September 29, 2016
Fall is the time to go mushrooming. That is, if you know the difference between fungi and mushrooms, the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms, and the places where to look for them. And those place haven’t been logged recently. And you are prepared to run into people who defend their turfs with weapons. Yes, you read that right – although it looks like the mushroom wars have slowed down bit. (You didn’t think you would read a blog without politics, did you?) Whether Montana, Washington or Oregon, groups of people fight over access to prized locations for morels as well as chanterelles.
Too many requirements for me to go mushrooming, but I do like to eat them. A recent visit to “Little Bird”, one of my favorite but rarely experienced PDX restaurants, provided the best mushroom and spinach in puff pastry – lunch you could imagine!
Mushrooms played a large role in the fairy tales of my childhood, both those of the brothers Grimm and the Russian tales that were a staple. I now learn that they play a role in African folklore as well, and in the tales of the native peoples of Alaska. As so many repeated features in fairy tales do, they probably served an educational role. Mushrooms were an essential part of the fall/winter diet, they could be dried and used in soups. Important, then, to know that they could be dangerous, particularly if you went for the really pretty red ones with the white dots (Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric.) It is not deadly, unless you eat 7 or so of them, but some of its cousins are. It is, however, psychotropic, and was used in religious ceremonies in numerous countries.
And talking about getting high: here is new evidence for a historical sniffler (and monster on drugs):
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/blitzed-norman-ohler-adolf-hitler-nazi-drug-abuse-interview?CMP=fb_gu
Prokofiev wrote a book of stories that were recently translated into German, alas I could once again not find an English translation. One of them is a fairytale about a mushroom prince….. it never made it into his music. So we’ll listen to and watch the autumn fairy, appropriate for the season, from his Cinderella.
