Achtung, Mushrooms schmeckt Gut!
Wolfgang Bivour carefully emptied a basket of freshly collected mushrooms onto a forest floor covered with fallen autumn leaves. Brown-capped porcini and bay boletes lay beside slimy purple brittlegills and honey-colored armillaria – and, among them, the lethal green death caps. Bivour, one of Germany’s most famous fungi connoisseurs, described the different species just collected in an oak and beech forest on the outskirts of Potsdam in eastern Germany. Surrounding him were 20 people who listened attentively, among them university students, retirees and a Chinese couple with their 5-year-old daughter. Across Germany, the traditional forest art of mushroom hunting is enjoying a revival, fed by the coronavirus pandemic restrictions, which pushed people from cramped apartments into forests, and by the growing popularity of the vegan lifestyle. A growing interest in the use of medicinal fungi is also playing a role.
In recent years, images of mushrooms have gone viral on social media, and a hobby once considered uncool has become a chic lifestyle pastime. Guided tours on mushroom hunting are hugely popular. Wolfgang , a 75-year-old retired meteorologist, said the tour he led on a recent, drizzly autumn day wasn’t “primarily about filling your basket – although it’s always nice to find something for the dinner table.” Wolfgang is sometimes sought out by hospitals when they have cases of suspected mushroom poisonings. He has also been giving mushroom tours in the Potsdam region southwest of Berlin for more than five decades. When the members of his group showed him mushrooms, he identified them with their German and sometimes their Latin names. He spoke about their healing powers or toxicity, gave suggestions on how to prepare some of them, offered historical anecdotes. He invited them to smell and taste the ones that were not poisonous.
One tour customer said despite her newly acquired knowledge, she plans to stick to the familiar ones – porcini, butter mushrooms, slippery jacks and bay boletes – when going out to the woods with her kids. During the excursion she learned that colors and grain patterns can’t always be clearly determined. “I think that if enjoyed in moderation, many of them would be a culinary experience, but I still don’t trust myself,” she said.
Mushroom mirth
Ate some weird mushrooms last night and somehow ended up in a Mazda car sales yard tripping like crazy….”Shroom Shroom.”
What kind of mushrooms get in the most fights?
Shit talky mushrooms.
“Where did you get this mushroom recipe?” Husband asks his wife.
“From a detective novel.” she answers.
I was illegally hunting for mushrooms.
I have questionable morels.
October 14th Birthdays
1998 – Ariela Barer, 1989 – Mia Wasikowski, 1992 – Esra Bilgic, 1985 – Sherlyn
1999 – Ben Wilshaw, 1927 – Sir Roger Moore, 1939 – Ralph Lauren, 1967 – Stephen A. Smith