wild mushrooms

I forgot how good mushrooms are. We found wild mushrooms under the old gum trees when we arrived in McLaren Vale 15 years ago. Blissfully pungent big brown monsters that fried up with butter and garlic as our regular weekend feast. Some kind of poison entered the food chain. Across the Vale it was rumoured that eating wild mushrooms made you sick. Our neighbours got really sick. We noticed a yellow tinge, and sometimes a red streak appeared in our mushrooms and the taste had changed, there was now a bitter after taste and when you cooked them it was acrid, we'd lost our wild mushrooms. Locals arriving at restaurants proudly presenting their foragers bounty of fungus were turned away. I called experts and was put onto the next expert, all said there were no tests to be sure the mushrooms were safe because they could only test for what they knew, and they couldn't test for what they didn't know.. which all made sense at the time. We all stopped foraging. Until this year. David stumbled across some particularly fine looking mushrooms and broke them, open, clean, white. Tasted. Fresh, delicate, earth. How precious they seem now, more exotic than imported truffles. Carefully we watch and pick them just as they break through the soil. Now we cook them in Olive Oil, still with garlic and savour with quiet respect.