A recent visitor to Leuven University, near Brussels, writes of waking one morning to find the manicured lawn outside his window dotted with pure white mushrooms. For two days he watched as the original mushrooms grew bigger and browner, and new mushrooms popped up. No one picked them, and, on the third day, the lawn had been mowed, the mushrooms had disappeared - and so had the opportunity for one of the tastiest free meals around. But those mushrooms triggered memories of magical childhood hunts in English deciduous woods boletus edulis - a large brown-domed mushroom, with a sponge-like base in place of gills. Our correspondent, coming from a Central European family, knew that the boletus was one of the most prized of mushrooms and, when they went mushrooming, it was almost always families from Germany, Poland or Hungary whom they met on the same quest. When they encountered others on this treasure hunt, secrecy and subterfuge was the order of the day, for - like a journalist - one never revealed one's sources. Back home, they were sliced into foaming butter (those were the days) creating such a wonderful aroma that all the family clamoured to be fed. Boletus are surprisingly rarely found in Ireland (or else the sources are being jealously guarded!), but this is the time of year when, across the country, field mushrooms are waiting to be picked. A quarter-of-a-century ago, kids used to sell mushrooms, threaded on reeds, at the roadside in the West. Are children still prepared to earn money from the humble mushroom?
In Leuven, our correspondent tells of a beautiful herb garden, hidden away behind a small restaurant where few visitors would ever see it. Each bed was surrounded by a perfectly trimmed miniature yew hedge that would have done credit to the most formal public garden. He watched as the chef lovingly picked a variety of herbs for that evening's dinner - the care lavished on the garden held the promise of a delicious meal. Pity (that the wild mushrooms weren't used), but the food was delicious!