When you’re asked to submit an article you often wrestle with the brain and don’t know what to write. For me, it’s that oh I don’t know till that ‘light bulb’ moment happens.
I’ve been in retail all my life and love learning about good healthy stuff!
Well here it is, of course (just had a double dose of lions mane)
Adaptogenic Herbs and Medicinal Mushrooms!
I’ve been lucky to be bought up on traditional Chinese herbal soups (weird-looking tasting stuff), we had herbal soups regularly probably monthly and I remember them to be not so great tasting and very earthy. I know now that the worst they tasted the more my body needed it. As ‘obedient’ kids, we were told to drink the soup so we drank the soup, and now I’m really pleased that I did, and still do! Except now I fully embrace it.
Now they’re back, (they never really disappeared with us lot) they’ve suddenly been re-discovered even more boldly within western society.
They’re ancient herbs, adaptogenic herbs, and powerful tonic herbs to elevate our Mind, Body & Spirit.
They label them now as ‘Medicinal Mushrooms’, Vegan, Gluten-Free, and Paleo.
The benefits of hydration, beauty, anti-aging, high performance, immune, gut beneficial and much more…
Yes! They are potent tonic herbs and mushrooms mostly grown in the wilds of China and Inner Mongolia. They have wild crafted 10:1 dual extraction and that’s high concentration, it takes 10kg of fresh product to extract 1kg of pure extract. So reading and following instructions is important!
I heard there’s a mushroom foraging group in NZ and forages for species like turkey tail, morel, Chaga and other varieties.
In-store here at IEproduce we began this mushroom journey stocking certified organic imported dried mushroom-like shiitake, morel, porcini, chanterelles, crimini, maitake and oyster and the many fresh varieties.
Then along came fresh shiitake grown on imported logs labelled as ‘Spray-Free’ (there’s a story that goes with that too!)
Headlines – Chinese Shiitake Mushrooms labelled as NZ Grown
Link below:
OMG! June last year, research lead me to phone an NZ Bio-Gro Certified Mushroom Grower in the Hawkes Bay and I managed to persuade him to supply IEproduce with his ‘true to label’ shiitake mushrooms and even better lions mane. (I had to reveal my little knowledge of mushrooms and my passion for them, and still had to wait a few weeks).
I remember Phillip’s Mum cooking me Chinese herbal soup with dehydrated lion’s mane which you can purchase from Asian grocery stores. But now we have a great source of supply of fresh lion’s mane and why not stick with fresh organic!
The fibrous stalks on the shiitake that mostly get cut off and chucked have so much goodness, beta-glucan!
I have substituted organic meats out for organic shiitake. I just stir-fry in organic coconut oil, drizzle with tamari and add to dishes for meals. (Actually when I’m cooking them I probably eat half of them, but hey, gotta taste them right?)
My daily mushroom routine:
1st drink breakfast – Lions Mane
2nd drink morning tea – He Shou Wu
3rd drink lunch – Reishi
About to add Cordyceps (when we were kids, I remember having to draw pictures of all this stuff so we would remember them and wrote the Chinese names phonetically)
Cordyceps I drew as a caterpillar and that’s how I’ll always remember ‘Cordy’
I personally prefer and recommend taking them all separately so I know I’m getting that fungi hit.
Luckily with all this ancient wisdom mushroom knowledge that goes deep and entrenched in our veins we can tap into this with a totally different fungi focus.
They’re versatile as a wholefood. This allows us to add mushrooms as a meat alternative as they give us earthy flavors to plant-based foods using their adaptability take on spicy, savory and sweet flavors and we get amazing medicinal benefits.
Watch out for these mushroom centric foods to come that’ll capture our taste buds - Mushroom Madness! Yes!!
https://www.ieproduce.com/collections/medicinal-mushrooms