Nothing can go wrong (with garlic and butter), or can it?

Could this be the last post ever on this blog? Is this the end already? Am I going to meet my maker after hours of insufferable agony ? Well, may be, dear friends and acquaintances, as I have just started digesting our first bash of wild mushrooms.

The end of Me or the Rebirth of my French identity?

It's not the elusive cepes, as explained in a prior posting. No, just a kind Rosé des prés that seem to enjoy the vicinity of our field. 

Rose des pres, pre - garlic & butter

Sue has mustered the courage to make me try some.
She applied the old French principle that nothing can go wrong when cooked in parsley (from under the kitchen window), garlic (from the market but planting is coming soon) and butter. And once again, this has proven accurate. It was absolutely delicious. Anxiety receded slowly as my taste-buds blossomed. I could have heard myself moan in appreciation if the crackling of fire in the chimney hadn't been so loud on this rainy day.

Defiant Looking 'shroom

Why, except for the obvious basking in our rural glory, am I writing this down? Because this is a major step in our integration process. Mushrooms, you see, are the 'talk of the town village'. And eating some make us one notch more local. I'll now be able to face Paul and Jean-Paul, and casually shrug when mentioning that I, too, eat mushrooms from my field. It will bring me closer to the status of real-French-country-man especially if I omit that for a good five days now, Sue keeps bringing back all sorts of mushrooms in the hope I'll be mad enough to try and eat them. Most of the fungi have this defiant, even arrogant look on their head that seem to say: "try me, try me, I may not be as dangerous as I look ".

-Good try, sucker, I 'aint no fool! I think on the inside.
On the outside I shrug and walk passed, especially since I have acquired some ultimate mushroom-knowledge at the special 'Mushroom Festival' last Sunday in Eglise Neuve d'Issac, the next door village.
Set in the communal hall, this exhibition and information gathering started at 2 pm. We turned up one hour late, to avoid the crowds (421 inhabitants in Eglise Neuve, twice the size of our village), to find a very quiet village square. We walked around the town hall, wondered if the meeting had been moved to a bigger venue to accommodate the large turn out ? Nope, after asking a local lady, we found out that the Mushroom Festival is ... next sunday! So we know nothing more about 'shrooms and I very well may be poisoned.