A Caçar Bolets!

Finally. This has been on my to-do list for over a year now, and the deed has been done: looking for mushrooms.

I'm not talking about nonchalantly, lazily, half-heartedly mooching about a chain supermarket, vaguely looking at the price and wondering whether they're too expensive and thinking you probably won't use them anyway. I speak of the getting to grips with nature once more, rolling down hillocks of rotting leaves, hair snaggling in twisted knots of trees, mud seeping up your trousers with the silent determination of a paedophile outside an orphanage.

Hunting for mushrooms is a very traditional Catalan event taken with such seriousness that when you find a place, fertile and full of all things fungal, a pact of secrecy must be sworn. If you ever divulge aforementioned secret don't be surprised if you end up with a donkey's head next to you on the pillow - this is the degree of seriousness we're talking about. Usually, it is an event that takes place in the early autumn, since the climate at this time is customarily the optimal conditions for mushrooms: sunshine and rain.
This year, however, the weather has been weird and, quite frankly, inconsiderate. So the joy of rummaging through loam and the odd cache of empty Estrella Damm beer bottles was postponed until this last month. Two of my close friends and I were up near Figueres on a beautiful sunshiny day, tramping through heavily wooded areas, armed with a basket of a size which (in retrospect) was terribly optimistic. Our, or rather my, squeals of excitement every time anything mushroomy was found pierced the otherwise tranquil pine forest. Squeals which were then almost immediately followed by huffs, sighs, and general displays of disappointment when my knowledgable Catalan friend informed me that they were dolents - bad. I even managed to find some that were extremely dolents. Evidently, I was unintentionally bent on poisoning everyone.

It was a marvellously educational day, though. I learnt many things about the forest, a few species of mushroom and how exactly one is supposed to check if they are indeed comestible (by looking both from above and underneath the cap of the mushroom). The resident Mushroom Guru also showed us a mushroom amusingly and pleasingly called pet de llop - 'fart of wolf' or, rather boringly in English, the puffball mushroom. For those interested, the Greek is 'lycoperdon pyriforme': lyco meaning 'wolf', perdon from 'break wind'. Anyway, I have no idea where the wolf figures in all of this unless the Big Bad Wolf made the Three Little Piggies laugh raucously whilst stepping on one and farting simultaneously; hence the revenge plot of deconstructing their architecturally rather flimsy domiciles. They brought it on themselves. I imagine that the farting bit of it comes from the green cloud of spores emitted when one stamps rather viciously on the mature mushrooms. It is quite satisfying, and I urge anyone to try it if they are having issues with aggression - much better than a stressball.

 The above picture shows the extent of our pitiful collection of mushrooms. To be honest, though, I was just happy to be out the house doing something - even if it was clambering and squatting and doing all manner of things unladylike, with nothing to show but a handful of frilly rubbery mushrooms and muddy trainers. Next year, I'm taking a pig.