Mushroom Hunting Quotes

Clothes I wear for mushroom hunting are rarely sent to the cleaner. They constitute a collection of odors I produce and gather while rambling in the woods. I notice not only dogs (cats, too) are delighted (they love to smell me).

Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.

A morel, tastiest mushroom there is. Been a long while since I went hunting morels. Here,” he said to me. “Take this and go see if you can find any more along the river.

So, he prayed. His prayer was as humble as can be. "I fucking swear, you stupid snake, if I end up dying from drinking mushroom juice, I am going to return from the dead and hunt you down.

It was one of those red-gold early October days, the air crisp and tart as heady as applejack, and even at dawn the sky was the clear, purplish blue that only the finest of autumn days brings. There are maybe three such days in a year. I sang as I lifted my traps, and my voice bounced off the misty banks of the Loire like a challenge. It was the mushroom season, so after I had brought my catch back to the farm and cleaned it out, I took some bread and cheese for breakfast and set out into the woods to hunt for mushrooms. I was always good at that. Still am, to tell the truth, but in those days I had a nose like a truffle pig's. I could smell those mushrooms out, the gray chanterelle and the orange, with its apricot scent, the bolet and the petit rose and the edible puffball and the brown-cap and the blue-cap. Mother always told us to take our mushrooms to the pharmacy to ensure we had not gathered anything poisonous, but I never made a mistake. I knew the meaty scent of the bolet and the dry, earthy smell of the brown-cap mushroom. I knew their haunts and breeding grounds. I was a patient collector.

Horklump M.O.M. Classification: X The Horklump comes from Scandinavia but is now widespread throughout northern Europe. It resembles a fleshy, pinkish mushroom covered in sparse, wiry black bristles. A prodigious breeder, the Horklump will cover an average garden in a matter of days. It spreads sinewy tentacles rather than roots into the ground to search for its preferred food of earthworms. The Horklump is a favourite delicacy of gnomes but otherwise has no discernible use. Horned Serpent M.O.M. Classification: XXXXX Several species of Horned Serpents exist globally: large specimens have been caught in the Far East, while ancient bestiaries suggest that they were once native to Western Europe, where they have been hunted to extinction by wizards in search of potion ingredients. The largest and most diverse group of Horned Serpents still in existence is to be found in North America, of which the most famous and highly prized has a jewel in its forehead, which is reputed to give the power of invisibility and flight. A legend exists concerning the founder of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Isolt Sayre, and a Horned Serpent. Sayre was reputed to be able to understand the serpent, which offered her shavings from its horn as the core of the first ever American-made wand. The Horned Serpent gives its name to one of the houses of Ilvermorny.

He reached down and pulled something from the ground, then held it out in his hand so that we could see. “A toadstool?” I said. He shook his head. “A morel, tastiest mushroom there is. Been a long while since I went hunting morels. Here,” he said to me. “Take this and go see if you can find any more along the river.

Chikako and Ben's lives are inexorably linked linked to an ever-expanding list of seasonal tasks. In summer, they work through the garden bounty, drying and pickling the fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness. Fall brings chestnuts to pick, chili paste to make, mushrooms to hunt. Come winter, Noto's seas are flush with the finest sea creatures, which means pickling fish for hinezushi and salting squid guts for ishiri. In the spring, after picking mountain vegetables and harvesting seaweed, they plant the garden and begin the cycle that will feed them, their family, and their guests in the year ahead.

I know the call, sister. I am fairy. Really? I haven't seen you at any of the midseason fetes, or the blossom gatherings, or the acorn hunts, or... I don't like crowds. You don't seem to like much of what it means to be fairy. More and more was revealed about Wendy's temperamental little friend! Fairies were apparently gregarious- social creatures, like people. Or horses. Not the lonely solitary haunters of hills and isolated groves Wendy had imagined, who came together for the rare dance around a ring of mushrooms. But Tinker Bell obviously shunned the company of others like herself, preferring the company of a few giant humans like Peter Pan.

I spent most of the morning surveying the perimeter, wading in and out of the trees. I noted mushroom rings and unusual moss patterns, the folds in the land where flowers grew thick and the places where they slid from one color to another, and those trees which seemed darker and cruder than the others, as if they had drunk a substance other than water. An odd mist billowed from a little hollow cupped within the rugged ground; this I discovered to be a hot spring. Above it, upon a rocky ledge, were several wooden figurines, some half overgrown with moss. There was also a small pile of what I recognized as rock caramels, the salty-sweet Ljosland candies that several of the sailors had favored.

I had actually wanted to say something more, to express a wider gratitude for the meal we were about to eat, but I was afraid that to offer words of thanks for the pig and the mushrooms and the forests and the garden would come off sounding corny, and, worse, might ruin some appetites. The words I was reaching for, of course, were the words of grace. But as the conversation at the table unfurled like a sail amid the happy clatter of silver, tacking from stories of hunting to motherlodes of mushrooms to abalone adventures, I realized that in this particular case, words of grace were unnecessary. Why? Because that's what the meal itself had become, for me certainly, but I suspect for some of the others, too: a wordless way of saying grace.

The patient, genderless, bodiless, will tell me of its anguish: I feel like an old, opaque secret. I keep asking to be renewed. I suck on every fad, like mushrooms on a cemetery slab. Everyone’s better than I am; I’m the imprisoned best. No one loves another except as a mirror to a musty guest, to take stingy control. We are all failing, masterfully, because we desire it. Want to see civilizations ruined, want to see our species’ death, our psychic embroidery unraveled. We want to find out who’s left, the impossible perceiver of our demise. I’m hungry, I’m sick, I’m wounded. No shirt. So tired. I want to go home. They’re killing us; can’t remember childhood. The animal, bloodied, fails to hunt again. Our genocides are a cliché, repeated, but there’s no satiety, and further horror is willed. Who will save you? Who wants to be saved . . . I didn’t mean to say . . . I didn’t mean to be born.

I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan. Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil's hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac 'n' cheese, Stephanie's roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale's honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over hair products, since we have the same thick brown curls with a tendency to frizz, and the general dumbness of boys, and ended up giggling over glasses of bourbon till nearly two in the morning. She is even more awesome, funny, sweet, and genuine in person than she was on her rock-star winning season on Bravo. Plus, her food is spectacular all day. I sort of wish she would go into food television and steal me from Patrick. Allen Sternweiler did a game menu with all local proteins he had hunted himself, including a pheasant breast over caramelized brussels sprouts and mushrooms that melted in your mouth (despite the occasional bit of buckshot). Michelle Bernstein came up from Miami and taught me her white gazpacho, which I have since made a gajillion times, as it is probably one of the world's perfect foods.

The foragers’ secret of success, which protected them from starvation and malnutrition, was their varied diet. Farmers tend to eat a very limited and unbalanced diet. Especially in premodern times, most of the calories feeding an agricultural population came from a single crop – such as wheat, potatoes or rice – that lacks some of the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional materials humans need. The typical peasant in traditional China ate rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If she was lucky, she could expect to eat the same on the following day. By contrast, ancient foragers regularly ate dozens of different foodstuffs. The peasant’s ancient ancestor, the forager, may have eaten berries and mushrooms for breakfast; fruits, snails and turtle for lunch; and rabbit steak with wild onions for dinner. Tomorrow’s menu might have been completely different. This variety ensured that the ancient foragers received all the necessary nutrients. Furthermore, by not being dependent on any single kind of food, they were less liable to suffer when one particular food source failed. Agricultural societies are ravaged by famine when drought, fire or earthquake devastates the annual rice or potato crop. Forager societies were hardly immune to natural disasters, and suffered from periods of want and hunger, but they were usually able to deal with such calamities more easily. If they lost some of their staple foodstuffs, they could gather or hunt other species, or move to a less affected area. Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient foragers, who had domesticated only dogs, were free of these scourges. Moreover, most people in agricultural and industrial societies lived in dense, unhygienic permanent settlements – ideal hotbeds for disease. Foragers roamed the land in small bands that could not sustain epidemics. The wholesome and varied diet, the relatively short working week, and the rarity of infectious diseases have led many experts to define pre-agricultural forager societies as ‘the original affluent societies’.

The Czechs are downright crazy about mushrooms! In late summer and autumn, a foreigner might even get the impression that the number of sponge-hunting Czechs roaming about in the forests with a punnet largely exceeds the possible number of mushrooms.

I pulled the rubbery chunk from Nirlungayuk’s knife. It was cold from the air outside and disconcertingly narwhal-colored. The taste of muktuk is hard to pin down. Mushrooms? Walnut? There was plenty of time to think about it, as it takes approximately as long to chew narwhal as it does to hunt them. I know you won’t believe me, because I didn’t believe Nartok, but muktuk is exquisite (and, again, healthy: as much vitamin A as in a carrot, plus a respectable amount of vitamin C). I like chicken skin and pork rinds.

North of Las Vegas, desert and mountainous scrub land stretches for hundreds of miles. The earth still bears the scars from above-ground nuclear bomb tests at Yucca Flats, the flash of mushroom clouds visible from the early Las Vegas casinos. Secret tests of another sort take place in Area 51, the Air Force’s clandestine base and sprawling testing facility shrouded in mystery and baked by an unrelenting sun. In the 450 miles between Vegas and Reno, ghost towns slowly crumble, Great Basin rattlesnakes hunt for rodents, and US Highway 95 stretches up and down the arid landscape, connecting the state’s only two metropolitan areas.

Caretaking in a relationship is not flowers or date night—necessary as these are, they are the equivalent of a new color painted on your walls. Delightful, but not structural. Structural is unloading the dishwasher when it’s your partner’s turn, or making sure whoever gets home last from work is greeted with dinner. It’s learning about mushroom hunting or musical theater or rugby because your spouse loves it. It is talking about the best of your partner in public, not the worst. It’s listening to stories we have heard a hundred times before as if they are new. Often, it is just listening, period. My father always washed the car by hand before he took my mother out on a date, even after they were married. He would say he wanted it clean “for his girl.” That is the part she remembered, not where they went or what they did. As psychologist John Gottman, who has studied countless married couples, will tell you, it is the presence of respect and an abiding willingness to support each other, more than romance, that indicates whether a marriage will last. Couples that exhibit these qualities tend to stay together, creating the marital equivalent of firmitas.

George Moonlight had introduced his only son to the woods before Charlie could walk. He’d taught him to hunt, trap, fish, make squirrel stew, skin a deer, build a birchbark canoe, construct a wigwam for shelter, distinguish the edible mushrooms from the poisonous ones, start a blazing fire without matches, find his way through fifty miles of virgin forest without compass or map. He’d taught him to appreciate the sound of a mother quail protecting her babies, the rich smell of a fall day, the crispness of a winter night, the majesty of a hawk soaring across a cloudless sky, the gentle tranquility and harmony of snow blanketing a field. He’d taught him to respect Mother Earth, drilling into his head the Quidnecks’ three commandments: Take only what you need; use all that you take; leave something for tomorrow.

We're hunting the Beast!” said Brother Gillespie with a wild grin. “What beast is that, brothers?” asked Manfred, wondering if the interesting mushrooms had cropped again.

I suspect, on some level, all of us who consider ourselves “outdoors-people” — whether we fish or hunt or birdwatch or gather mushrooms or hike or photograph — are romantics at the core. "We experience something transcendent in those environs, something we idealize in our hearts and minds, something that illumines a spark of the divinity within us.

During the drive to the forest with Hiro, memory gets personal. He points out the window, “That’s Roy’s matsutake hunting place; over there it’s Henry’s special spot.” Only later do I realize that both Roy and Henry are deceased. But they live on in Hiro’s map of the forest, recalled every time he passes their spots. Hiro teaches younger people how to hunt for mushrooms, and with the skill comes the memory.

Richard began to experiment with hallucinogens. LSD was still popular with America’s youth, and he tripped many times on acid. He also took magic mushrooms and peyote, which were both plentiful and readily accessible in El Paso. High, he’d go out to the desert at night and hunt by the light of the moon, imagining he was in touch with Satan, that Satan was communicating with him.

Mushroom hunting in Provence is veiled in secrecy, second only to truffle hunting in the level of dissimulation and suspicion it inspires. If you are lucky enough to find a good spot, you might unearth skinny yellow and black trompettes de la mort (trumpets of death) or flat meaty pleurots (oyster mushrooms) or even small spongelike black morels. If you are not sure exactly what you've found, you can take your basket to the local pharmacy, and the pharmacist will help you sort the culinary from the potentially deadly--- it's part of their training.

I spent most of the morning surveying the perimeter, wading in and out of the trees. I noted mushroom rings and unusual moss patterns, the folds in the land where flowers grew thick and the places where they slid from one color to another, and those trees which seemed darker and cruder than the others, as if they had drunk a substance other than water. An odd mist billowed from a little hollow cupped within the rugged ground; this I discovered to be a hot spring. Above it, upon a rocky ledge, were several wooden figurines, some half overgrown with moss. There was also a small pile of what I recognized as rock caramels, the slaty-sweet Ljosland candies that several of the sailors had favored.

Biff laughed and shook his head. “You city boys are all the same.” “I’m not really a city boy,” said Porkins. “I spent most of my life living in the Nether, roaming from place to place and hunting for mushrooms. I’ve only worn clothes once in my entire life.” “City boys,” laughed Biff. “All the same.

You've got your alien abduction. Bigfoot abduction. Men in black. Genie wish gone awry. Interdimensional portal. Cursed Mesopotamian tablet. Sewer monster. Lake monster. Sea monster. Swamp monster. Killer clowns. Time paradox. Cults—you've got death cults, demon cults, occult cults, new age cults, basically any kind of cult. Witches. The giant Pacific octopus. Trapped on a ghost ship. Possessed. Possessed by a ghost ship—could happen. Knocked unconscious by genetically engineered mushroom spores. Genetically modified insect swarm. Genetically modified alligator. Lots of potential in the genetically modified space overall, really. Fell in a vat of invisible paint. Stolen by time thieves. Shrink ray on the highest setting. Unexpected wicker man festival. Psychically scrubbed from memory so you forget them as soon as you aren't looking at them. Mole men. Lizard men. Giant carnivorous pitcher plant. Giant carnivorous catfish. Bears. Got lost in Finland. Went hiking. Trapped in a TV show. Trapped in a haunted painting. Trapped in a mirror. Trapped in a snow globe. Trees. Not sure how they'd be involved but I always feel like we underestimate them. Moth man. Time loop. Wild hunt. Tax fraud. I could keep going.

Neptune's bounty was followed by that of Diana. I had staged a "hunt" to take place while the diners ate. Several of the bigger slaves were dressed like bears, and hunters with bows chased them playfully around the couches while nymphs tried to hinder their progress. They ran carefully around the slaves serving trays of pork cracklings, mushrooms marinated in wine, stuffed dormice, and figs soaked in milk and honey.

In short, until the Second World War broke out, the world seemed to me to have a range of different gradations of morality and behaviour, not opposites but placed alongside each other. At one extreme was the stern anti-Fascist or even pre-Fascist rigour which was incarnated by my mother with her moralistic, secular, scientific, humanitarian, pacifist, animal-loving austerity (my father was another response on his own: a solitary walker, he lived more in the woods with his dogs than among other humans: hunting in season, and looking for mushrooms or snails in the other months). After that one gradually moved through various levels of indulgence towards human weakness, approximation and corruption which became more and more marked and cloying as one went through the Catholic, military, conformist and bourgeois vanity fairs, until you reached the opposite extreme of total vulgarity, ignorance and bluster which was Fascism in its smug sense of triumph, devoid of scruples and sure of itself.

One tub held baby-food jars emptied of their contents and refilled with alcohol. Another tub contained handfuls of stacked twigs, another was full of something that might have been ginger root, or perhaps bits of wild mushroom.