A little less half, bit more than a third of a bag of heroin, that I'd left in the kitchen, when preparing a shot.
Went in to make a pot noodle (chicken and mushroom, if its that interesting, which it wasn't before I finished making it.) I was looking in the spices cabinet in my kitchen (theres an entire double-doored three or four shelf cabinet mounted on the wall that aside from porridge oats by the bagful and a few nice goodies like black treacle and the scrummyness that is golden syrup (preferably by the great big silver-plated serving tablespoon, which is of a most generous capacity, although the handle is now distinctly and deeply curved due to repetitive bending when used to stab into a tub of icecream and gouge out hunks of same for serving.
I was LOOKING for one of my tubs of, or bags of the dried, cured caps of the fly agaric mushroom, Amanita muscaria and a bottle of dark and aged soy sauce.
. Probably my absolute favourite spice of all, aside from a custom made steak spice blended mixture which also does contain as one of its macroscale ingredients, powdered fly amanita. But what did I find to distract me? A baggie containing what blessed font of yum? PORCINI! dried, thinly sliced cep, the penny bun, the Boletus edulis, one of the most important of ALL mushrooms commercially, its used for flavoring all kinds of foods mushroomy, canned mushroom soup relies on them intensely, and hundreds of thousands of tons pass through world markets annually, and BELIEVE YOU JOLLY WELL ME! when I say, that many many many more ceps are also found by wild mushroom enthusiasts, and pass through various markets under the table, cash in hand, nothing more said of the matter, to avoid taxes, and thats not even taking into account the great numbers that are also simply taken home at the end of the day's rummaging and foraging in the forests and woodlands, and which never ever get to see a market or a purchaser, but are simply snaffled up by the fortunate finder(s), and thence scurried home with and scoffed on the spot once cooking facilities are at hand. They are not uncommon but there is a lot of shady practices like
irresponsible swines of mushroom hunters, who unlike myself and other good hunters who CARE about nature, and just as much, strive to protect the bounties mother nature (more than just a fucking catchphrase to me, many never THINK of WHY we term nature 'mother'. For she gave us birth, shelter and food, albeit that one must work to possess not just to have doled out as an entitlement.
Some pickers don't just do it with the very valuable, costly ceps , but all sorts of mushrooms, from chanterelles to the magic mushrooms of the Psilocybe genus, and the other psilocybin containing genera too, picking the youngest most immature mushrooms without leaving them to grow. Because if they don't, theres every chance somebody else will take that precious prize before them for themselves and leave the finder with not a one single lonesome fruitbody for their bacon, sausages, fried eggs chips and beans in the morning.
I do sympathize though, even though the practice of snaffling up babies before they have a time to emit their spores and spread their speoies for future years, and even generations to come, both of the fungi
and the people who wish so dearly to find them and nosh on them. I myself would feel pretty damned wounded had I say, found a young giant puffball, or a cluster of ceps, a young sulfur polypore, sprouting out of a dead or dying tree, in its young, firm and juicy prime, as indicated by the moniker it gets and deserves, 'chicken (and NOT 'hen', this is Grifolia species, usually G.frondosa) of the woods.
And then, leaving them, if they were so young as to never have spread spores, for them to do so, as I do, save only in a very few instances, as one CANNOT eat puffballs once they start to turn mature and darken inside, nor are aged lawyer's wigs fit to consume, a they quite simply, liquify, and turn into a black mass of inky goop, via an autodeliquescence mechanism, they dissolve themselves when mature to spread the spores, and when young and uncolored on the gills, or just with a tinge of pink at the base, they thankfully are not rare but they ARE a very tasty, popular mushroom. IF that is, one can manage to successfully get one home from the second it is yoinked from the ground and placed within the collector's pick-a-nick basket of tasty wild treats it starts. Like pulling the pin out of an already finicky and unstable as hell hand grenade with a time delay fuse, the second the pin is pulled the timer starts ticking, and its already been ticking quietly ish. But it starts screaming more or less once given the heave ho, and it is literally a race against the clock to get them to a place they can be cooked before they give the hungry mycophage two fingers and turn into ink. Like the other common name, the shaggy ink cap (binomial is Coprinus comatus)
But found them I often have, and big tasty mature specimens ripe for the plucking. Taken home, sliced and dried, they retain their flavor excellently, which is the big reason commerce loves 'em too, they even can apparently survive pressurecooking and remain tasty and redolent of mushroomy-ness. So I took a nice handful, and broke them up a little, for Boletus edulis can get to be a pretty large (several kilos for a real big one) species. So broke them up into bitesized pieces and then tossed them in the pot noodle with some of the soy sauce I went after before adding boiling water, and did that, stirred them in...and oh me oh my. That turned a cheapo bog standard but nice snack into something that, especially as I haven't had any ceps since the growing season last year, didn't know I had that bag of dried ones still, that was a treat
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