Ajooma

Last November I went foraging for mushrooms in Wiltshire, which is between London and Cardiff. It’s a very small county stuck 20 years in the past, in the best way. I’ve never gone hunting for mushrooms before, or even gathering for wild food. I was very excited to throw off the yokes of industrialized food production and get out of London for a weekend. Kat grew up in the clean air and green fields of Tisbury and kindly invited me, Dave, and Shannon to her parents house. The drive there was about 5 hours, but we had fireworks going off around us every 5 minutes in preparation for Guy Fawkes and an iPod full of tracks to keep us occupied.

Once there, we sampled the offerings in the all(3) the local pubs, including my first pickled egg, which is customary consumed with a packet of crisps (salt and vinegar). The next day was spent walking around the town, including the cemetery, some fields carpeted with shade, and a lake. The WI (Woman’s Institutes are locally organised groups for British women) was having a sale, featuring local jams, chutneys, cakes, eggs, and other knick knacks. Kat insisted we go, as a General Medley’s preserves were legendary, but warned us to shine our elbows as the local ladies were quite formidable about getting the best. We queued till the doors opened and stormed in, trying to be brisk without appearing to rush. There were indeed many people who used their bodies to block competitors. I managed to come away with G. Medley spicy pear chutney. Later in the day the party of 6 piled into 2 cars to head off to the forest where we would forage. Debbie, Kat’s mother is a mushroom enthusiast, and the most knowledgeable amongst our group. We followed her lead mostly. It was wonderful being in the forest. The dark and dank, smelling of the decay of fallen foliage made my nose tingle. I realized how much I missed nature in London. It’s true London is pretty green, with wide expanses of parks, but I missed the rolling hills and mountains of the Korean landscape. It’s so easy in Korea to go hiking, and get out the noise and bustle of the urban environment.

It takes a while to get use to mushroom foraging mode. You need sharp eyes and soft feet. The mushrooms grow on around old tree trunks or decaying bits of logs. They are quite small, and blend into the muted tones of autumn.

You need to shuffle your feet about, displaying the fallen leaves, but not too hard for fear or breaking the mushrooms. They are very fragile and delicate. Once your eyes get used to spotting them, they are everywhere. The problem is most are non edible. In fact, only 20% of our gathering was throw into the pan. The variety of mushrooms we collectively found were so numerous that Deb was consulting at least 3 books. I was surprised by the diversity of shape, size, texture, colour, and reproduction methods of fungi. This puffball released it’s spores in the air.

I also saw tiny yellow staghorns that look like antlers, minuscule ghost gloves, milkcaps that exude a milky substance when the gills are broken, and hard polypores that jut out from tree trunks like seats. There were also slick and slimy toadstools and amethyst deceiver, which despite being purple are edible. Although they do have a similar looking cousin which is poisonous.

The sun was starting to sink so we headed back with out bounty. Kat and Shannon cooked a delicious meal of pigeon (which Debbie had already procured), leek and bok choy stir fry (both vegetables from the garden) and the main feature…the mushrooms on toast. It was a wonderful feast, my stomach responding to the manual labour and freshness of the meal.