One of the delights of her life was mushroom foraging. She'd be gone a whole day, harvesting from her favorite haunts and bring home baskets and baskets of mushrooms.
As fate would have it, she was in her late 80s, lying on her death bed, in hospital, of stomach cancer. When the end was near, we were summoned to be with her. When I arrived, her sons and daughters [she had 11 children] were crowdwed around the bed. I recall this day so well, I was in my late teens then, and a lull in the conversation of sharing memories and good times, and in an effort to keep her mind off her pain. I piped up and said, "Gram, I'll always remember the delicious pot of mushrooms you'd make. I don't think any of us really were taught which mushrooms to pick were the *good* ones" How could you tell?*
She replied: *I didn't.*
Well! The look of horror and disbelief on the faces surrounding her bedside was almost funny. Most of us did laugh....but she quickly recovered by saying....when you cook wild mushrooms, always cook them with a real silver dollar in the pot. If the silver coin turns black...throw them out.
I always wondered why she kept a silver dollar on the stove shelf. Heh.
