Let's go hunting!

In a recent trip to the Black Forest, Katja led me into the woods, promising me an experience of a lifetime...

It wasn’t quite what I expected – she took me hunting!

To my surprise I loved it.  Getting face to face with nature is hugely liberating for us city folk.  Adjusting our senses to track our target was both fascinating and hugely rewarding. 

I was amazed by the inventiveness of natural camouflage, and loved the challenge of trying to pick out our quarry as it tried to blend with the background.  I also learned that you have to let the little ones get away – they’ll be bigger and juicier when you come back.  Who said hunters were bloodthirsty and barbaric?

Not that I deny the immense thrill of the chase.  In fact it was probably even more of a buzz than the actual capture – though I must admit there was a primitive pride in seizing our food directly from nature, free from chemicals and processing, and taking it straight home to slice up and cook.

And we didn’t do it the easy way either - we were on foot not horseback, armed not with hunting rifles but knives (albeit razor sharp ones).  Nor was there any ‘tally-ho’, beaters or master of the hunt, just a stealthy, methodical creep through the woods in pursuit of our target.

Best of all, our sport had all the thrills and spills of traditional hunting, but none of the bloodlust – no creature was killed, no pain inflicted for our pleasure:  we were hunting for mushrooms.

It’s hard for English folk to understand why the Tuscans go so mad for their truffles or the Bavarians for their blackcaps.  I was certainly puzzled – and concerned I was about to be poisoned.  I was not reassured to learn that the word toadstool comes from the German Todesstuhl - death's chair!

But Katja knew what to look for - it’s all down to the colour (brown, not white, black, grey or red), texture underneath (spongey, not smooth), and lustre (dull, not shiny).  Or you can also look for the presence of juices upon breaking, bruising reactions, odours, tastes, habitat, and season.  Or maybe it just depends on whether you are feeling lucky...

Actually most of the world has no such hang-ups.  Ancient Egyptians call mushrooms “the plant of immortality”, early Romans ‘the food of the gods’.  Now, of course, we’re all puny buttons compared with the giant toadstool of China, who not only make use of all sorts of funghi in eastern medicine, but also eat nearly 3kg a year for each of their billion inhabitants!

Seemingly it’s mainly squeamish Victorians who fretted about poisonous toadstools, spreading wariness across the English-speaking world.

In fact there’s a whole science of ‘ethnomycology’, the attitudes of different races to mushrooms.  Europe splits into us mycophobes in the north, traditionally afraid of mushrooms, and mycophages of the east (Germany, the Balkans and Russia) and south (Spain, Italy and southern France), who can’t get enough of them.

I am certainly thankful for the role of mushrooms in the ecosystem, recycling plants after they die and transforming them into rich soil – apparently if it wasn’t for fungi, the earth would be buried in debris and life on the planet would disappear.

And perhaps I should be happy about the magical elements too?  I’ve no desire to experiment with hallucinogens, but I suspect my fellow Oxford resident Lewis Carroll knew what he was talking about when he had Alice eat pieces of mushroom, as advised by a hookah-smoking caterpillar, which made her grow and shrink.

But we were hunting for food – so are they any good to eat?

I was surprised to learn just how nutritious they are – despite being 90% water, mushrooms are high in B vitamins, phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, even copper, and are a good source of fibre.  One portabella mushroom has more potassium than a banana!

Portabella in particular seem to have become popular as a low-calorie, fat-free substitute for meat.  But for me it’s Quorn which is the real wonder-food – a fungal protein indistinguishable from chicken meat in texture, taste and nutritional content - but without the salmonella, antibiotics and general nastiness of the broilerhouse.

Samuel Johnson rightly mused that "it is strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them".  

But if he had foraged with us in the forest, and only tasted our tortilla, I’m certain he would have made an exception for the noble sport of hunting for mushrooms!

The Power of ‘We’

It’s exactly twelve months since I arrived back in the UK, having spent the previous 2 years volunteering in a remote village in north-west Cambodia.  It’s also the anniversary of when I started blogging again, thanks to the powerful prompt of the annual Blog Action Day.

So what better time to reflect on the most challenging and rewarding decision I ever made - to volunteer with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)?  And what more pertinent question than how does VSO embody this year’s Blog Action Day theme, ‘the power of we’?

For a start VSO is about overcoming poverty – it brings together people from very different backgrounds and helps them to work together for a greater good.  It may be ungrammatical, but surely that, if anything, is the ‘power of we’?

What’s more, this is done very specifically at the invitation of and in partnership with local organizations.  Rather than dipping into areas where outsiders feel there’s a need, we got together with local people and agreed priorities.  

Perhaps most importantly, VSO – I think uniquely amongst major development organizations – works through volunteers.  No city-centric 4x4-driving ex-pats here – rather, professionals getting right out there to share their skills to help change lives.  I do believe there’s a distinction - a voluntary worker can create a different dynamic with local colleagues than a salaried employee.  In short you close the gap by living and working like your co-workers – no more ‘them and us’, just ‘we’.

I don’t pretend it’s a perfect organization.  There is much to do to focus on the areas of greatest need among and within countries (I doubt Cambodia is still in the ‘most needy’ category - it’s now on the gap year and even boutique honeymoon circuit!).  And modernization of a bureaucracy takes time, as seen through lumbering systems, hesitation in embracing openness, and tardiness in rising to challenges such reducing the wasteful turnover from failed placements or relentlessly ensuring resources are directed at the sharp-end.  Most of all VSO needs to start measuring success by outcomes in overcoming poverty rather than just by the number of volunteer bums on floors (seats - you’d be lucky!).   

But I’m here to praise not criticize – I think VSO is getting there, and is a fundamentally brilliant organization, one I am proud to be associated with.  That’s why, now I’m in the UK for a while, I’ve agreed to lead my local supporter group - and why Katja and I may even offer our services as volunteers again in the future. 

Having both enjoyed life-changing experiences during our placements (including, of course, having met each other!), we feel we are in a strong position to recommend VSO as an organization which really embodies the principles of volunteering, of working in partnership, and of helping the poor to help themselves – truly, ‘the power of we’.

Are you green enough?

You are approached by a spotty teenager asking you take a 'green test' - how do you respond?  

The direct “No”; the obtuse “Is Clearasil green?”; the passive-aggressive “Thanks but we're late for Top Gear”?

At the time I look shifty and mumble “Er ok then”.  Not that I'm worried - as an edgy-veggie tree-hugger, I'll ace her questions, right?

Well, I do score well on many counts.

Travel is a key polluter, so I proudly boast of cycling most places, and taking busses or trains for longer journeys – no nasty gas-guzzling car!

Home is a modest terrace, crammed with long-life lightbulbs and rechargeable batteries – and enjoying cavity wall and loft insulation plus a new-ish boiler.  What’s more, we've just changed electricity and gas supplier to Ecotricity (it’s them or Good Energy, it’s easy to do - and it costs the same!). 

Everyone recycles, but we do it despite Oxford council’s bizarre colour-coded bins (the green one? – well that’s obviously for… landfill; idiots).  Plus we just installed a home composter and water butt, so we’re two-up on the neighbours in green garden bingo. 

 “But what about money?” she asks, hopefully.  Well our bank and insurance are both with the Co-operative, the only highstreet bank with an ethical policy.  And I donate every month to Friends of the Earth, by subscription and affinity credit card. 

“Sure, giving is powerful” she concedes, “but are you an activist?”

I'm tempted to list my contribution to local cycling and pedestrian societies, recent help at Oxgrow community gardens, even my impending take-over of the Green party (maybe).

Instead I let her off with a gentle lecture on how activism begins at home - you have to role-model green behavior yourself.  Look at us:  we take take clothes to Oxfam, give away our old bed on Freecycle, purchase 'pre-loved' books from greenmetropolis.com – we even buy expensive eco-cleaning products and scrub twice as hard for the privilege!

To complete her green feast we talk food:  agriculture is a huge polluter, so our veggie lifestyle gets gold stars (if you still eat farty cows you’re on naughty step!).  What’s more, we subscribe to Abel and Cole, home delivered and locally produced – the only flies on us are organic!

Taking a triumphant swig of my banana smoothie, I wink at the poor outclassed youth, and make to leave.

Not so fast!

“Um, at what temperature do you heat your home?”.  Ok, it’s a small chink – having recently returned from warmer climes it’s on a lot, even in ‘summer’.  At least she doesn’t know we’re ripping out a perfectly good bathroom for purely aesthetic reasons.

“And you make a good point about money – are your mortgage and pension also green?”  Er, well, I don’t control those, my pensions is through work and mortgage through a broker so, um, dunno.

"Hmm, and you don't grow your own?   But don’t worry, at least that nice organic food you get is local” she adds kindly.  True - apart from the Chilean wine,  Caribbean bananas, Andean choccies…  Our cheesy grins also hide an uncomfortable truth:  we're innocent at the butchers, but pretty guilty at the dairy counter…

“It’s great that you cycle though”.  

And then the killer blow: “So can I just check - have you flown anywhere in the last couple of years?”

Only to Kenya and a couple of times to bloody Cambodia, the other side of the overheating world.  And that’s before a possible skiing holiday, let alone persuading several dozen loved-ones to trek to Germany next year for our impending nuptials – how can that be green?

My environmental credentials are unraveling quicker than the student’s badly-knitted Afghan ethno-hat.  I really do make to leave.

“Do you want to hear your score?”