Forests Foods and Firsts

I ate mushrooms.

 

No, that isn't a typo.

Anyone who knows me knows my hatred of mushrooms. Mushroomaphobia some have called it. I call it "a lack of enjoyment of eating fungus". But Sweden has somehow managed to compel me to sample that which I have spent many years avoiding.

More on that later...

As a kid, I remember watching Norsca ads, where moist towelettes, soaps and deodorants probably made in a factory in China using artificial scents were sold to us in Australia as "Scandinavian Freshness" with people running around naked in beautiful green forests of pine trees and bathing beneath waterfalls.

Well, after spending the week in the beautiful city of Skövde (pronounced something like "Hwh-erh-v-deh"), I can confirm that these beautiful forest areas actually exist in real life. The bad news is that there were no beautiful naked Swedes bathing beneath the waterfalls. Only Norwegians.

The Swedish Forest is an amazing place. With millions of shades of green and a serenity that rivals Bonnie Doon, it holds delights to please every sense. It also holds ticks which can potentially paralyze you, but I was thankful that my "tour guide" thought to check me for ticks and found one on my stomach. Apparently it was attracted by my Van Halen t-shirt.  Talking of ticks, a weird Swedish fact is that when Swedes are marking things like exams or quizzes, they use ticks to indicate which questions you got wrong. Guess you'd be ticked off if you weren't aware.

But back to the Swedish forest and it's aural sensations.  This time of year is a great one to be out in the forests, as it's the time when the water runs strong over falls like the Silver Falls at Skövde and the blueberries and chanterelle mushrooms emerge from the forest floor. Armed with our instincts alone, Maria, her mum and I set out in search of our dinner in much the same way a nightclub leaver at 5am instinctively seeks out a kebab shop, hotdog stand or McDonalds using their well-honed survival skills. It didn't take us long to find what we were looking for.



Chanterelles are famed the world over amongst culinary connoisseurs, yet Maria had a job ahead of me if she thought that my enthusiasm for picking the fungi would translate to enthusiasm for eating them.  But sometimes we just have to trust, and knowing that Maria also has an aversion to mushrooms, her offer to eat them with me left me with less room to move than her rook left my King to move in our recent game of chess. And besides, she told me "You've eaten surströmming before, so I'm sure you'll be able to man up enough to eat these - they're not that bad..." 

"...Plus you can eat blueberry pie after as a reward."

Checkmate. She's a smart girl.

So with our forest haul in hand, we returned to make dinner. Well ok, Maria's mum made the dinner, but I kind of found some of it and I'm sure I kept the snakes away or something in the forest. Hey, I'm Aussie, that makes me like Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee right? All those years of wrestling drop bears has to be for something so I'm claiming it.

First course. Chantarelles, served with a bacon and garlic cream sauce on toast with tomatoes.

Mustering what courage I could, I took a bite.

No vomiting.

No gag reflex.

Edible. Surprised.

Took another bite...

...actually not bad.

In fact I went on to eat the whole plate of them. Proudly, I can now say "Mushrooms, I have defeated you!"

But let's not have a rematch any time soon.

And now let's pause for a moment to see my reward:

Homemade, handpicked, fresh blueberry pie, tasted as good as it looks and sounds. The Swedes have a great name for a place that you love, your special place. Your "Smultron Ställe" ("Wild Strawberry Place"). I think Skövde might just at least go down as my new "Blåbär Ställe" ("Blueberry Place")...