Foraging for fungi in France newsletter

Bonjour,

I hope that you and yours are well.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like summer just whizzed by and here we are, autumn is knocking on the door! And with the new season comes a new issue of The Good Life France Magazine.

The autumn 2024 edition is chock-a-block full of fabulous features – Paris, Bordeaux, Brittany, Corsica, Narbonne, Minerve, the Languedoc, Lyon and more. There are guides galore and ravishing recipes from the crème de la crème of the French culinary world. History, culture and fantastic photos. It’s a beautiful issue and it’s FREE as always, just click here to read:

The Good Life France Magazine Autumn 2024

If you like it, please share it, it is free to everyone – and to those who read and share it, thank you so much, it’s enormously appreciated.

French philosopher Albert Camus once said, ‘autumn is like a second spring when every leaf is a flower.’ And as I walk the dogs along the narrow roads in my little corner of rural France, the hedges are festooned with plum-hued berries and plump rose hips, and the leaves of the trees are already starting to turn the colours of an autumn rainbow.

Mushrooms are flourishing early after our damp, cool summer. They’re sprouting from tree trunks and forest floors, and lurking under hedges. Wandering through the woods, we encounter basket-carrying neighbours, foraging for fungi – chestnut coloured, flashy yellow and coral and polka-dotted, like something out of a fairy tale, girolles, chanterelles and cèpes. I have only foraged once – with my friend Annette. We collected several species which she was sure were edible but to be certain we visited a friend who is said to be a mushroom expert. I should have known better when he compared our haul with faded drawings in a more than century old book.

“Yep, they’re all good, delicious cooked in butter” he assured us, kissing his fingers and closed his eyes, enraptured at the thought.

I insisted we double check at the pharmacy, many of them offer a free mushroom review! Viewing our earthy loot through thick round glasses the pharmacist put them all back in the basket bar one. “This one, non, unless you are unhappily married” he grinned. We trembled at the thought of what might have been. “Would it kill my husband if I had given him that one” asked my friend, turning a ghostly shade of pale at the thought.

“Nope” said the pharmacist “but he would spend a week in the toilette!”

Wishing you a very bon weekend, and a very happy autumn, and especially very happy reading of The Good Life France Magazine.

Bisous from a non-mushroom picker in France
Janine
Editor

Top photo: Did somebody say autumn is here!? Paris, by photographer/artist Dawne Polis.

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Janine Marsh is Author of My Good Life in France: In Pursuit of the Rural Dream, My Four Seasons in France: A Year of the Good Life and Toujours la France: Living the Dream in Rural France all available as ebook, print & audio, on Amazon everywhere & all good bookshops online. Her new book How to be French – a celebration of the French lifestyle and art de vivre, is out now – a look at the French way of life.

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