Rune's Presenation, part II

photo (c) Fred Stevens
from a website on mushrooms, see link below.

This is continued from Rune's presentation part I, here.  This is a little bit of editing and a little bit of addition to the last post.  I added a photo (above) from this website:

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            A picture of Rune's grandmother holding small tan mushrooms came up next.  She had a pained looking half-smile. 
"The second mushroom my grandmother taught me to collect and eat was a small tan mushroom she variously called a fairy ring mushroom and a tan toadstool. It’s Latin name is Marasmius oreades.”

Another shot showed the mushrooms growing in a circle.  “They grown in a circle,” Rune said, “As they use up the food in the center.  Some circles get hundreds of feet across.”  A third shot showed their peculiar hat-like shape. “Toadstools,” Rune said, "are often considered poisonous, that is, anything called a toadstool is usually thought of as poisonous.  Everyone in my neighborhood when I was a child called these toadstools and were horrified that we collected and ate them.  But they were good.  Extremely good.  And I am still alive.”

Rune passed a handout to the boy at the corner seat. “Here are some recipes for fairy-ring mushroom soup, fairy-ring rice pilaf and others, along with some links to other recipes.  I got these off the internet.  My grandmother, my mother and I always used these mushrooms like any other—cut the stems off first—in stir fries, on pizza, in lasagna, or fried in butter and served as a side dish.”

NOTE:  Although this is a novel and the STORY is from the imagination, the plot and characters, parts of it are true, and this but about my grandmother and the mushrooms is true and from my real childhood.  These are, in fact, the mushrooms we ate.
I do not, however, have any pictures of my grandmother with mushrooms (I don't think) In fact, I have very few pictures of her, as she did not like to have her picture taken.  Here is one.  

I am the kind of dy-eee-ah looking child on the left of the photo.  My grandmother (the one who gathered mushrooms, though my other grandmother may also have gathered mushrooms) is the one in the center, between my mother and father.  


continued, part III