Mushrooms in Lithuania with Tomas Baltušis
Alex Dorr
Today we travel to Lithuania to explore Dzūkija National Park and experience nugrybauti which is a lithuanian word that means to get lost in the woods while looking for mushrooms. We sit down with Tomas Baltušis, an avid mushroom hunter to take us on a gastronomic and fungal diversity safari of Lithuania. Tune in and shroom in to todays episode.
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TRANSCRIPT
Alex, welcome. Welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dorr, and we are absolutely obsessed with the wonderful, wacky, mysterious world of mushrooms and fungi. We bring on guests and experts from all around the globe to geek out with us and go down this rabbit hole to try to figure out what the heck is going on with these fungal friends of ours. So today, we have Thomas baltucius from Lithuania to talk about mushroom hunting in the forest of Lithuania, and what to expect when you when you go out into the woods and look under your feet. So, Thomas, how you doing? Yeah. Hi. Hi. Alex, great. Great. Awesome. So, amazing. Yeah. So, before we jumped in, you said, I'm not a mycologist, but I love mushrooms. And yeah, I think that's that's true. 99% of us on this on this podcast. So who are you? What are you up to in Lithuania? Okay, so the short version of stories that I used to be a civil engineer, and like 10 years ago, I decided to change my life. And I moved to zucchini National Park, build up a house, a vacation Wheeler, and now I'm inviting guests and do a lot of fun things there with them or for them. It's like mushroom hunting, kayaking, whatever, bicycling going into the swamps, etc, etc. So that's who I am. That's a rough life. I feel bad for you. Can be a lot worse, yeah, and how did you originally get into mushrooms and fungi? Was it a family lineage thing? Did your dad or grandpa take you out, or, or grandma, mom or, or, were you the first in generation? Okay, yes, and no. You know what was the situation. I was born during the Soviet era. We used to belong to Soviet Union. And, you know, during the Soviet times, we we didn't have so much fun things to do, like a leisure activities, and also the food supplies in the stores were, was not so great. So what usually? What we usually do during the season, we would go to the forest with my parents and pick up mushrooms and berries. It was sort of fun, and it was sort of a traditional food supply for us, and we are not alone. That's how the whole generation lived. It means that people of my age, most, mostly, all of them, knows mushrooms, more or less edible mushrooms. They collect the mushrooms that parent taught them to collect, and they still do that. Yeah? So that's, that's how I get, got into the mushrooms again. It's a great fun and I still love it, and I still do it, yeah? And you said you recently moved to, I can't remember how you pronounced the National Park? Yeah, it's a complicated it's a complicated language. It is, okay, it's the kiosk National Park. It's in Lithuanian. It would sound the kios nationals, parkas. And how did you get introduced to that National Park? Was it close where you grew up? Or just great for mushroom hunting? I grew up in the capital of Lithuania. It's Vilnius and wealth. I got married, I got a child, and we love to buy to go bicycle with the family. So usually we will do that in some way in the forest and zk National Park. It's only, is only 100 kilometers, around 60 miles from Vilnius, which means that on weekends, we would usually go to go to go there to do our bicycling, and we left that place, we found a lot of interesting things to do there, the nice scenery, etc, etc, and we decided to build up a house there. That's what we did. After building up the house. We were really involved into that life. And yeah, I mean, now we spend around half of our time, and then maybe even more, yeah, that's amazing. So another word that I can't pronounce, but I'm going to try, okay, uh, NOURI, bati, ah. Yeah, probably completely butchered that. But can you talk about this word, yeah? Well, it's actually, if we Yeah, if we talk about Lithuanian language, grimace means mushroom. Griboti means forage, foraging for mushroom, mushroom Fauci. And as you know, when you are going to hunt for Marshalls, usually you wouldn't keep one one way. I mean you, usually you would wonder around and wander through different Bush bushes, and without following the clear path. And in Lithuania, when people, when some person doesn't have a clue, doesn't have or infrequently changing his opinion, or even he's deattached from reality, we would say that he's hunting for mushrooms, because I love that, like this. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so that's one of the major meanings, Okay, grab out. It means hunting for mushrooms. But it also means, if we talk about the person, he's away, I just, I just read this morning, there's a, I can't remember what country, but they use a phrase they're thinking about the longevity of a crab. But it's the same thing, like, if someone's daydreaming or lost in their thoughts, they're like, but I like mushroom hunting a lot better. That's I like that one. Yeah, that's okay, even if, if somebody is like doing like that, somebody doesn't have a clue. So we call it grievous. We call him grimace, or it, which means mushroom, or cutting mushroom, like Yama cutting mushroom. So that's the first meaning, talking about person who doesn't have a clue. Again, another meaning could be that you are going for you are looking for mushrooms and going very deeply somewhere, and you lost your path. But it's alternative meaning, and usually people wouldn't say this in this, in this sort of word, yeah, okay, if you got my idea, yeah, yeah. What Um So, going back to the the National Park, what made you fall in love with it. If you can kind of paint a picture of what this park looks like. How big is it? What is the diversity of, you know, plant life? Is it mountainous? Are there streams? What? What does it look like? Well, generally, Lithuania is very flat where, yeah, we are country of rain, so we have a lot of rain, and we are flat. And, yeah, as you know, mushrooms loves rain. Now it's changing a bit, okay, but so Tokyo National Park is in the south and south of Lithuania. It has around 56,000 hectares. Which is covered by wood for around 85% so I can see that 85% of the National Park is covered by pine woods. All the rest are lakes. We have a lot of lakes rivers, and also tiny villages lost in a forest. So that's mostly about that. We have a lot of wildlife there. So it's like wolves, like Moose, Elks, rabbits, foxes, a lot of things, a lot of a lot of animals, and also a big variety of different drawings with different plants. I can go into the details, but yeah, just just as an idea, we have 217 species or wild beast there? Do you say? Weaver, wild bees? Bees. Really crazy. Lugan with 70 species, 17 species you can imagine. Yeah, but okay, it's quite I mean, we have some swamps, some reserves, which are really, really a big treasure of our country. So, yeah, so it's a very nice piece of land, and that's where I live. It sounds beautiful, yeah, and and the mushrooms, I'm sure, are very grateful for all the rain. So what? What are some notable mushroom species that one might find there, if they're a beginner mushroom forager, and maybe they know a handful of popular species that they can eat, you know, what are some famous ones that that you love to pick there? Okay, so in generally, we have around 1000 different mushroom species in the forest. In our forests, around 250 up to 300 of them are edible or non poisonous. One, usually we collect around 120 to 140 species, and that's what people know. Among these species, we are proud to announce that we have 11 different kinds of boulettas of case, of course, boleto settlers. Is the king boleto. Sadly, what you call it? Yeah, I think in America you call them sepso forsini Mushrooms, mushrooms. That's yeah, so, so that's our king of the mushrooms. And during what the season we can collect quite a lot of them. I mean, it depends what time you do that. But yes, so we have 11 different species, kinds of bolitus, mushrooms, 22 different sorts of rasulas, different sorts of milk caps, like saffron milk cap milky Abric, wooly milk cap, etc. We have green mushrooms, which grows in the end of October. We have parasol mushrooms, chanterelles, sticky bun, etc, etc. So that's about it. And this might be a hard question, but do you have a favorite mushroom that you like to go foraging, or maybe a couple or a handful? Yeah, of course. Boleto saddles is the first one. Number one, definitely. Yeah, I agree. Very tasty, and I like to eat it. I like to prepare it, and it's really good. Another kind of mushroom, I would say is green mushroom. If you know it was Terre I don't Latin name, okay, whatever. So this mushroom grows in the late October, in the late October or even November, this time, and it's very nice when it's pickled. So it's really good. Yeah, it's good. And Well, generally, we do everything with the mushrooms. We pickle them, we we boil them, we fry them, we dry them. So whatever, it's possible we do that. But yeah, and also, I would say parasol mushroom, if it's fried on the on the on the butter. It has a very nice taste, a little reminding of steak. Oh, if you try, didn't dry, yeah, I found parasol, but I've never eaten it, so I'll put my my steak parasol on my bucket list. Yeah, yeah, sure. So what are there notable Lithuanian mushroom dishes that are kind of famous in Lithuania, and then also vice versa. I'm curious what you do with it, like, what do you do? You have a go to recipe for your porcinis, or the green mushroom. I know you just talked about the parasol, but what do you guys too. Well. Again, porcini is number one, so I like to prepare porcini with fry it with onions and with a little bit of wine and creamy. It's a very good combination and well, you can eat it with everything, with with pasta, with vegetables, whatever it is. I also like mushroom soups out of the prep, freshly picked mushrooms. It's very nice, and you can do it out of every kind of mushroom. Yeah, Lithuanians, they especially during the Christmas time, they like to prepare herring fish with carrots and. Dry it forsini mushrooms too. So it's a nice combination, and it's like one of our Christmas table dishes too. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of dishes out of mushrooms, but I would say these are, like, best. I kept saying something about, like a stuffed mushroom dish in Lithuania. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I kept saying that over and over again, yeah. Well, actually, yeah, we have such sort of this, which call, which we call seppalene is a it has a sepulna seplin shape. It's prepared out of potatoes outside, but we would stuff something inside, like meat or the same mushrooms or whatever we have. It's kind of it's kind of complicated to cook this dish. It takes around maybe three to four hours to do it. But yeah, in zukiya land, which is famous for mushrooms, people do it with mushrooms too, yes, and and is it like a like a dumpling or an empanada? Like, what? What does it look like? It's like a dumpling, I would say. But it's a very strange thing. It's a very strange dish, and you should go to Lithuania to taste it, because you you wouldn't find it so easily in the States. Yes, maybe there's some Lithuanians who can still do it, but you need a special kind of potatoes. And, I mean, yeah, but it's and again, some people like it a lot. Some people doesn't like it at all. So, I mean, that's mushrooms in general. Yeah, their loss. And I read about also a mushroom festival held in, is it varena, yeah, varena, varena, right. Varena is the is, is a major municipality which do Kias National Park belongs to, yeah, and they have mushroom festival there. It attracts a lot of people from all over Lithuania and also from abroad. And well, what? What they usually have there, they usually have the mushroom parade. They would have different folk songs and dances, whatever it is, and they would also have a mushroom how to say, competition, yeah. Mushroom picking competition, right? Yeah, I was about to ask about that, yeah, championship, right, right, right, right, mushroom championship. So, so it's a big festival, and it's, it ends with the concert and fireworks in the evening. Amazing, cool, yeah, it's a big event. It's a big event, but, but again, during several years. Well, they usually, they usually do it on in the first half of September, but during the past years, they wouldn't be they wouldn't. They were not so successful with the volume of mushrooms they picked during the championship. And again, the climate is changing and the mushroom season is moving further. So I would say they would, they should move the festival to October too. Yeah. And have you participated in this competition ever, huh? Yeah, it was just as a, not very serious, like, just for fun, yeah, I'm curious, like, is it, um, like, who comes back with the most amount of mushrooms by weight? Or, you know, who can pick the biggest specimen of procini. Or how do you win that competition? They have different rules each time, and they would decide which mushrooms should be picked, which sort of mushrooms should be picked, and which area and in which time. And afterwards, they wait the mushrooms, how much mushrooms each each team would pick? And yes, but usually they change the types of mushrooms or the places they were should be picked. The last time they took everything because it was no mushrooms. Yeah. All the mushrooms were not in the September, but in October. So, yeah, that, yeah, that's, that's the climate change. What? What can I say? So I'm curious, overall, in Lithuania, I mean, you talked about the shifting culture because of the pressure from the Soviets of, you know, going out into the woods and being able to provide for yourself and your family by mushroom and berry picking. Then I was reading about this, this one gentleman who became, at one time, once short time, the wealthiest man in Lithuania, supposedly, because he was mushroom picking and selling. And it's, you know, there are mushroom competitions at this festival. I'm curious, like, How competitive is it being a mushroom Hunter? Do you? Do you find that you have to be very secretive of your spots? Do you, yeah? Or do you feel like there's enough mushrooms to go around and you get your fair share. Or do you have to, like, run out there early in the morning? And yeah, you just should know how to look for them, because usually, if I go for mushroom hunting with somebody who is not familiar with it, I can find a lot of mushrooms, but the person doesn't, you should know how to look for mushrooms, and for each sort of, sort of mushrooms. Again, if you would go through the National Park during the season, and you would see a lot of cars parked by the road, you can guess that the mushroom season has started again. Yes, of course, everybody has the good places for mushrooms. And each mushroom, sort of mushroom, likes different places to grow. But anyhow, you you should hear, you should know the rules, where to look for different mushrooms, and that's it. And you have some places to go and but if the, let's say, if a portini mushrooms start to grow, they usually grow for one or two weeks, mostly, and afterwards they stop again, and maybe later grow again. But in this week, you will probably find portini mushrooms everywhere. It just depends how much of them you would right. So I was reading something about how in Lithuania, everywhere beside, I think, state parks and somewhere else, it's perfectly legal to pick mushrooms and actually incentivized. It was something like, I can't remember the phrase that they used, but it's like, everyone's right to pick mushrooms in the woods. And I'm curious when, when people, you know, I'm sure a lot of people will sell to restaurants or, you know, different industries, maybe ship it International, if, if that's open to do. But do people in Lithuania, is there like, a permit that you have to get, or some sort of, you know, you have to do a test and then you get some sort of certificate or something like that, or is it pretty loosey goosey and, well, it's no problem with that. You shouldn't get any certificate. The main idea is, well, there's several restricted zones, like reserves, yeah, yeah. So you can do it there, and you can do it directly into someone's yard, so it's 100 meters around. You can right, yeah, but even in the private forests, you have the right to go there and pick mushrooms, if it's even a private forest, yeah. So, yeah, that's about it. So as long as it's 100 meters from someone's house, even if they own, even if they own the forest, you can go in there. And, yes, mushrooms, I love that. That's great. Well, okay, but you, you, you have to keep the mycelium, you shouldn't know the mycelium. The mycelium are the roots of mushrooms. It's very important to keep them because the mushroom itself is just a fruit. So you can take it like, like, whatever apple from the apple tree. But you shouldn't cut the apple tree. And if you cut them in mycelium this way, the mushrooms will disappear. So if you are hunting for mushrooms, cut the mushrooms, but don't break the mycelium. That's the main rule of mushroom hunting. I will counter what you just said. There was a study. Uh, that I read a couple years ago, it was, I think, over like, 30 years where they tracked, uh, 10s of 1000s of different samples across many different places, and they they tracked the difference between cut versus picking mushrooms, and they didn't find any difference in terms of how much uh, diversity and abundance came back every year. I'll find this study because it's been a couple years since I read it. But, yeah, it, it did. It did say that it doesn't really matter. However, if you are picking it, don't be digging all in the soil. And, you know, just like disrupting too much. But a simple pick based on this study, which did have a huge data set, didn't say it affected, and it will will say, if you are picking, you know, a woven basket or something, that when you're carrying the mushrooms through the forest, the spores can disperse, so you're actually helping the dispersing of The spores, rather than, like a plastic bag where you're you're containing the spores, but, but yeah. I mean, having a mushroom knife is also pretty cool, so I highly recommend everyone has ones. Yeah, you can cut it. You can just take it out, but just don't break the mycelium. That's the main rule. That's it. I mean, and Mycelium is everywhere. You can't even imagine how much of it is under the ground. So do you do you have, like, what would you say is the most memorable either mushroom that you've ever found, or mushroom hunting experience, maybe had, like, a crazy day where you got lost or you found a super rare mushroom. What would you say is your most memorable mushroom hunting experience? Getting lost is not a memorable we do it quite often. Yeah, yeah. But now with these technologies, so it's a bit simpler. Anyhow, we don't have too much of internet connection forests in our forests, so you should have different apps to not to get lost. Yes, I have some stories about the dick mushroom once I've got one big bouletus And we didn't manage to eat it at one, at one meal with the whole family. So it means, like, four or five people were eating and they didn't finish. Wow, they can get pretty huge. Yeah, it's like, it's so much meat as well. Like, even the stem is all so much food, whereas a lot of mushrooms, like, the stem isn't, it's hollow and, you know, it's not very big. Porcini is a lot of food. It's a good lot of food. It's taste and it's big, and it was a more than one kilo of weight. So we really had something to eat. Then another story was that once I was foraging for mushrooms, foraging mushrooms, and I found so many of them at one place so it didn't fit into my big basket, I was so unhappy to leave them to someone else, but I should do that, because I just didn't have any space to put them. It's a great problem to have, for sure, yeah, and so yeah, we have different stories. Of course. I sometimes I even found people who are collecting death caps, Red Death caps, which absolutely poisonous. But, you know, they are probably collecting from from different for different purposes. So I would try to stop them, but they wouldn't agree with me. Yeah, another interesting thing that local people, uh, sometimes collect the mushrooms they were taught to collect by their parents or grandparents, as I tell you, as I told you, but some of them are a bit poisonous, and they still collect them because it's a tradition. They do it every time. They boil it three times. They think that the poison disappears, but they still do it. And I mean, like one of the examples, fake more, fake morals. Yeah, fake morals. So that's what they do. They collect them in the early spring, they cook them they cook them outside, because if you cook them inside, you got stones, yeah, whatever. But it's a tradition, and they people of zucchild and still do that, yeah? I mean even regular morels. I mean, they're semi poisonous, if you. Cook them, right, you know. And if you stand over it while it's cooking, it's not good for you. And, yeah, you hear this all the time, where, in some field guides, you know, there'll be a mushroom that's poisonous in one country, but then in another country, they love it, you know. Or Or like, a tribe somewhere eats it all the time, you know? And they're like, Yeah, this is great. And, and, you know, like, an expert, my college is like, no, that's really poisonous. And they're like, Yeah, well, if you cook it right, then it's delicious, you know, yeah. Well, speaking of field guides, I'm curious, how is Lithuania like, Do you have a good field guide to mushrooms. Is it more word of mouth that you're talking about from people's parents, grandparents? Do you have to use, like, maybe a Polish Field Guide? Is it close enough or or do you have good resources? No, polish is different language. Yes, we have guys again. Sometimes I I see people looking for mushrooms with the apps. Yeah, I wouldn't trust that, because if you absolutely not into the mushrooms, and you know, don't know what to look for, you know, you can be you can make a mistake, and which could be very deadly. You know, we have a joke in Lithuania that he can't each kind of mushroom is edible, but some kinds could be edible only once. So it means that some, some sort of mushrooms you can eat only once and after you are dead. Yeah, so I wouldn't trust these apps. And we have a guides. Yes, you can take a look at the Wikipedia. You can we have local mycologists, which would create some different books about the mushrooms, and you can see the pictures. You can see the descriptions anyhow, as every anywhere else you need a practice to because some mushrooms, some sort of mushrooms, are very similar, but one of them is edible. Another is not. So you should have a practice to do that, definitely. So if people wanted to learn more about Lithuanian mushrooms, do you have any good books or videos or anything that you would recommend for people to learn more? I would recommend Wikipedia first in Lithuanian afterwards, Google can translate that. It's a good sort of mushrooms, if you would enter gribe animals, the words were what we just discussed. You can go to the over that, and you will find a thick resource of Ruthenian mushrooms, which are edible, which are not there's some also. There's some websites like gribe.lt or gripe.net which could describe Lithuanian mushrooms with pictures. What could be tipped, what shouldn't be ticked and so on. Yes, we have this sort of material, and you can look for that into the internet, cool. And then I also know that you host forays as well at the National Park, yeah, so if people wanted to, you know, take a foray with you. What? What does that entail? Yeah, well, actually, I usually do that with the small groups from two up to 1010, people. Maybe it depends what they want. Usually it takes around from several hours up to the entire day, because usually I would show them around in different nice places. I would explain how to look for mushrooms, which mushrooms are edible. And after the forage, we would go to my villa and cook some sort of meals out of picked mushrooms on open fire. It's also, I mean, nice thing to do. So it depends on on people, but usually it's interesting, it's nice and it's tasty, and they would have dinner at the same time. Yeah, so we do that. Sure it's a and you can, you can, you can find some info about this activity on my web page of the kiosk wager vacation villa, amazing. Yeah, well, we'll try to put the link in the bio for everybody so they can check that out. But thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'll have to go to Lithuania one day. I've never been Yeah. You should do that because, yeah, afterwards you should find it in the on the map. It's very small. And after what you should find, how to go there, what you will definitely, you can definitely do that. Yeah, definitely, yeah. I even, I even had some, yeah, seven groups from from the States, and, yeah, they were really happy. Cool, amazing. Well, thank you for coming on and thank you everyone for tuning in and trimming in for another episode of the mushroom Republic podcast. Couldn't do it without you. So thank you so much if you if you like this episode, you like the show and you want to support. We don't have a Patreon or any way that you can directly donate, but we do have a mother company, mushroom revival, and we have a whole line of organic, functional mushroom products, from capsules, gummies, tinctures and more and powders. So check that out. If you want to get some for yourself or friends and family, we have a coupon code pod treat. It's a surprise coupon code just for listeners on this podcast. If you don't want to spend any money, we have a giveaway going on. We pick up one winner once a month. Link is in the bio if you want to win some free mushroom goodies. We also have a whole array of free resources on our website, from free ebooks that you can download to blog posts that you could read if you want to dive deeper on on this podcast or any podcast, we have all of our show notes. If you want to read all the dialog and things like that on our website as well. And also, my newest book, The Little Book of mushrooms, is on our website as well. And if, if you learn something cool about this, this episode or another episode, spread the spores, spread the mycelium. Tell, tell your friends and family you know a cool mushroom fact that you learned, and get everyone hyped about mushrooms. And as always, mush love and may the spores be with you
