Mushrooms 1

Yesterday as I cycled around a bit, some 30 kilometers despite a smattering of rain-- I was suffering from Post-Pilgrim syndrome, you see, the symptoms of which include: a general feeling of restlessness, an urge to scan the horizon, a preference to pee outside (I may have already mentioned this several times), a desire to hang out in kebab places and think one is in Turkey, an urge to look at maps and plan a route, flashbacks of the road life, an urge to check every tree and bush for berries or fruit, a continual searching for a good campsite, or for a good place to sit down for a break, or for a place to fill a water bottle...-- so as I was cycling around a bit to relieve a few of these urges, in a big circle around the lignite quarry, from which is drawn the brown coal to fuel the nearby power plant, and into which a few villages have disappeared forever, having survived the war-- and as I cycled through villages like Kirchberg, Schophoven, Merken, and Lucherberg, where armies clashed a lifetime ago-- as I was cycling I espied a mushroom or two growing in the grass by the road, and I knew this mushroom to be the very same mushroom that grows in the backyard-- the very same mushroom I have been picking and tossing into the organic rubbish bin so that Bella die Schwarz Hund does not eat it and perish.

I then decided, once I had returned from my brief but satisfying bicycle excursion, to positively identify this mushroom, as I am a mushroom hunter, you see, and have been ever since living in Portugal, where I ruthlessly hunted down many a mushroom to fry or mix in with various savory dishes in order to satisfy my rapacious appetite. 

The mushrooms that I ruthlessly hunted every autumn in Portugal were:  the very popular Parasol Mushroom-- Macrolepiota Procera, or, the Tortulho, as they call it in Portugal-- a large and delicious mushroom in great demand-- so much so that people will never divulge where they have found theirs, and whilst hunting them in the woods, one may come upon another Tortulho hunter, holding a sack, skulking around, and glaring at you when they spy you with your own sack, skulking about and glaring at them-- the skulking and glaring the result of greediness for this mushroom...

Here is a photo of the Parasol mushroom :

And here is a photo of me with the very same fungi, taken whilst walking through Slovenia:

And here is a photo of a chap we met in the woods whilst walking in Slovenia:

And here is a Slovenian farmer that we passed:

And an interesting Slovenian barn we walked by:

And Tijuana jail, where I once spent an interesting night:

But I digress...

Just quickly then, the other mushrooms I once hunted down whilst living in Portugal:

Caesar's Mushroom, aka Amanita Caesarea, which was the preferred treat of one of the Roman emperors, who was subsequently poisoned with this delicious mushroom's brother, the Death Cap, aka Amanita Phalloides, pictured below:

I was able to pick all the Caesar's Mushrooms I wanted, as no one else picked them, thinking them deadly, and thinking me insane, which they were not, and I am probably not.
Once, whilst searching for this mushroom on a mountain in Portugal-- that is, the Caesar's Mushroom-- I had a religious experience. I can assure the reader I hadn't confused the Caesar's Mushroom with the Fly Agaric, aka Amanita Muscaria, which is the well known psychoactive mushroom that certain Shaman chaps used to consume for their own religious experiences, as pictured below:

In fact, I had eaten no mushrooms at all when I had my mystical experience. You see, I was sitting on a large rock with a view of the valley below... ah, perhaps we'll save that one for another time.

I believe we were discussing edible mushrooms I'd hunted in Portugal. Yes, that's right. And the last one that I had a keen appetite for was the Penny Bun, aka the Boletus Edulis, or the 'Porcini', as pictured below:

So, back to the identification of this mushroom that is growing everywhere in North Rhine-Westphalia; growing even as we speak:

Having returned, then,  from my cycling excursion, I sped to the backyard--which the English would refer to as the 'garden'-- and I had a good look at the shaggy, inky, English lawyer's wig-like mushrooms growing there, and I went to the computer and made a positive identification; they are the Shaggy Ink Cap, aka, Lawyer's Wig, aka Coprinopsis Comatus, which Latin word does not mean 'comatose', I assume, as it is supposed to be edible.

Here is a photo of same from Google Images, in various stages of development:

Only the very young mushroom, pictured on the left, is edible, as the inky versions become an inky, mushy mess.

Hmmmm, edible, eh?

Stay tuned for 'Mushrooms Two', if I am still around to write it.