Pine Mushrooms

Each year at this time of yeat, a lot of people go mushroom picking around this area. Mainly, they're looking for Pine mushrooms. These things can sell up to $40/lb on a good year. This depends on their quality. There are different stages to the development of the mushrooms and , the ideal, most delicate and succulent stage is the "button", which makes them a "grade" 1 Pine mushroom.

I personnally am not crazy about them. I like them...but I mostly like the idea that they are harvested straight out of the forest. Having little mushroom parties where everybody eats the harvested overgrown, worm laden, grade 6 mushrooms is great romantic fun! The question is, why the heck do Japanese like "our" pine mushrooms so much? Are they just crazy like that? They like to pay extravagant amounts of money, to eat something from the forest of Canada? Where did it all started?

Apparently Matsutake (japanese pine mushrooms) were very abondant in the forest before world war II, but a wild pine desease started plaguing the poor japanese pine forest after the war and never really recovered (along with urbanisation, the big nuclear mushroom, and other problems brought on by crazy humans). And, since Pine mushroom survive in symbiosis with the roots of the Pine, well, there you have it.

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So yesterday we went to a little post mushroom harvest at the neighboors. Of course we didn't pick mushrooms. In three years I've been here I have never participate in this adventure. It was very fun to get together, prepare them and eat them, but I just was disappointed at myself that I never came up with the idea like that to go and harvest mushrooms with friends. B is always complaining that we don't do anything together etc. This would have been perfect. but I forgot once again. I feel really bad because I never come up with such great ideas for activities to do.

It's a desease I have