Germans put the fun in fungi
In our suburban yard in northeastern Ohio, I can’t recall ever seeing a single mushroom. Or maybe they were there and we just unknowingly squashed them when we put down bases to play baseball. Nor did the woods behind the house harbor any; perhaps the trees were too young. So my early experience with mushrooms was restricted to rather pitiful canned specimens that wound up in omelets.
Thus my surprise upon arriving at my friend Anke’s house just outside Munich when I was met with a distinctive woody smell. It wasn’t wood, but a product of the woods, at least: mushrooms. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. She had just returned from a week-long mushroom-collecting expedition in what had been an extraordinary mushroom season.This bountiful booty had been carefully laid out to dry in the sunroom, filling the entire house with its distinctive aroma.
Post I’ve been waiting for