Wellington, New Zealand - Before Erin Patterson's in-laws and relatives arrived at home for lunch, she bought expensive ingredients, consulted friends about recipes, and sent the kids to the movie.

The Australian woman then served them a dish with poisonous death hat mushrooms – the meal was fatal to three of her four guests.

That's Patterson's plan, the heart of a triple murder trial that has been trapped in the sphere of nearly six weeks.

The prosecutor in the Victoria Supreme Court case said the defendants lured guests to lie to lie, to Isaiah, and then deliberately fed them toxic fungi.

But her lawyer said the beef Wellington she serves was a tragic accident caused by a mushroom storage accident. She denied murdering her estranged husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and her relative Heather Wilkinson.

The mother of two also denied trying to murder Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived. Patterson chose his own defense speech at the trial this week, a rare step for the defendants accused of murder.

On Wednesday, she spoke publicly about the July 2023 lunch for the first time and gave an explanation on how she planned the meal and was not sick.

No one has ever proposed a death hat mushroom while having lunch in rural Leongatha, but she says she did it without knowing it.

Patterson said Wednesday that she splurged on expensive ingredients and research ideas to find "a special thing." She said she deviated from the recipes she chose to improve the "bland" flavor.

She told the court she thought she was adding dried fungus purchased from an Asian supermarket in a container.

"Now I think there are people who are foraging there, too," she told attorney Colin Mandy, who told the court Tuesday that Patterson had been foraging wild mushrooms for years and had put some pantry in the weeks before her death.

Patterson, who formally separated from husband Simon Patterson in 2015, said she felt “injured” when Simon told her the night before lunch that he was “uncomfortable” to attend.

She told his relatives earlier that she had arranged the meal to discuss her health. Patterson admitted this week that she never had cancer — but after a health panic, she told her parents-in-law she did.

In fact, Patterson said she was planning on a bariatric surgery. But she was too embarrassed to tell anyone and planned to pretend she was receiving cancer treatment.

"I'm ashamed of not being able to control my body or what I eat," said one of Patterson, who was in tears. "I don't want to tell anyone, but I shouldn't lie to them."

The defendant said she believed she was spared the worst effects of the poisoned meal because she caused self-inducing vomiting shortly after the lunch guest left. She beat most of the cake and then let herself throw it out - a problem she said she's been struggling with for decades.

Patterson also said she thought she had eaten enough meals to cause her subsequent diarrhea. She then sought hospital treatment, but unlike lunch guests, she quickly recovered.

She said her estranged husband asked her about the dehydrator she used to dry foraging mushrooms at the hospital where the guest's health was worsening.

"Is that how did you poison my parents?" she said Simon Patterson asked her.

Patterson said she is increasingly afraid of being blamed for poisoning and her children will be taken away. She told investigators she had never owned it and had never forage before.

While she was still in the hospital, she insisted that she bought all the mushrooms in the store, although she said she knew the foraging mushrooms might have accidentally found their meal.

Patterson said she was too scared to tell anyone.

Patterson also said that while she sat in the evidence locker to delete photos of the mushrooms she was foraging, Patterson wiped her phone remotely.

Prosecutors argued in the April opening case that she deliberately poisoned her husband's family, although they had no motives. They said she carefully avoided poisoning and faked illness.

The trial will continue with prosecutors' cross-examination on Thursday. If convicted, she will face life in prison for murder and face 25 years for attempted murder.