Spring in Oslo

I want to go next week with a guided tour

For some, it happens every year – like how AFL happens every year in Melbourne without question or raising an eye brow. During my half year in Norway, my friends talk about how every autumn people in many parts of Europe would go walking into the forest looking for berries and mushrooms. Unfortunately I only saw winter, spring and summer (or fortunately as I might have overdosed on both food types).

Then this month I read an article from The Age about mushroom foraging around Mornington Peninsular.

And today I read this passage from Omnivore’s Dilemma:

When Ben spotted me hunting in a prone position, he approved. “We say ‘stop, drop and roll,’ because you can see things at ground level you’ll never see from above.” Ben and Anthony had a slew of these mushroom-hunting adages and I collected them over the course of the day. “Seeing is boleting” means you never see any mushrooms until somone else has demonstrated their presence by finding one. “Mushroom frustration” is what you feel when everyone around you is seeing them and you’re still blind-until, that is, you find your first, thereby breaking your “mushroom virginity.” Then there’s the “cluster fuck,” when your eyes are on and other hunters crowd you, hoping your good fortune will rub off. Cluster fucking, I was given to understand, was bad manners. And then there was the “screen saver” – the fact that after several hours of interogating the ground for little brown dunce caps, their images will be burned on your retinas. “You’ll see. When you get into bed tonight,” Ben said, “you’ll shut your eyes and there they’ll be again – wall-to-wall morel.”

Who wants to go!?

Right now the house house smells like boeuf bourguignon