Unlocking the Secret Mushroom Code

Wild mushroom risotto.  Venison Stroganoff.  Grilled mushrooms with butter over panini.  Is your mouth watering? I know mine is after watching Jamie Oliver frolic through the English wood picking mushrooms--the chicken broth for that sauce might as well be the drool that just dripped onto my pillow.  

This reminds me: Germans are crazy about mushrooms: Truffle, Pfifferlinge, Champingions, Pilze--anybody who has more than three names for mushrooms has to be a bit of a fungi fanatic.  How could I forget?  What's been keeping me from taking advantage of the perfect mushroom location--southern Germany (i.e. Swabia, as opposed to Bavaria--google a map if you don't know)--for so long?  It's the New Year and it's as good a time to learn something new as any.  Visions of prancing through the woods with a brown wicker basket and a red scarf in my hair start to run through my head.  What am I waiting for?  If I want to accomplish something, it's time to schaffen schaffen schaffen!  (The Swabian expression for "Work, work, work!")

First problem: January is not exactly mushroom season.  Well, is it?  I'm not entirely sure.  It might be the right time for harvesting some kind of the many, many, many, many different types of truffles which grow  in Germany.  However, I know enough to say it's probably not Pfifferlinge season, because the gourmets in Stuttgart won't start advertising the wonderful delights of this particular kind of fungus until sometime in the spring.  

To be honest my knowledge of fungi is rather limited.  I know some can be poisonous and that you're better off NOT eating wild mushrooms as opposed to romantically imagining yourself to be Oscar Wilde on a long ago Spaziergang through the enchanted wood.  You probably wouldn't feel too enthusiastic about being prematurely preserved after an ill-advised preemptive mushroom tasting.  

Here is what I do know:  

1) All Germans have secret mushroom "hoards," in the woods somewhere, the locations of which they guard like bridge trolls.   I know this because that's what we learned in German class with Herr W in high school, so it must be true.  You might just learn the secret location of these hoards if a German decides to trust you.  Which, by the time he does, you'll probably be pushing daisies anyway.  And, since I'm going to be trying to find out about mushrooms in Swabia, I know I'll definitely be pushing daisies.  

2) "Heh?  Mushroom Hoards?" is the response I get from Si, my boyfriend, when I ask him about the possible location of his.  "Germans don't have mushroom hoards.  Who says Germans have mushrooms hoards?  I don't know anyone who has a mushroom hoard.  Who told you that?  Besides, you can't eat most of the mushrooms from the woods.  They were all exposed to radiation thanks to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl and most of them are too radioactive to eat."  Obviously Si's not ready to open up about this very sensitive issue yet.  I'll give it time.  

3) Should you manage to find a non-radioactive toadstool, the local pharmacy offers a special service.  They'll identify the type of mushroom for you, just in case you might want to make sure you don't wipe out three generations of your family at once.  It might be a good idea.  

However, after Si's radioactive comment, I decide to scratch the wild mushroom gathering.  For now.   This still isn't going to stop me from finding out something that a real German knows about mushrooms, so I head out into the cold, rainy, cloudy and betrübter Swabian day (the weather in Swabia is usually pretty betrübt, or "troubled" in Swabia--must be the bad mood incurred from always having to be the best at everything).  Hopefully I'll come back with more than just mold!