Wild Mushrooms: A Cookbook & Foraging Guide, Second Printing

I am so proud of Trent, he tackled a new skill so we could deliver our own recipe photos for this book! While both of us dabble in photography, he has always been so much better at the technical tuning. I’m more helpful at framing the shot. We had some fairly good camera equipment, but did not have the skill set to capture food. Trent took an online course from Joanie at The Bite Shot (highly recommend). We purchased a new lighting setup and jumped in. Food photography is a very different beast. It is all about lighting and fine attention to detail. Placing shadows and removing splatters, dust, dirt and hairs. Although the pictures make your mouth water, the process is actually not very glamorous. Running from the kitchen, wiping plates, placing garnish just so, scrutinizing the set – an exhaustive process. We took many of our photos at night right in our living room. As long as you had a quick flash and the proper reflective surrounding, the darkness didn’t matter too much. There were many trips to the thrift store to find new plates, bowls, and silver. Also to the art store to find interesting new backgrounds.

The mushroom photos were shot in the field for the most part with our iPhones. Phone cameras are pretty exceptional these days! As you can imagine we have an exhaustive collection of mushroom photos. In fact, my photo library is full of Trent, mushrooms, dogs and nature shots almost exclusively 🙂 Our friend, Scott Smith, was kind enough to contribute the oyster mushroom shot from his personal library – such a beautiful photo.     

We are so lucky to have some amazing chef friends! This book wouldn’t be here without them! Five chefs – Jane Mason, Angelee Aurillo, Tyson Peterson, Joseph Crawford, Graham Steinruck and Matt Kennedy – helped us cook and test all the recipes. There were a few that we did on our own out of necessity but for the most part these folks spent hours, days with us in a whirlwind of mad cheffing. Often we would knock out 6-10 recipes per day, style them up and photograph them immediately. Thank you friends, we heart you.    

Yes – in fact I would say most of the recipes (more than half) make mushrooms the star! There are even a few that are easily converted to vegan if you so choose. Trent and I are vegetarians ourselves. And while mushrooms always pair well with meat, we tried to cover a wide range. Upon quick count, I found 70 vegetarian recipes. You will also find lots of cultural diversity in the food. With 25 foragers from all over the US, we ended up with American, European, and Asian influences. There are some oyster mushroom recipes that changed my whole viewpoint about eating them!

The foragers are my favorite part of the book! Most of them are people we have met over the years during our mushroom themed travels, now cherished friends. Yet others are influencers on our lifestyle – favorite authors & chefs, exceptional folks. Some people, while we talk regularly, we have yet to meet in person! Mushroom hunters are a diverse group of people, yet without fail, everyone we have met over the years has been kind and generous of spirit.  

This is a common question. Honestly, when I heard the projected cover price from the publisher I was worried about the quality we would get in return. We knew nothing about this process. We were happily surprised, the hardcover book is really beautiful and very well done. I wish I could tell you how they pulled it off, or how Amazon sold round one for such a stellar price (seems they were testing the market). Most publishers get books printed in China these days and ours was no different. When you go with a publisher, many things are out of your hands – this is one of them.  

We are noobies. We had never been through this process before. Skyhorse Publishing came to us out of the blue with a request for a wild mushroom cookbook. We jumped in blindly. While the process was frustrating at times, overall it was a positive experience. Be prepared to make compromises along the way. This book was supposed to be titled, Forage to Table. It was the largest compromise we made to help with keywords and internal sales channels. While it felt heartbreaking at the time, it didn’t seem to matter much in the end. Skyhorse took all of our visions into account from the get go – even changing the angle from purely cookbook, to an added focus on people, foraging tips and preservation. They incorporated our suggested design and increased the size of the book. They held up their end of the deal and made us feel like partners in the process.

We were responsible for almost everything needed to bring this book to life – obviously the writing – the forager interviews, the recipes, but also some other heavy lifting – foraging the mushrooms needed to bring the recipes to life, cooking and testing the recipes, taking the photos, digitally editing the photos, creating a sample design that we loved (this was optional). We did most of this ourselves, but in some cases we paid for things to be done. Creating this book was a hefty investment of time and resources.

The publisher bears the cost of printing. They edit the book and put the final design into place. They get the index completed for you if needed (though this was not free). They take these cost risks on you, new authors, essentially strangers. And for that risk, they reap most of the rewards when the book sells via their distribution routes. Most of your money as an author of a book like this is made when you sell it yourself.        

Trent will tell you enthusiastically, yes! I’m still warming up to the idea 🙂 We are always bursting with ideas. Looking backward, it seems like the book flowed out pretty quickly. But there were so many factors that allowed that to happen, including the beginning of a pandemic! As our web clients and all businesses were figuring things out, we had a slower period that allowed us to focus on writing, cooking and photographing. We are not exactly sure what’s next on the author front, but one thing is certain – mushrooms always play a central role in our lives. You can expect to see more cool fungi centric things from us in the future!