Tressa and her gramma, Brenda, with baskets of  Lactarius deliciosus

Mr. Nadeau,

I wanted to write and thank you for the pictures and identification information especially on the edible fungi, I have found pig ear to be a treat.

In return for this wonderful help, I could pass along a recipe I've 'discovered' for making almost commercial quality soy-milk from the average bean. Its a bit difficult but worth the effort.

can you recommend a very good mushroom/fungi book with color illustrations as well?

thanks, Dave campbell St Marys Ohio

Preparing a near commercial-quality soy milk from common beans.

Several years ago, we purchased a soy-milk machine (grinds and cooks beans in water) and the taste was unbearable. The machine appeared to work correctly, but the "bean taste" was so bad we had to hold our noses to drink the milk. My father-in-law, a grain farmer in W Iowa and source for our beans, explained that there was a special type of white bean that he could not get (apparently shipped exclusively to Japan) that may make a difference. But, we were stuck with what is commercially produced here.

After a great deal of experimenting, we have found a process that makes excellent milk but is rather labor intensive. This might be acceptable to those who cannot (or are afraid to) drink commercial cow milk with who-knows-what in it!

The process takes at least two hours for about a gallon of soy-milk and goes as follows:

1.) Find a supply for good beans, as white as large possible. Sort out dirt, debris and small/misshapen/split beans.

Dry beans will keep for a good 10 years so don't worry about buying a bushel.

2.) Soak the sorted beans at least 24 hours, they will swell to about twice the original size. Changing the water daily and refrigeration helps prevent slime. The beans are soaked when their outer skin pops off easily when the bean is squeezed between thumb and first finger. Don't try to process much more that twice what you expect to produce unless the excess can be frozen. A 5 gallon bucket of soaking beans may rot before you can skin them.

3.) Heres the trick- the bean's outer skins have to come off, and this is where the work is. Our Soy Wonder machine requires about a cup of soaked beans and we usually do 2-3 cups at once, requiring about 1-2 hours to skin. Squeeze each bean between thumb and first finger and the bean will pop out, leaving the skin in your fingers. Discard the skins.

4.) The skinned beans will have a yellow tint, this is the source of the awful "bean" taste and must be cooked off. Place beans in cookpan covered with an inch of water and cook on very low heat - don't boil! Cooking will drive off a bean-smelling and sometimes foamy yellow substance. I usually do this three times or until the water comes out clean. May take 10 minutes to cook depending on your cook stove.

5.) Once processed by the soy- machine and cooled, the solids are removed by straining through a tea-towel and at this point, additives such as vanilla or sweetening can be added. Real vanilla is far better than the fake stuff and can be sweetened with honey.

The ground and cooked bean residue from the soy-machine is edible like mashed potatoes. Our Soy Wonder was purchased at outlet for $ 15 but normal price for such a machine might go $200-300 on the high end. The address on the box is:

Miracle Exclusives Inc.

Port Washington, NY 11050

The machines instructions say that the process pasteurizes the milk and that is probably 140-160* F, might be able to grind the beans in a food processor to the consistency of coarse grits and cook them at 160*F on the stove top, but we haven't tried that yet.

The finished milk may last 1-2 weeks in the refrigerator, and could possibly be canned, but we haven't tried that either.

Dave Campbell