Generous autumn,.. Written by Ambrož Štih (Slovenia)

Previous week we had online Mid-term evaluation training. That is training on which every volunteer on projects via ESC in Slovenia evaluate project until now and gets some tips how to get the most out of project till end of it. It was online due to corona reasons. And this word ONLINE is a problem for many nowadays.  So it is for the organizers as for trainers, and that is why the timetable was a way  more chill than schedule of On arrival training which I had offline/live. I think when we saw timetable we were all quite positively surprised with Tuesday which was kind a off day. It meant that we were able to organise something by our own or just to take care of our own and enjoy, relax, do what we love to without any pressure. So I checked a map of municipality of Domžale (where my home place is and where I was during time of training) and came up with an idea  of discovering forest close by and check if there are hiding some mushrooms.
As there was a lot of fog al the weekend the humidity level was nice and I could see a lot of smaller and bigger, younger and older, white, black, brown, red, orange, yellow, purple and all kind of sex organs of fungus kingdom. As I am not yet the professional mushroom gatherer I picked only the orange one that I know. In Slovenian they are called “sirovke”, saffron milkcap in English and Latin name is Lactarius deliciosus. They are a lot nowadays not really hiding with orange color under the pine trees. In Slovenia we have nice law about walking in nature and picking nature goods, so we can walk in every forest we want (if it is not forbidden on behalf of virgin forest) and one person can pick up to 2kg mushrooms per day or one mushroom that is whatever weight. 

As there were more mushrooms that we could eat with family for diner I surfed internet a bit and get nice recipe of making pickled ………..

Mushrooms need to be cleaned, sliced into pieces big enought to fit in the jars. Than put them in cold water and heat them up. Let them boil for 3 minutes. At the same time heat up the vinegar mixed with water in ratio two to three pieces of water and one piece of vinrgar. After mushrooms are cooked we stuff them in the jar, in between we add some whole pepper, Bay leaves, small onions or garlic. Than we close jars and cover them with cloth so they cool down slowly. And VOILA! we havedelicious pickled mushrooms super nice to serve with good bread, cheese and dry sausages or salami.
Bon appetit :)


PS.: do  not eat mushrooms for which you are not 100% sure they are the ones you know, it can end with not that nice Slovenian saying Pa je šel po gobe :/