the fly agaric is a sure sign of september. it is officially autumn-time.
all summer long i had been looking forward to visiting a friend of mine at the eco-village where he works as a co-op gardener, he was even going to pick me up today, but i felt so lousy i had to cancel my plans, all flu-y and depressed and not at all adventurous, or up for sleeping in an unheated cottage. i just wanted to curl up under blankets and never emerge. eventually i dragged my cranky bones outdoors, though, only to find a big branch torn off on an old apple tree. the branch with my favourite apples, of course (it has different varieties grafted on). the branch i, for once, had removed a lot of my favourite apples off of, to help the rest ripen and prevent said breakage.
the fruit is not ripe yet, so i am waiting before sawing the branch off with a clean cut. it is still connected to the trunk a bit. but i worry about the tree getting diseased from the wound. i already pruned it quite drastically earlier this year. hopefully it proves to be a tough one. i'm going to try and graft some of the branch back on, even though it is not really the right season for that. they are really good apples.
my mood wasn't exactly elevated by this disaster, so i decided the only thing to do was to go mushrooming. just near the house, for a little while...
"yeah, right" and "as if" are the correct responses, yes.
...hours later i made my way back, carrying a rather heavy basket brimming with all kinds of delicious things. one does not merely walk in and out of these woods...
this is what i was mostly looking for: lactarius deterrimus, the false saffron milk-cap. it is often dissed in comparison to the actual saffron milk-cap, but i like it enough to pick even the maggoty ones. i find the taste almost meaty (could be due to the extra protein...) and have succesfully fed these to people who "do not like mushrooms". they grow well in the spruce fields, and today i was lucky to find many fresh ones.
i was also blessed with a whole bunch of other mushrooms. a porcini/cep and some other boletes, rufous / red hot milk caps and others, some albatrellus ovinus or 'sheep's conk', funnel chanterelles (in the small basket), chanterelles and hedgehogs, a variety of russulas and some very fine gypsy mushrooms. in the larger basket are some likely very poisonous ones i took with me to properly identify. they are some type of galerina, that is all i know, but they don't quite match anything from my books (SIENET = mushrooms, in finnish).
exhausted, but i somehow managed to prepare and cook everything. froze some, made a 'shroom salad' with raw onion and sourcream of the milk-caps that needed boiling first, chopped and fried the false saffrons for later use, made japanese-inspired soup with the russulas (love them in soups!) to eat next week, ate the gypsy mushrooms fried with an egg (lovely) and sliced the porcini thinly for drying. only the funnel chanterelles are in the fridge, waiting for their turn in the dehydrator.
then, boiled some hot cocoa spiced with mint and cumin and vanilla soy milk, and took a deep breath. didn't feel so shitty any more.
