An (un)usual Bavarian weekend

I got one word to summarize the weekend: FUNGHI. We had a funghi weekend, let me explain. Two weeks ago, we went to the Wald (woods) near my working place. I work in a tiny town 20 minutes from München. It’s amazing the places you can find so close to the city, I mean, for landscapes like this it would seem you need to drive for hours!

A truly magical forest

I truly love these types of forests, the ones where you get lost in no time, where the cellphone signal is completely gone and you just walk around waiting to find the Caperucita Roja (the little red riding hood). Just look at the floor, it was so fluffy I can’t even tell you.

Weekend walk through the woods

Anyways, the funghi, yes. The floor was full of funghi staring at us, like they wanted to be taken home and get cooked. My husband, a typical hombre, wanted to touch, smell and eat them all right there. Me, as a typical latina, stared at him “in spanish” (like this!) and that was the end of the story. But he had a good point: free funghi for the rest of the winter if we go hunting with an expert. So we went with an Italian friend who has been harvesting funghi since he was a kid just like his papá, his abuelo, and a million generations before him. For Italians and Germans, picking mushrooms in the forests it’s the most natural thing to do in autumn, so for them this is a clasical autumn weekend, for us, it was a first. Turns out half of the mushrooms that looked yummy were evil, he even told us that if you eat one of the really evil funghi you won’t even make it to the hospital in time to survive. You see now why it’s very important for you esposas to learn to “stare in spanish”.

Mushroom family

Wild funghis

There are a lot of types of mushrooms, the ones that rule this Bavarian forest are the Honey Mushrooms or “Chiodini” as the Italians call them  (the ones on the right). These mushrooms are poisonous raw, but when you cook them the right way they are muy buenos! You gotta take a good knife and a basket with you, plastic bags will ruin the poor funghi and the environment too so, don’t. It’s important that you cut them with a knife, that way the funghi can grow again. By the end of the day we collected about 5 kg of the famous “chiodini”. I gotta tell you, I LOVED this experience, it kinda takes you back to the roots, to simpler times. We were really proud and cold, so we headed back to the casa for the second part of the weekend, the cooking of the funghi. This story I have to tell in another post. It’s really worth it so stay tuned!