Bolete happy!

OH and I went out for a morning woodland walk yesterday. OH took his camera and I took my basket, a pair of scissors and my mushroom book. Temperatures have dropped markedly in recent weeks and while it's been quite dry, there's been dew in the morning -- perfect conditions for mushrooms.

There were loads of the things sprouting from the ground, mostly Little Yellow Jobs with gills that had too many contenders in the book for me to say for certain what they were. According to my sources, there are over 1000 mushroom species in the country, 200 are poisonous, 200 are edible. Of the 200 edible ones, there are only a few that, to me, are easy to identify, and those are: beefsteak fungus, hen-of-the-woods, chicken-of-the-woods, and the edible boletes (the ones with the spongey underside. Rule of thumb with those: red or orange anywhere on the mushroom means exactly what it means in traffic management: don't).

After about an hour of us poking around under bracken, we struck lucky: a fat bay bolete (Maronenroehrling) by the path under some ferns. And another one nearby, a little smaller. And another one. We'd found a patch. OH, seeing that I was lost to the world, took himself off to photograph a cross-spider's elaborate web. I was so engrossed that I didn't see or hear the two labradors coming up the path. They were huge and quite scary-looking, and I only had a pair of kitchen scissors to defend myself, or rather, the prize bolete they were about to trample on. "Darlings," I said to the panting hellhounds curling around my legs, "If your mucky paws touch my mushroom, you're in a world of trouble."

Their owner, an elderly gentleman, showed up a few seconds later. "They're friendly," he said, using the deluded excuse of every dog owner the world over, "And you're out to pick lunch? Great to see someone who knows what they're doing." And off he went, taking his canine foot soldiers with him. The bolete had survived them.

When we got back, I checked all of them through for any strays. The big moment had arrived. All their predecessors had been dried and then consigned to the compost because I didn't trust my judgement. This time I wanted to give it a go. "Okay," OH said, "but fry them separately from my lunch because one of us has to be fit enough to drive to the hospital, should your little experiment go wrong."

I fried about 40 g of them in a little butter and had those with the leftover ravioli. They were delicious. "I just want you to know," I said to OH before I put the first bite in my mouth, "that I love you." Which was a bit overdramatic because with the truly lethal mushroom poisons, you get your first reaction after 6 hours and then have between 6 and 14 days to say your goodbyes to your loved ones as the poison circulates around your organs and punches your kidney into early cell death every time it passes through.

Now, almost 24 hours after ingestion, I feel absolutely fine. I shall string slices of the remaining ones and hang them up to dry in my study (which is fast becoming a witch's haven of drying herbs and flowers) and once I've successfully gone past the 6-day mark, I definitely know they're safe to eat.

"I looked them up myself online," OH said later, "And there just wasn't any poisonous lookalike so I let you eat them."