There is, in Brittany, a group of friendly ladies who call themselves the "Les Pipelettes" (chatterboxes) who meet once in a while to talk and talk and also to make miniatures. They are careful not to call themselves a club, because if you have a club, you might be entitled to some state support (government money) but also there is a rule book two inches thick that tells you how you must manage your organisation. So they're just a group of friends who get together from time to time in each others' houses to have lunch and share their passion for miniatures. Not a club, oh no.
Anyway we went to one of their meetings in a little village near Rennes this weekend, and it was an opportunity for me to take a good walk in the countryside. Apart from enjoying the crisp Autumn air, I collected some acorns and chestnuts to plant, and discovered some interesting mushrooms. It's mushroom season, and people like to collect them to eat, engaging the services of an expert to weed out the deadly ones. As a kid, it was drummed into me never to eat mushrooms picked in the wild, an aversion that I have largely failed to shake. I did find some mushrooms in the garden last year that were clearly the same as the ones you get in the shops, and I ate them. The wife cooked them for me for breakfast, but refused to eat any herself.
"Clearly the same" is always interesting. I had an uncle who was a native of Czechoslovakia and used to foraging for fungi. He collected them each morning. He showed me two apparently identical fungi that grew close together.
ReplyDeleteIf you cut them with a knife one had yellow flesh and so did the other. One of them turned blue on the cut after a moment or two. One was poisonous, one was good to eat.
I wonder which was which?
His wife would cook his collection for him but never eat them. But they never liked each other!
Trust me, I can recognise a "champignon de Paris" ....
ReplyDeleteDo we have "experts" we can call on in the UK? Holkham Woods on the North Norfolk coast was just bursting with fungi this weekend but I didn't dare....
ReplyDeleteI have no idea if experts are available in the UK; I imagine they exist but how to get hold of one?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't dare either, without the services of such an expert, who I would also check very carefully to ensure that they weren't a long-lost acquaintance who bore a grudge.
I heard about someone this week who has been given a commission to give common names to all the species of fungi in Britain.
ReplyDeleteStruck me as a fabulous job.