Sunday Mushrooms

Congratulations. 10 years of mutual mushroom hunting is a major milestone.

Your wife has a very nice jade bracelet.

That is the kind that is put on in childhood and becomes unremovable without breakage because the hand grows to be too big to take it off.

Well, maybe she could, just about, because she does not look to have very large hands, but I doubt it.

This is true older native traditional Chinese culture.

I am assuming the second photo, the mushroom chopper, is of your esteemed lady wife. Please correct humble self.

Martin, if you are interested in oldish stuff, it seems the Romans had an analogy to the global warming debate:
Alarmism: "Barbarian Horde Invasion Theory? Hogwash!"
http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/10/barbarian_horde_invasion_…

A detail you forget to mention is the disgusting multitude of maggots inside any mushroom that is not completely pristine. While the maggots can be removed, I certainly never felt enthusiastic about eating the stuff...
-Despite being a country boy, I never learned to distinguish between more than a few mushrooms. If we were uncertain about some, we simply presented a specimen of the mushroom to the cows [who have an excellent sence of smell, and love (edible) mushrooms]. If they refused the offering, we knew it was poisonous. In theory, it should be possible to train cows to "hunt" truffles, but I lack the necessary fungal enthusiasm and/or a shovel for the dung.
Also, genetics has identified a mushroom in north Sweden as identical to a mushroom that is highly valued in Japan. I suppose you could train a local bear to locate the stuff, as bears have a sense of smell far superior to dogs, and -like the Pope- do their business in the woods, negating the need for shovels.

That blogger is nuts. If she wants to save the world so badly, why did she have 4 children, and then try to raise them with subsistence farming?

Nice!
We have a bumper crop this year with lots of rain, but I've mostly stuck to puffballs and shaggies (because I'm lazy and haven't ID'd the rest). Morels are uncommon in the area, unfortunately. What is that big sucker left of centre...we have a ton that look like that but we were told by someone with more experience that they're not good eating...?

Sandy, thanks! YuSie got that bracelet less than ten years ago, using soap to get it on. It's Burmese jade, probably helped fund the military regime. /-:

Dogteam, the big scaly one is a shingled hedgehog. They're one star out of three in our shroom book. Make sure the ones you pick have spikelets under the hat, or they may be something else.

Martin: Thanks! It's a bit late here now, the shrooms are pretty much off, but I'll try harder next year!

Birger: Maggots are a wonderful source of protein. :)

Ongoing press conference announcing the Nobel Prize winners in Physics:
http://nobelprize.org/ (Right now)

Yeah, Geim & Novoselov, graphene.

The second guy almost has the same surname as Nirvana's bass player.

Shaggy ink caps are delicious, but I'm not sure whether they cause similar problems with alcohol consumption... The only time I've ever eaten them I had a dreadful hang-over the following day - but then I was at a wedding and I am Scottish, so I have certain obligations... ;)

We went out on Sunday with some friends to the woods about an hour north of Stockholm and ended up with two baskets full of trad kanterell mushrooms. It took us three hours to clean, cook and freeze them and then take the ticks off each other!
There were plenty of other mushrooms growing but we have only been shown how to recognize one sort so I'm sure we missed lots of edible alternatives.

Trattkantareller, Yellow Legs, have yellow feet and brown funnel-shaped hats. Trad. chanterelles are yellow all over. (-;

Hehe

Do you two have an 'our fungus' too?

I like that basket by the way, t looks like the sort of thing Ray Mears would make.

Congratulations on ten years; me and the missus are only just reaching our third anniversary. The anniversary being after we met at an archaeology seminar in our department. You don't get much geekier than that.

Haha, "our fungus"!

My dad actually made that basket when he was a kid.

Thank you, and congrats on your first three years of archaeomarriage!

Dogteam, the big scaly one is a shingled hedgehog. They're one star out of three in our shroom book.

The older ones may turn bitter so some people recommend only picking very young ones. But I guess this one tasted all right?

All I know is that the promiscuous mix of mushrooms I stewed with bacon and onions and beer did not taste bitter.

But if you have bacon, you don't really need anything else.

Bacon is God's food, no? If not for bacon, I would go to live in Malaysia. I don't mean that corruption called Canadian bacon, I mean the real stuff. The genuine article.

When the Swedes discovered smoked bacon, they were so impressed that they borrowed the English word for it. But they kept calling their traditional non-smoked bacon salt fläsk, "salted pork".