Thursday, September 18, 2008

It makes sense if you think about it

Last weekend, we went foraging for mushrooms in the New Forest. One of the women at work does it regularly, and so she can safely identify at least a few of the edible species. The Limey has been dying to do this forever, and this way, at least I know it's relatively safe.

(He came home one day bearing these huge mushrooms from Bushy Park, near his work, proclaiming them delicious and harmless. Uhh...by what evidence?)

Anyway, so those mushrooms- damn, they are good at camouflaging themselves. I've read you need to get your eyes properly "adjusted" to find mushrooms and it's totally true.

These are chanterelles:

You can identify them by their bright yellow undersides:

You can probably find them in this picture:

But what about here? (I deliberately took a random picture of an area near where we'd found some, so I wouldn't know for sure if there were any):


I tested myself just now, and, yup, can see some:

And I'm sure there are more there I haven't found. Those things are wily, aren't they?! It's amazing how well-hidden they are. We found brown mushrooms, bright yellow mushrooms, white ones, black ones, purple ones, and yet, they all blended perfectly into the forest floor.

We brought home bags of mushrooms. The Limey made the mother of all mushroom risottos, and we still had to freeze a lot of them.

1 comment:

Lien said...

I did this a few years ago when I went to the mountains with some friends. But the local national parks and wildlife authority were happy to help identify the edible from the poinsonous ones for us. But some friends were still not convinced. I was hoping for something a bit more meaty than just the mushies... but we didn't get any happy trippy experiences with it.