Friday, 2nd of December 2022
Last week and weekend has been crazy busy. Lots of tears of excitement, joy as well as despair. Call it PMS, call it life, but the result was that I missed #FungiFriday last week!
I don’t know, maybe it’s a good thing, as eventually I am going to exhaust my huge mushrooms collection and I’ve been so lazy, I don’t go to the forest much these day. It’s so cold 🥶 I just wanna wrap myself in blankets and do next to nothing!
I’d lie if I said I did next to nothing last Friday. I spring cleaned my kitchen and tidied up the rest of the house while waiting for my bestie to come over from Lincolnshire and spend the weekend with me. We chatted till late at night and the whole Saturday we spent on various London adventures. Here is the proof:
Now that my weekend has started again, I decided to catch up with writing and hopefully produce some drafts to next week too. While doing this, I pretty much drained the batter in my new phone and I drank a lot of Bailey’s with coffees 😅
I’m writing from my old phone which luckily has a huge mushrooms gallery too! Today I will tell you how I hooked my ex on mushrooms. Exciting times!
As you know, I have been picking mushrooms since I was a child, but until a few years back my ex knew nothing about it. When we discovered the forest almost at my doorstep in covid times, I started looking around to check if I can recognise any mushrooms that grow there. My ex was panicking and telling me not to touch anything, as they might be poisonous.
Bless him, he couldn’t know I was a seasoned mushrooms picker 😅 Upon our next visit to the forest I ignored his well meant warnings, as I got too excited to see a very distinctive shape of a porcini mushroom!
In secret I packed a little box in my backpack in case I find something and it was a great idea indeed! I thought I’ll just pick a few that I know are 100% edible and send them to my auntie to double check. This one below for example I wasn’t sure about. It’s definitely from Boletus family, but I don’t remember seeing then with red underwear 😉 back in Poland. My uncle seemed sure that they’re edible, but once sliced they looked like nothing I ate before, so we skipped it at the time, although some months later I picked and ate one of these, so I guess they’re edible. I wouldn’t advise this approach to new mushrooms enthusiasts though!
I briefly explained to my ex what kind of mushrooms I am looking for and surprisingly he joined in. He was running to me with his first few finds to check if he picked something edible and more often than not, he did. He was a fast learner.
That first trip ended with just a few mushrooms in my little box, but once we got home and I fried them in butter for his supper, he was sold!
He couldn’t believe that one can find free and extremely delicious food in the forest. I didn’t have to convince him to try our mushrooms luck anymore, he was the one dragging me to the forest in every free moment of the day.
Our second mushroom picking trip was like a dream. Many times afterwards we wondered if we have accidentally crossed into the parallel Universe to find all those mushrooms.
Seriously, there were so many and such a huge ones too!
I think that it was the day when the universe decided to side with me in an attempt to entangle another human into the mycelium network 😅 Cause we all know it - once you’re hooked on fungi, there is no way back. You’re forever connected and you will always be dreaming of finding more of them to deepen that connection, while spoiling your taste buds with amazing sensations.
Needless to say that I engraved that day in the memory of my poor old iPhone 7. Pictures quality might not be the best, but it is all documented.
I cut off his face from the picture, as he loves his privacy, but look at the size of the mushroom in his net! Enormous!
The picture below, together with a few others ended up on facebook. I know, what a waste of resources! But I was so excited to share those finds with everyone. It was my first mushroom picking trip in many years and I couldn’t believe what we have found!
I received so many replies that day and many of my friends wanted to join us for out next mushroom adventure. After this my ex said I should stop posting my free food on Facebook, cause they will pick all our mushrooms 😅
Just one of the quirks of my ex. He believes everyone is out to get him and there is never enough to go round.
But look at this abundance and size of the mushrooms we found! Moma nature is so lavishly abundant!
I tried to preserve as many as I could, but truth be told I barely remembered how to preserve them properly and as a result I wasted so many beautiful mushrooms!
Still, it was so much fun hunting them. Probably one of my best mushroom foraging trips ever.
Now it is almost 10pm and I had promised 
Ok… just one more picture then!
Happy FungiFriday everyone!
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Until next time 💙
| Camera | Photographer |
|---|---|
| iPhone 7 |  |