Oh, cool, I’ve never heard of jelly ear fungus before! It looks like it’s edible, and considered a good mushroom for beginners because there are no poisonous lookalikes. Have you eaten it before? If so, how did it taste?
Oh, good! So elderberry seeds aren’t poisonous if you cook them? I’ve thought it would be nice to make elderberry jam, but I’ve heard the seeds are poisonous, so I’ve consistently juiced them to make syrup instead.
Jelly mushrooms are so fun to eat. I call them trail snacks when I find them. 
They don’t usually taste like much - unless you get really into the moment and then you can get hints of forest or the tree’s flavor.
That sounds neat!
I tend to really like cooked mushrooms, and be meh about them raw. Is this a sort of mushroom that would be tasty cooked?
The mushrooms are usually used in soups or stews in Chinese cuisine. It traditionally was never eaten in the UK, perhaps as a famine crop. The mushrooms are perennial and are jelly like when full of water, which I assume because I forget but is over summer, then dry out almost completely over winter and remain on the tree. Then will rehydrate again later. I’ve never tried them raw but have cooked them in soup (the dehydrated form is almost like a stock cube). The flavour isn’t really all that notable, it’s quite bland maybe with a mild mushroomy flavour. Iirc doesn’t have any medicinal properties either.
I don’t mind them but don’t actively forage them. If I’m feeling creative I might. Perhaps I should look towards a few more Chinese dishes from time to time haha.
Yeah from my experience cooking apple elderberry pies, or the ferments with whole fruits I’ve made the seeds or little of bits of stem the may have remained have never caused any issues. And the probably limited literature I have read has seemed to back that up from what I can tell. I have no idea if it would be the same for other elderly tree varieties though.
Oh, that’s a relief! I’ve considered elderberries to be really annoying to deal with because of the stems and the seeds. (Especially the stems. Those are tiny berries in huge clusters. The only way to get rid of every single teensy stem is to juice them.)
There’s a guy in my city who has a blue elderberry bush that he said he foraged from a wild bush up on a mountain near us. He said the fruits are actually tasty enough to eat raw, and he does so. 
It’s the wrong time of year, but I asked for a cutting, and I put it in a pot with moist soil and willow water, in the hopes that I can get it to root. That sounds like a pretty amazing elderberry bush.
They’re also really tasty in ramen, if you’re into that. Or merely toss them into stews/soups that you make. 
That DOES sound amazing.
I recently found wild red ones on our property. I’m excited to watch them grow. 
Yeah, exactly! Elderberries that taste good raw? Wow, that sounds amazing!
Of course, that does beg the question of whether they’re still poisonous raw. But I suspect the bitterness indicates the level of toxicity (since that’s usually how it works), so if they taste good raw, it’s possible they are safe to eat raw.
I don’t plan to test that out by eating a huge bowlful all in one sitting, mind you, but maybe two or three one day, see if I feel fine, five or ten the next day, see if I feel fine, etc.
If nothing else, if they are safe to eat raw, I could turn the pulp into fruit leather instead of discarding it, which would be really nice.
You could try fermenting the fruit before you turn it into leather to give yourself that slight extra peace of mind. If you let it ferment too long it might be not quite suitable for your kiddos, but a brief fermentation seems reasonable. Or even could do a honey ferment, which is similar to what we do when we make elderberry syrup (which ends up being an oxymel in our house).
Nah, fermentation is off the table for me. I’m super anal about alcohol. I buy vanilla powder instead of vanilla extract, for instance. I’m only grudgingly willing to eat bread and other baked goods that contain yeast.
Mostly this is for religious reasons, but I’m more anal about it than most people in my religion.
I love ramen! I looked at making it before but the broth seems like a complicated multi step process… Maybe now I will have to revisit it 
Oh, now I’m imagining ramen with wild mushrooms and elderberries somehow incorporated too
You could try a sugar extract? I like to leave used vanilla pods in sugar and that’s enough to extract a strong vanilla flavour
Whoa, you can do that?! That would be a fun way to extract flavor to put into baked goods!
Ah, well then that’s not an option for you. 
Yes! I hadn’t thought to do this with elderberries, but this is definitely a possibility. You can do it with all sorts of things. When I have limes I know I’m not going to use any time soon, I’ll submerge them in sugar. I end up with a lime syrup (it sucks all the juice/moisture from the fruit) that I can then use in things.
You can also do this with salt in case you didn’t know. This is great for herb blends. Rosemary, basil, etc. It infuses the salt with the flavors of the plants.
Mushrooms and elderberries! That would definitely be wild. 
In lieu of being absolutely traditional about the ingredients of the broth, we’ll usually make bone broth and add in fun things from there. Last year there were plenty of wild mushrooms that ended up in ramen broths. We had a lot of painted suillus mushrooms come up in our area that ended up in soups until just recently when we ran out of our dried cache. 
Wow, being able to make syrup without needing to cook the fruit or run it through a juicer – that sounds like the kind of low-tech, easy solution that I’d find very convenient!
Would it still work if I put the concoction of sugar plus fruit in the fridge? Then I could set it and forget it for awhile without having to worry about mold growing.
Yep, refrigerating it is ideal. I left mine on the counter a tad bit too long and it molded. 
Awwww! Yeah, that’s what I want to avoid. I’ve experienced things molding before because I left them on the counter too long. 