After weeks of dry weather it’s flipped over into the kind of drizzly, grey, dampness that Brittany can specialise in which flattens your spirits and grinds you down if it lasts any length of time. Happily it is not forecast to last.
A positively silver lining to the clouds and damp has been the sudden fruiting of some of my favourite mushrooms. On the table are a couple of different Agaricus, a Charcoal Burner (Russula cyanoxantha), and a good crop of the Miller (Clitopilus prunulus). Finding the Miller in any quantity always makes me happy. It’s not the most straightforward fungus to collect – especially for beginners – as there are two superficially very similar, and sometimes deadly, confusables: Clitocybe rivulosa/Clitocybe dealbata.
If I collect it from somewhere new I always take a spore print – that means I don’t get to eat it the same day, but it’s worth it to see the pink print which means edible, rather than the white print of the ‘deadlies’.
And the mackerel have arrived! After several sorties to Douarnenez which – although pleasant – did not deliver a single fish. Finally they have turned up. They were biting constantly. They certainly ate well from the constant disappearance of the bait from my line. However, my incompetence meant I didn’t land as many as I should have, so most lived to fight another day and these ones were the unfortunates that copped it.
Lovely fish. Lovely taste!
