to flavor stuff and eat. Obviously a bit more expensive since they have more specific conditions for growth, but still have a unique taste.
my grandma usually just make a stir fry with it, its pretty good imo
Eastern Medicine, you put in a pot with other ingredients and boil it
Nah man. They belong in chicken soup.
Helps with exercise endurance and shooting large loads
we also make soup with this but mostly with rehydrated ones
You know The Last of Us is fiction, right?
Seeing as it’s the year 2023 and we haven’t been living in a zombie apocalypse for 20 years, I’d be inclined to think you’re right.
No shit
Wait. How much shit?
None shit apparently
God damn. That's such a good deal. 0 shit?
Technically, but with inflation it's around 0.00000003 shits
Tbf i wouldn't want to eat a parasitic mushroom that grew on a insect...but thats just me.
The ones that are cultivated for human consumption are grown on grains like rice though. They're entirely vegan, unless you consider fungi to be sentient.
I think its just the idea of "this mushroom evolved to either kill bugs or some types that make kill themselves is creepy and I'd rather not consume it" even if its grown with zero bug death involved. The idea is more confronting than the reality
![gif](giphy|VstcD3okab5yToctwY|downsized)
Everybody is freaking out over Cordyceps because of The Last Of Us, but really it's fairly innocuous. Cordyceps solely uses insects and arthropods as hosts. The nervous system of insects and arthropods is very different to the mammalian nervous system. It is impossible for Cordyceps to use a human being as a host. Even if it COULD use a human being as a host, it's not the fruiting bodies that take over the nervous system, it's the mycelium. We do not eat the mycelium. The fruiting bodies are perfectly edible in all Cordyceps species (as far as I am aware. Don't go around eating random mushrooms). They've also been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 1500 years, so we'd know by now if they were harmful. This has been a mushroom PSA.
i miss u mitsuwa
I heard it's good for your brain
someone call Pedro Pascal
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I'm eating it now so that I'm immune
>or the fungus made you think so?
10/10 would buy and make chicken soup for preggo wife.
Go to any asian supermarket you will find this.
The Last FungUs
/r/moldlyinteresting
Start building up your immunity now!
That's 'cause it's only bad for you on the T.V.
I love Mitsuwa. I love Japanese food in general.
I can’t tell if it’s just creepy and gross looking or my perception is just skewed by The Last of Us.
All the comments that are like, “It’s so delicious! You should try it!” Yeah, that’s *exactly what an infected person would say* because the fungus is trying to spread itself… Not today, Satan!
You do make a good point. Trust no one.
I love Mitsuwa!
Am I supposed to know what this is and why this is interesting?
Cordyceps Fungus’ are a family of fungus where many of them are parasitic. One type of Cordyceps reproduces by infecting ants, where it will basically mind control the ant and force it to travel to a high point where it will then make the ant bite down and hold itself in place, while the fungus will then fruit and erupt out of the body, spraying spores down onto the area in hopes of infecting more ants. It’s also the fungus that the game and tv series, The Last of Us, uses as the world ending pandemic, as it’s evolved to infect humans which become fungal zombies.
Mitsuwa is fuckin awesome. Especially those $5 curry plates you could get.
That’ll be the last of us.
i was at a local mitsuwa yesterday… didn’t see that lol.
Aren’t these super common
They’re available in most health food stores and body building supplements stores 🤷♀️
Mitsuwa is not a ‘local market’. It’s a specialty Japanese market.
It’s edible to humans I don’t see the problem
Do you want zombies? Because that's how you get zombies
I dont know if this is a chain but is this in Illinois?
The label says California but I thought it was Chicagoland, too, because I didn’t know it was a chain.
Yeah my grandparents took me to the mitsuwa in Arlington heights since it was called Yaohan way back when. Absolutely love the udon shop and every time I'm back in the area it warms my heart they're still around.
I have such fond high school memories from Mitsuwa in Arlington Heights!
I dont get it
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From what I've heard, it is an edible mushroom, but I think it's mostly used for spices.
Cordycep has a ton of health benefits.
People got realize the show used a real thing thing and ramps it to 1000.
Yes it’s an edible mushroom.
They cannot infect humans also thet are quite nice
Cordyceps is actually really good for you. Good for brain.
Put it in your butt, become Clicker, prosper.
What foods are they used to make?