6 Comments »

• 1
  

  This would have been cool to see. Did you take a picture? Ah. Nevermind. The word picture is probably better. Then I can imagine it.

  Comment by Kelly — July 7, 2009 @ 6:08 am

• 2
  

  You have drawn a fairy tale here in just a few words… good job, Alison…

  Bonnie

  Comment by Bonnie — July 7, 2009 @ 6:46 am

• 3
  

  food all around?? are they edible

  Comment by Gillena Cox — July 7, 2009 @ 8:24 am

• 4
  

  Thanks, Bonnie! And Gilena, that’s exactly what I was thinking… I loved that something foodlike (poisonous? delicious? I’m not sure) was actually growing on the structure of the luncheonette. But I do LOVE wild mushrooms. Some Swiss friends of mine took me mushroom picking when I lived in the mountains of Arizona years ago. It is one of my favorite memories.

  Comment by Alison — July 7, 2009 @ 9:59 am

• 5
  

  Alison, I love mushrooms too, especially in cream/brandy sauce with steak… great French bistro food! But I will never forget when we lived in Ukraine hearing a woman screaming/crying at the top of her lungs on the steps of the train station, telling the world that her whole family had just died from poisonous mushrooms… thus home-picked mushrooms conjure up eerie memories for me. With that said, when we lived in Cyprus, it was very common for the locals to pick mushrooms in the mountains each Saturday and Sunday on weekend outings. Knowledge is power… It seems many nations have a deep love of mushrooms and have learned the secrets… some better than others…

  Bonnie

  Bonnie

  Comment by Bonnie — July 7, 2009 @ 6:47 pm

• 6
  

  What a heart breaking story, Bonnie. I will not forget this one. Wild mushrooms can be so very dangerous and yet the whole expedition of collecting them is so romantic! So it’s easy to want to gloss over the potential lethality, so thank you for sharing this story.

  Well, the longer story of my mushroom picking outing with my Swiss friends in Arizona is this… We went picking the day after rain and used a book since not all the mushrooms in Arizona were familiar to my friends. We picked those that we were sure were safe but…. at the end of the day my friends could not say that they were 100 percent sure so we threw them all out.

  A week later they went picking on their own and found mushrooms that they were familiar with and that do not look like any poisonous variety. And so they cooked them up and we ate them! The best mushrooms I have ever had! But I am lucky that they were cautious. Again, I could have easily been swept into eating what we picked together because the whole process of mushroom picking was such a magical experience. Thank goodness my friends had a more sober approach.

  Comment by Alison — July 8, 2009 @ 8:19 am

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