A Girl...

The Mushroom Incident

That is what is known as a "Before Picture." By the look on his face, it's almost as if Simon knew in the taking that he was posing for a Before Picture. For behold, in the pan, partial ingredients of the mushroom breakfast that almost killed the groom and the man of honor the day before the wedding!

Kilo, as I have mentioned, likes to traipse about the forest with a wicker basket and collect various wild things--some for the eating and some merely for the looking at and comparing with the picture in the Mushroom Field Guide under the section labeled POISONOUS. Friday morning he was showing Simon how these little puffballs are poisonous and these little puffballs, which look exactly the same, are not. "See, when you slice them up *slice slice slice* you can see that the insides are different. Now let's cook up these non-poisonous ones and eat them for breakfast, shall we, mate?"

And so the knife that was used to cut open the poison mushrooms was also used to cut open the non-poison mushrooms, including the "chicken of the woods" variety, which tastes and feels just like chicken and is completely delicious (I'd had some the day before), and which you see in all its fluorescent glory in the pan in the photo above. Simon and Kilo ate heartily of the mushrooms and about twenty minutes later Simon surprised me in the bathroom where I was taking a shower (first one in England!) with a groan of "Those mushrooms aren't agreeing with my stomach. I think I'm going to be sick."

After only about a minute in the moist and steamy room, he declared that he needed to get some fresh air, and then it was just mere moments until I heard him outside the bathroom window barfing into the rosebushes. Poor little fellow.

Kilo said he'd was feeling kind of iffy himself, but he wasn't definitively sick. As the morning wore on, however--and as speculation grew that it wasn't just Simon's reaction to too many strange fungi but actually poisionous knife residue!--he decided to take matters into his own hands and, failing the old finger-to-the-uvula trick, took a look at what I will delicately call the "After Picture" in living color and smell (sorry!) and divested himself of his breakfast as well. Better safe than dead, right?

And so the groom and the man of honor lived to see the wedding, but not without having their near-death story told and laughed about countless times among all their dearest family and friends, the end.

And yes, an After Picture does exist, and no, I didn't take it, and no, I haven't looked at it, and no, I'm not going to post it, so rest easy, people.