Discovering the North

Gastronomic Adventures in the Land of 1,000 Lakes

A “back to nature” trip to Finland was planned for August. We, a Russian-German group of four friends, met in Laappenranta and took a bus to the town of Anntola on the banks of Saimaa Lake. We booked canoes through Guide Tiina, owned by a tiny Finnish woman of about 40 who devoted her life to exploring Saimaa by kayak in summer or skiing in winter. Tiina gave us two canoes, waterproof barrels and a laminated map of the lake - her own creation and something she was very proud of.

We were enjoying our adventure – paddling, swimming, laying on rocks in the sun, exploring empty islands of the Lakeland and eating. The woods were full of wild berries and high-quality mushrooms: red chantarelles, orange birch boletes, grey oyster mushrooms. Lyolya and I, the two Russians in the group, let our mushroom passions run wild. We wanted our German friends to share our dietary plan to live on nature’s gifts.

While berries are definitely safer for picking, mushrooms are trickier. Almost all wild sorts have poisonous look-alikes, but experienced collectors like us had nothing to worry about, we thought.

On the fifth day the weather changed. We were happy to reach one of the islands marked on the map as good for a night’s stay. We found a fully equipped kitchen with a fireplace on the shore. It was time to make dinner. And what luck, our dinner’s ingredients grew right under our feet! We saw several huge penny buns also known as king mushrooms just steps from the kitchen. Going further into the woods we found more and more of them.

The water was boiling on the fire and the mushrooms were about to be added to the broth, when we saw a motorboat approach the island. Two teenage Finnish boys had come to grill sausages on the fire. They saw the pile of penny buns we were about to cook. One of the boys started putting our mushrooms into two piles. He explained that more than half of them were poisonous! He showed us the porous texture of the cap and the greenness underneath it and explained that those were the signs of the evil twins. They probably saved our lives.

Our mushroom mistake gave the other members of our party the right to protest our “gifts of the woods” dietary plan. The following day they insisted on paddling to the store to buy sausages and beer. The rest of our trip we ate store-bought Finnish food and were reminded of how listening to locals in strange lands can be crucial to making it home alive.