MUSHROOMING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19291, 1 April 1926, Page 5

MUSHROOMING.

BY R. W. HOW. You must be afield not later than six o'clock in the morning, before the farmbands have come or the rest of the house is astir. An old dress, no stockings and a pair of sandals or rubber shoes are sufficient clothing to throw on, and then out into the dew-soaked fields, with the mist still hanging in the hollows and the shadows of the woods making long, dark path's on the sunlit meadow. The clouds that scurry across the sky before the morning breeze leap in shadow up the hillside, the warm sun is on your fa.C'3, the wet grass cold against- your bare ankles, and who would not go mushrooming in the morning? You require a largo basket, for the warm, moist nights produce a crop of mushrooms regularly at every dawn, and there is no need on these mornings to slink back through the farmyard with two or three nestling in the bottom of a shopping bag. They gleam pearly white and are seen easily in the thick, bright grass that the rains have sweetened and the animals kept so short. Big, flat ones, little ones with pink edges iust showing, and the pretty buttons—they all go in the basket, even those that were missed at last night's gathering and are slightly frayed and look as " though they had not washed their faces in the morning, for they can all be used. After an hour's work the basket is nearly full, and you return down the slope* toward the farm. There will be mushrooms frying with the breakfast bacon, mushrooms in the big steak pudding for dinner, and in the cold rabbit pie for supper. In a day or two there, will be bottles of mushroom ketchup in the storeroom, for all the "not-quite-so-good" ones will go into the preserving pan with salt and vinegar and turn into the appetising relish. The early morning "is the best of the day. after all, especially the golden beauty of sn autumn morning, and the hour or two before breakfast gives you an appetite not 0111 v for the dish your efforts have provided, but, for the mornings work that follows.