Foragers Diary; Sweden October 2018

My recent trip to Sweden with my oldest son Michael should have yielded a bit more wild food than it actually did, our plan was to do some fishing, now we dedicated a whole day to fishing but didn't actually catch any fish, we did though find some delicious fungi to incorporate into our meals.

Michael has grown very adept at spotting penny buns or as the Swedes call the karljohann svamp, the year one of the most sought after culinary mushrooms in Europe and absolutely delicious, it was too late in the season to find many but we found enough to supplement our first meal at our camp site near Ullsjön. 

Frying the penny buns in the lid of our billy can before adding them to our meal of meatballs and rice. 

We found plenty of crow berries and blue berries but they were all far past their best and not worth picking. 

 

We found a really good haul of hedgehog fungi, something I don't see a lot of in the UK although it isn't rare here, and made several meals of them. They are known as blek taggsvamp in Swedish but don't be confused by google translate, if you type 'hedgehog mushroom in Swedish' into google you may find it leads you astray. hedgehog in Swedish is igelkott and the Swedish word for lions mane fungi is igelkottstaggsvamp (literally hedgehog spine mushroom) but that isn't the same as this. 

A billy can lid full of delicious fungi, we made skewers with some of them and picked more for a stew later in our trip. 

It wasn't only in the wilderness that we found mushrooms, I've said before that the UK is behind the rest of Europe as far as wild food, particularly mushrooms, are concerned and this just highlights that. This is Hötorget in central Stockholm and the market stalls are loaded with Chanterrelles and other fresh produce, I haven't seen anything like this in the UK.  

Even the manikins in the outdoor shops are out picking mushrooms. 

Check back in tomorrow for more about our adventures in Sweden.