A Fête Worse Than Death…

…or one which saves your life?

Yesterday we visited the annual Fête Mycologique at a nearby town and, as before, it was a fascinating, if scary, experience.

Mushroom gathering is a big part of the culture around here, as indeed is collecting any free food. For several weeks from early October the fields and woods are populated with people searching for mushrooms and signs appear at the roadside advertising mushrooms bought and sold.

It’s simply not done to ask people where they find their mushrooms. The best sites are closely guarded secrets, often passed down from generation to generation, and enquiry is never accepted as just casual interest.


So far we’ve talked vaguely about ‘mushrooms’ and that’s perhaps not surprising from a pair of English people brought up in urban environments. For us there were always two types of fungi, mushrooms and toadstools. Mushrooms were those white-topped, pink-gilled field mushrooms which are widely available in shops and were definitely edible. Everything else was a toadstool and, if not poisonous, was definitely not considered to be eating material. Being told that puffballs, for example, were delicious and safe impressed us not one jot. Since we moved here, of course, we have discovered a vast number of fungi are both edible and delicious, if you know what you’re doing. And therein lies our difficulty.

Our first attempt at mushroom hunting was not, we must confess, crowned with success. Our guide inspected our basket at the end of the morning and pronounced, with much ooh la la-ing, that the whole lot had to be thrown away and that we must wash our hands thoroughly before putting them near our mouths or touching anything we were going to eat. Apparently those delicate, harmless-looking beauties we had collected were a deadly form of Amanite. But did we let this destroy our confidence? Of course we did.

The Fête Mycologique displays a bewildering number of different mushrooms, some of which are delicious, some OK, some not nice to eat, some indigestible, some poisonous and some deadly. And the trouble is that some in the first category can easily be confused with those in the last two categories. Even the names don’t help. The black and sinister ‘Trompette-de-la-Mort’ (Trumpet of Death) is delicious and safe as houses.

Although French country folk are reasonably adept at sorting the good mushroom from the bad (although many of them just learn to identify a handful of safe varieties and pick nothing but them) accidents can and do happen. That is why, at this time of year, pharmacies display large posters giving information to help identify mushrooms and, if you ask, the pharmacist will examine specimens you’ve collected and rule them safe or not.

We now have sufficient confidence that we can definitely identify one safe variety that we picked some yesterday and had a delicious mushroom omelette for dinner. We feel really proud of ourselves.

Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better finish now. I’ve been suffering from a very queasy stomach all morning and now I’m developing double vision. I’d better just call into the bathroom, assuming Mrs A isn’t still in there.