Went mushroom picking in the forests of Varena yesterday. Mushroom picking is my special lady's favorite out-doorsy activity, and one I enjoy too, though she's great at it and I suck. I found three chanterelles, two of which were very small. She found about forty of those, plus a couple dozen russula, and one giant boletus, which is the #1 prize of mushroom picking. Maybe I shouldn't feel that badly, since my special baby was helping her on her first mushroom outing, and I was by myself. Egle and Mindaugas each pulled in impressive hauls too, though.
The young one got the hang of it pretty quickly. Once you have an eye for it, you don't have to check every mushroom to see if it's good: you can tell from a distance if it is has been host to worms and just walk on. After this dawned on her, whenever mother would walk by without checking a mushroom, child would turn to the mushroom and make a derisive sound made by vibrating her extended tongue and lips!
4 comments:
It's pretty disturbing when you think about it, but where I grew up people used to go mushrooming up near the cemetery. I guess that's where all the good fertiliser was. You had to be really careful though not to pick the poisonous ones, I much preferred going blackberrying anyway, even if my hands ended up with scratches all over them afterwards.
Funny how our conversations lately keep coming back to God. I have a cook book by Jeff Smith, who used to have a show in the states, The Frugal Gourmet. In his book there's an intresting introduction to the chapter on mushrooms: they're one of the reasons Smith believes in God. I hope I don't mangle his well put thought. More or less, in a world where shit and dead flesh can be transformed into delicious, nutricious fungus fruit --quite a miricle indeed-- there's gotta be something great out there we're not seeing.
Well yes, God: who the fuck else do you know who could turn corpses into delicious fruit?!
I thought the whole tasty fruit thing was the work of Satan, no?
Post a Comment