There’s a common number required for drinking vodka in Ukraine: 3

The rationale is fairly straightforward, but I still thought it was funny. First of all, this is something you don’t usually see in the States, but is commonplace here. Three grown men sitting (or standing) around a small picnic basket type something-or-other, placed carefully under a tree, on some grass, occasionally discreet, but not always. As an observer, I know this is a somewhat planned meal (drink) because of the way the blanket is laid out and glasses are positioned in front of each person. Not everyone carries around a personal glass – so somebody must have been thinking ahead.

I kinda think of it like 3 little kids playing “tea” together. You know, when you are 5 years old, and you ask the neighbor’s kids on either side of your house to come over for a “tea party.” It’s for this reason that it strikes such a funny chord in me — as I see grown men sitting around a tree, with a little blanket placed on the grass, sitting around getting sloshed.

The above is just a re-enactment, as I’m highly reluctant to break out my camera and photograph 3 adult men around a vodka bottle without knowing who they are, and that they won’t take offense to my picture-taking…

Anyway, the reason for 3 people is straightforward:

#1 The normal bottle contains 750 mL of booze.

#2 Divided by 3, this is (for you math experts), 250 mL each.

#3 250 mL (or one glass) is the optimal amount of alcohol to get the average man drunk.

#4 Price is not a determining factor! It has much more to do with amount. One is trying to obtain that perfect level of inebriation, whatever the (usually cheap) cost is.

#5 Two people is NOT enough. That is TOO much vodka, and you may hurt yourself walking home. Moreover, drunk people always argue — and 2 people are highly likely to get into a fight, which obviously has poor consequences for one or both men.

#6 Four people is TOO many. If you are not satisfied with your drunkenness, dissatisfaction can easily turn into violent actions towards your recently corralled buddies.

#7 Next point –> You don’t have to do this with friends. If you need a third person, you simply ask any able-bodied man you spot in front of the store, just before the big (daily) purchase. Hell, it can be a good way to make new friends.

#8 Also, three is a reflection of the spiritual trinity. Many things in Slavic culture revolve around the number “3″. I could give you lots and lots of this, but I’ll save it for another post.

Suffice it to say that when you are needing to get your goat on, just pool together $4-5 for a bottle, grab a few cups, find a couple of mates and a nice spot on the grass to lay your blanket down.

A common pastime for many Ukrainians is the hunt for mushrooms. Not for hallucinations, but for food and perhaps (nowadays) even more importantly, the thrill of the hunt. Admittedly, I had never done this before. I thought it was kind of boring and stupid, and potentially very dangerous. This is largely true, until you find an edible beauty hidden under the dry foliage. Somehow everyone else missed it, but you noticed! Though I had my fair share of doubts, once this happened to me I was hooked! (see below)

The first outing was a pretty poor experience, particularly for my (often inflated) ego. This was back in July, shortly after I took up residence in Kyiv. H, A and I started off walking from our summer house. We walked between the “peasant’s” houses and through the adjoining fields. The summer house is more or less surrounded by forest, and it borders a “smallish” river (a tributary of the Dnepr). The region right around the “development” was re-forested after WWII and extend for at least 30 km around Kyiv. I’m not sure about the extent or age of these forests, really… but these are educated guesses from what I’ve seen with my own eyes. Thus, I don’t know specifically what happened to the land here (back then), but it’s pretty obvious that it was all cut down for one reason or another… and subsequently replanted in large areas within a few years of each other (the forests surrounding Kyiv appear to be fairly uniform in tree size and density). The trees vary in type, from pines to aspens. Perhaps I will try to find out more precise information and add it later.

Anyhow, it is an interesting forest just because of the fact that the trees are all in rows. Kinda creepy in comparison to Western U.S. (natural) forests; sometimes if feels like I’m in an episode of “the Shining.” After assuaging the creepiness, I’ve come to appreciate it, even though it is obviously unnatural.

So we depart, and it takes about 10 minutes to get out to, and cross the highway to get into the main forest. Almost immediately H and A search for the proper equipment: a stick about a meter long – sturdy enough to adroitly pick at the ground, but not so heavy that you get tired of its (continual) use. On the first trip, I brought my pitching wedge, thinking I would be clever. Plus, I desperately missed hitting the golf ball, and figured I could hone a few skills in the forest. (and no, I didn’t lose a ball… yet)

Let’s just say that it wouldn’t have mattered if I had been tracking a starving pig through the forest — there was no way that I was going to find a mushroom (overly expensive truffles or otherwise). Not as a complete novice, and not as a totally “green” rookie on his first mushroom hunt.

Honestly, it was embarrassing. They said over and over, like a skipping 45, “don’t worry… just keep trying, you’ll get it.” So I did. I kept going. But as the hour(s) passed, and I still had not discovered a single mushroom, I felt as if hunting for shrooms just wasn’t my “cup of tea.” Sulking in my own apathy, I decided to break out my trusty Titleist ProVI (golf ball) I had in my pocket, and proceeded to practice my chipping while A and H kept the search going.

Every few minutes I would hear “Da, Zdiez,” meaning “yes, here” — and the other two of us would run over to where the discovery was made to check it out. Their take that day was pretty good, as you can see on the right! Mine was nil.

Let’s try this again…

We returned to the summer house the following weekend, and of course, A and H wanted to go mushroom hunting again. I reluctantly agreed, as they assured me that I will get better at it. I assured them that I couldn’t possibly get worse (!), so why not. I recalled a beauty that my wife found last time we were out (see picture below — notice the golf glove and the T-shirt). ‘I know I can do it,’ I whispered to my inner self. Just relax – you can find them… just like they do.

So we started out across the road towards our [now] usual hunting grounds. Hunters (actually we’d be more like gatherers I suppose) tend to return to areas where historically there have been plenty of mushrooms — and in particular, where hopefully only a few people know about. Keeping secrets about hunting grounds is a serious issue around here. Anyway, because mushrooms are fungi, a typical mechanism for their growth involves an invisible threadlike web throughout the soil. Every once in a while when the conditions are just right, a “mushroom” will attempt to split the soil and grow towards the sunlight and air. When you remove the top of the shroom there is still plenty of “tissue” left underground. This network is primed to sprout again and again. In fact, many are there buried in the soil already — but are too small to see — so we wait a day or two, or perhaps a week, and return to the same spot with high hopes. Importantly, certain conditions (soil, temp, humidity, etc…) foster the growth of different types of mushrooms in particular forest niches. So once you know of a good area, it is wise to keep returning if the weather has remained about the same = and remember to keep your mouth shut regarding its precise location. In fact, if anyone sees you and your basket of mushrooms, it is completely acceptable to give them false information and point them in the wrong direction. In other words, if you tell your neighbors precisely where you got these fabulous Bolet’s, you probably won’t ever find them there again unless you are up at the crack of dawn on the Thursday or Friday before the weekend hunters arrive at their summer houses.

On with the instructions.

Wild mushrooms are amazing! Many can be made used in diverse and very tasty ways. Some lend themselves to pickling, some are great in soups, and others are best fried up with some butter.
As might be expected, we have many different kinds edible and inedible mushrooms in the Ukrainian forests. King Boletes (Boletus edulis), Slippery Jack’s (Boletus granulatus) chanterelles (Cantharellus formosus and subalbidus), Polish brown’s, and many others are edible. Remember though, you never want to eat a freshly picked mushroom!

Alrighty — to be totally honest, I don’t really know shit about mushrooms, and I’m only passing on some personal experiences — but for heaven’s sake, do some research before you pick and/or eat any wild, non-store-bought mushrooms. My advice, ALWAYS boil them to remove trace elements that are almost always there. Mushrooms you buy in the supermarket lack toxins, and those alone can be eaten RAW. Hopefully everyone that reads this blog (or anything else relating to wild mushroom hunting) knows that many mushrooms are VERY TOXIC — and you can DIE if you eat the wrong ones no matter how you treat them (boiling, etc…). Every year “experienced” mushroom hunters are sent to emergency rooms because they ate some mushrooms that looked identical to edible ones!!! I am only a novice in this regard (and only restrict myself to pick what local hunters tell me to take), and I only eat mushrooms that I’ve been promised are edible. EVEN THEN… we always double- or triple-boil our mushrooms after cleaning them (removing the dirt), just to remove trace amount of toxins from the ones that are considered to be edible! This being stated… a couple of very fundamental rules exist (though all rules can be broken). First, if they are brightly colored — STAY AWAY — they are likely to be very toxic. Secondly, if the underside of the cap has “gills or slits” instead of “pores,” then STAY AWAY.

Here’s an example of a toxic one (left), reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. I was so scared, that the picture is blurry because I couldn’t hold the camera still. Just looking at it gave me the creeps… Really. Another one that I thought was beautiful (and is obviously TOXIC) is shown on the right. I would recommend to NEVER even touch brightly colored, gilled, and/or spotted mushrooms. They can be very toxic, and even the surfaces can leave toxic molecules on your fingers which can lead to rashes where you really, really would prefer to not have them. Think about it — do you ever see these mushrooms in the markets? NO — and for good reason!! Stay away. More often than not (so I’m told), the mushrooms with “pores” on the underside of their caps are edible (though this is a generalization). The opposite is true also, a significantly smaller number of “gilled” mushrooms can be boiled and eaten. Also, it’s generally good to look for mushrooms that are fairly drab colored (brown, tan, white) and WITHOUT SPOTS. Notice in the picture with multiple mushrooms (a couple of pictures up) that some have gills and others have pores. All of these are/were edible. Alrighty… enough of the scare tactics.

So how do you look for them? Well, you are supposed to scan the ground constantly in a “sweeping motion” with your eyes, primarily looking for bumps in the ground; irregularities in the foliage covering the forest floor that may indicate something underneath. Of course, rocks, sticks, sand, twigs, pine cones, bones, dirt, ant hills, leaves, etc… can make the ground look uneven, and give you false positives. In “our” forest, the ground cover is predominantly pine needles, leaves, and twigs from this season’s decomposing biomass. I’m no idiot, and hence the instructions were fairly clear to me. What was less clear was the more important aspect to hunting — it really helps if you have a “sense” of where the mushrooms should be. I ignored that instruction for the time being, assuming that my vision was going to serve me best at the moment. One of the issues is that forests are often dark, or at best, dimly lit.We went on our way, and being the second time that I’m doing this I felt confident that I would find something. To make a long story short, I returned to playing golf again. I don’t know what my problem is (was). I’ve always considered myself a keen observer. Moreover, I’m a highly trained scientist who relies on his eyes to provide sometimes indescribable data and information. How could my two hunter colleages (wife and brother-in-law) be finding mushrooms every few minutes, and I can’t spot a single one? Oh wait — that’s right… they’ve been doing it for over 20 years! Practice makes perfect at this game. I found nothing and was disheartened.

So on the third trip to the forest, the golf club was forsaken. I had to concentrate. I had to think like a hunter or gatherer or whatever. I had to THINK like a mushroom hunter. I know I’ve felt like a mushroom before, but imagining where mushrooms would want to grow is something else, right? Must focus. Commit. Need clarity. Attention. Perseverance. Maybe a touch of clairvoyance. ‘You can do it,’ I think to myself. Do it… Do it…

And I did.

Without a doubt, it was one of the most glorious days of my Ukrainian life. Granted, this beast could have been picked up on Google Earth… but still… I did it.

I was still slow at this, and it took another ~30 minutes before I found my second one. Slowly but surely, though, I began seeing the bumps (not the shrooms sticking out in the open, but ones covered by foliage) in the dimly lit forest floor. At first, it really helped to start looking around other successful finds and areas where mushrooms were already picked by people that beat us to the punch. They grow in patches because of their elaborate underground network. So where one is, there are likely to be more. Thus, on the third day of actively scanning the earth surface, I began spotting them. My eyes were getting trained.

They felt as if they got BIGGER! I trained myself to begin picking up on the subtle differences in continuity of the forest floor. Textures, colors, shapes and patterns begain piercing my retinas (metaphorically speaking). I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but it was like a light bulb turned on in my head. Quite literally, my visual cortex began making sense of what was once senseless. Shortly thereafter, I began wondering the forest on my own — or at least at a significant distance from my companion hunters.

I found another one. A Beauty! I was beside myself. Sure, sure… it looks like it’s sticking out so much you could trip on it. But believe it or not, when you are LOOKING so hard for something, while being visually distracted by light rays, branches, leaves, etc…, these buggers blend right in. Camouflage is their only defense (for edible ones)! They don’t exactly want to get ripped out of the ground and boiled. Would you?

So now that I’ve scared the bejeesus out of you, here are some pics of one of our more recent hunts at the end of the season (September). We collected them, brought them back to the kitchen, and began the weeding out process. Unfortunately, even though we checked for worms in the field, many mushrooms were delicious homes to worms. Usually you can spot the holes in the severed stems. If needing further inspection in the field, cut the mushroom in half and look for wormholes in the cap’s flesh. If it’s un-salvageable, leave it for the worms. Nevertheless, some look perfect until you get them home and begin the cleaning. To clean we cut off the bottom of the stem containing entrenched dirt and earth. Mushrooms that haven’t been thoroughly cleaned have an enamel piercing gritty flavor — which is completely a turn off — so clean them well. So we cut off all the dirty bits, worm-ridden parts (though worms are edible!), and tossed the pine needles. Remember to get rid of the dirt and sand (worms aren’t noticed in the final prep, but dirt is… so clean well. They should look something like the picture to the left. Once cleaned, we boiled them in several changes of well-salted water, for at least ~20 minutes each. We drained the water and let the shrunken limp mass cool to room temperature. From that point on they are edible in whatever context you so desire. It’s really up to the chef to decide what to do with them. We often cut them up and sautee them. However, they can also be pickled and kept for quite a while (years) on the shelf.

Alrighty… I’m kind of tired of writing at this point. I think I’ll give it a rest and go study some more Russian. Perhaps I’ll add something more later. Maybe a few pictures of final products Have a great weekend!

Bud Zdarov.

Ridiculous, selfish, stupid, macho, sexy, stupid, cool, classy, stupid, suave, elegant, and still… stupid.

They just don’t get it. Granted, it’s not all that different in Ukraine than in other parts of Europe (and the rest of the world) — but I thought there was some 100th monkey effect with some things we humans do. And I thought that addictively inhaling tar into one’s lungs was one of them — in fact, one of the more obvious stupidities.

Why do so many Ukrainians smoke cigarettes? Oh, maybe it’s the ads. They are everywhere. Billboards, buildings, airports, cars, markets, stickers, signs, etc… Or, maybe it’s because they are dirt fucking cheap. I saw some packs for $0.30 US Dollars. Yes. 30 cents — for a pack of 20. Stupid Americans are paying WAAAAY too much for a pack-o-smokes.

Maybe it’s because it restricts the blood flow to your peripheral structures – namely your skin – and thus, it helps keep your warmth inside during the winter. But wait a second, they smoke year round! Or, maybe it is because everyone does it – and to be cool – you can do it too! And you can kill yourself doing it — WAAAAY COOOOL.

Or, maybe it’s because it make your clothes smell like shit and makes your teeth brown. That’s always attractive. It leaves a great impression, over and over again.
Who knows? But damn it I get pissed off when they so readily throw their wrappers, packs, and butts anywhere and everywhere. Oh wait – they do that with everything, not just cigarette paraphernalia. But, that’s for another post.