The family visits the family.

Autumn, it is a time of many natural things in Poland. Changing leaves, berries, apples, pears and mushrooms to mention a few. Also, of course, it is time of rain. Which, in turn, helps the mushrooms.

Rainy nights

Rain is never too far away

But with rain comes mushrooms. So, when the family were here we decided rather than just eat mushrooms we would like to take them to pick some mushrooms in the area around Sokolka. The area is rich in beautiful forests, but everyone there loves their wild produce. So, you need to either get up early in the morning to beat them or you need to drive a little further away from town to find a good patch. As it was late in the season and also a season that had been quite dry, we didn't expect to find too many. But, you should always be ready to hunt mushrooms, foraging is a way of life in the East and it is a great way of life, of course, if you know what you are doing.

Of course not every fungus growth is edible this is probably a birch polypore.

Some are just down right dangerous like this fly agaric

Or this wooly milk cap

Sometimes it can be cold in the forest some homemade malinowka (raspberry liquour) is great to warm up. You drink it down

down

down

Suede Bolete, Boring Brown Bolete or Yellow-cracked Bolete an edible mushroom

Another fly agaraic, they do look pretty though, and I wonder where the smurfs are.

I think this is called a lilac bonnet

spidey world

These sulfur caps will have you pooping and convulsing at the same time should you be silly enough to eat them

but they are really cute.

So we came home with a decent hall for rank amatuers and one hardened professional. You can see some different boletus mushrooms like porcini, and bovine among others. Also, the large white one is a parasol mushroom which is great eating,

This is the parasol mushroom cut into large slices and covered in egg, salt and pepper.

It is fried on one side and flipped and fried on the other, in the end it tastes very similar to a schnitzel. very tasty.

preparing the boletus family for drying

a mottled boletus mushroom

peel off the outer skin before cutting it.

and slice away.

then lunch is ready.

afterwards it is time for dessert outside in the sun.

and a little silliness with maple seeds

everyone loves a laugh, even big uncle Tomek our mushroom guru

someone else just wants to be loved.

how to disguise yourself when picking mushrooms.

on your bike

it is all happy families after some mushrooms, food and exercise.

Automatic Autumnal Analogies

Autumnal days are seriously up there with the main reasons to live in a place like Poland. Autumn is when the best of the berries are available, when the leaves start to change colour and when the magical, and previously unknown to me, world of mushrooms. I was banging on last year about Kurki and Rydz, or Chanterelle and Red Pine. Well, this year we also got very lucky, it was Mushroom-arama! There were mushrooms growing everywhere, some would even suggest from between Marty's toes, and they would be right, too! First things first we toured the house block, as the land has many birch, conifer and oak trees. All favourite habitats of mushrooms.

We found an old Boletus at the front of the house in Sokolka

A Bay Bolete forest dwelling shroom.

The underside is all spongey and gores blue when you cut them.

This one was a touch too dry to eat.

Like this one also being too dry to eat. But it does show you the spongey internal structure well.

So I had been bugging Marty for ages to take me mushrooming, but she is always scared because she isn't totally confident with identification. So we pulled in the big gun, Marta's Uncle Tomek. He is THE man when it comes to finding anything. Whether it be a new car part, a custom made staircase or mushrooms in a tick and mosquito infested swamp. He knows it all. People like Tomek are the reason that I wish I knew more Polish as I can tell that he has a million stories. So Tomek piled us into his van that is normally only for Al Pacino and Iskra, his French Bulldogs. We went off hurtling down the road, turning off onto a dirt road in the middle of the forest, still hurtling, narrowly avoiding trees, logs, rocks, huge swamp like puddles and then slamming on the brakes. Tomek says get out. So we do. There are mushrooms sitting in the middle of the road! How he saw them when going at about 50km/h, I will never know. They were Opienki or Butter Mushrooms.

The first bunch we stopped at. I thought it was huge.
Some looked small but they are the best of all.
Tiny equals tasty told Tomek to Tush and the tourist.
You just take the tops as the rest can give you an upset stomach apparently.
These are a little old and dry, but just look at those layers.
Then more old and dry ones I thought were a lot.
Then you find a tree like this! This is up to about 2m off the ground.
So after little over an hour we had a good haul for us and the family.
We found loads and really quickly, but that was mostly thanks to Tomek. He was joking that he saw more people in the forest than in the church on Sunday. Of course hunting mushrooms isn't as easy as you think, not because you will never find any mushrooms, but because there are many poisonous ones.

What pretty red and white! It doesn't mean something nice like the red cross or the Polish national team, but certain body cramps and death.
These ones may look like somewhere the smurfs would live, but are basically death in a fungus, a Panther Cap.
I had no idea what this was, but it had to be poisonous. Well it isn't, it is a Parasol mushroom and because I am no mushroom guru I left it. But it is actually a very highly sought after mushroom.
This one is called the Sulphur Tufts.
These actually look really similar to old butter mushrooms.

I don't know what these are, but they look scary, and the yellow thing could be a muppet! Either way if you want to know more about Mushrooms, Shrooms, or Mushies as people might call them click here. A great resource and maybe you can even find a completely new species!