More Dots and Mushroom Picking

This weekend was very relaxing. On Saturday, Callie and I returned to Driv for another free meal and afternoon of decorating. Our task was the same as Friday, taping strings to dots. At the session, we learned that the dots were for the Stoplight party that night at Driv. The Stoplight party was a social gathering where people wore a certain color, green, yellow, or red, depending on their relationship status. You wore red if you were in a relationship, yellow if you were not in a relationship but not single- the in-between stage of dating and not dating, and green if you were single.

Only a few of the 3,000 red dots we made...ugh

The Spotlight party sounded really fun, but the decorations were taking forever. We had to put together 3,000 red dots, 3,000 yellow dots, and 3,000 green dots. It seemed a little unnecessary to me to have 9,000 dots for one night of dancing. By the end of the afternoon, I was sick of looking at dots.

Callie and I didn’t go to the Spotlight party because again, we were both feeling a little under the weather. Instead, I made an iced coffee and watched the latest episodes of White Collar. I absolutely love this TV series.

Today I got to go mushroom picking with Olga! I was so excited to go pick mushrooms. I remember how interested I was when I had talked to Olga while she was cleaning the mushrooms she had collected at Grøtfjord. Callie accompanied us because she wanted to learn even though she doesn’t like mushrooms.



Ducks we encountered by the lake



We headed out around mid-morning and even though it was raining, the forest was gorgeous. While walking we came across a small lake located to the south-west of Stakkevollan. In the lake was a flock of Mallard ducks and a few sea gulls. Of course I stopped to look at them since I love watching animals. After about a couple minutes, they started swimming to where I was. Eventually they walked onto to the land and started squawking at me. People probably come here and feed them bread, thus they associate people like me with food. I would have loved to feed them bread, but I didn’t have any with. Plus, let’s be honest, I can hardly afford bread for myself.

The three types of mushrooms we collected were Russula, Birch Bolete, and King Bolete. It is important you pick the right mushrooms and prepare them the right way because some mushrooms are toxic. Therefore, it was nice that Olga could teach me how to identify safe mushrooms and how to prepare them properly. The rest of the day was spent cleaning my mushrooms which was a three stop process of boiling, boiling again, and frying. For dinner I made spaghetti and incorporated the mushrooms into a tomato sauce. Yum. More mushroom hunting in the future.

Russula, Birch Bolete, and King Bolete mushrooms