T'is the season to be foraging

Until last week, I was under the impression that the Polish - first and foremost - have a love of all things DIY. It's the Polish who happily move countries to take over a building, sleep there eat there live there for months on end while tinkering with bricks and mortar and white goods and drinking Polish vodka. No?

No.

While driving along the 11 road out of Berlin, crossing the (heavily guarded by police cars, for some reason) border into Poland, it turns out I was wrong. In early autumn, at least, the Polish seem to have a very different national hobby. They're, en masse, foraging for mushrooms. How pure, how ethical, how seasonal.

How lucrative.

All along the roads I travelled, cars were parked on shoulders, in bends and on little side roads. People carrying cute wicker baskets and (for those less stylish) plastic bags or buckets were everywhere, moseying about, ducking in and out of bushes. They would then line those same roads, selling their wares.

We stopped our car at some lady's feet. As opposed to her neighbour, an angry looking man with jars of honey and pickled wares, she was selling nothing but a few freshly picked mushrooms, in plastic punnets. No points for stylishness then. But douze points on the authentic scale. She looked sort of proud. She took her hat off for the picture. Sweet. Then she asked 6 euros for one punnet of ceps (porcini). See what I mean? Lucrative.

But we didn't care. We have been happily eating mushroom pasta (made with fried onions, thyme, cream and one of those wonderful cubes of mushroom stock that they only ever seem to be selling abroad). We dried another batch, sliced, at 40˚C in the oven for a good couple of hours. Happy autumn days they are.