Yesterday is the same as tomorrow, 1 and 7 September 2019.

Another mushroom weekend around Gripsholm castle in Mariefred area. We went back to the same place where we went last week. And this time, the harvest was even better! Amazing to see how fast are the mushrooms growing as we did not leave much behind us last week. And this time, they were all fresh, young and without bugs!

1 September 2019

7 September 2019

A real pleasure!

This is Gripsholm castle in Mariefred.

The conditions for mushroom picking were just perfect this Saturday. There had been significant rain in the previous days and the temperature is still around 15 to 17°C during the day, resulting in an explosive blooming of mushrooms. We went to our usual place around Mariefred to find out that there were already a few cars parked in the area. Nevertheless, we went a bit deep in the forest and found unexplored areas.

Boletus field.

We found spots where we could pick 25 Karljohan mushrooms within a five metre radius! All young and fresh. We never saw that before. Luckily, we were prepared as we had large bags.

Nice Saffron-milk cap mushroom.

Yet, the most fascinating mushrooms remain the Amanita muscaria, when they are young and fresh. Sure they are not considered edible. Yet, the vikings were mixing them with hydromel before going to fight. The effect of the toxin was to put them in a transe status where they were fighting fearless with great energy, anyone on their path, friends or foes. In that state, they were called "Bärsärk", which gave the English expression "berserk" to describe someone in fury.

Amanita muscaria

Below are the sliced mushrooms that we are drying, in addition to the 8 bags that we froze and the two kilos that we kept fresh for rapid consumption. All together, we had around 25 kilos of mushrooms this weekend, mainly Karljohan, but chanterelles and saffron-milk cap as well.

Drying sliced mushrooms on a bed sheet.

Below is the best you can get on the way back from the forest. A mix of the freshest mushrooms fried in olive oil (some prefer using butter) with salt, peer and garlic. It would be nice to add parsley, but we did not have it.

A mix of fresh mushrooms fried in olive oil!