Crayfish parties.

It was a cold and foggy morning today. The themometer only reached 5C (41F) degrees. The sun came for a moment just to be covered by fog again.

Sweeds loves crayfish and every year around this date we have crayfish premier. Parties all over the country has these animals as the center of attention for all of August. Our own species of crayfish has almost died out totally because of a fungus giving it Crayfish pest. So nowdays our lakes and rivers are filled with the north american Signal crayfish. It´s a bit different taste but very close anyway. Crayfish parties is almost more important than Christmas for many people :-)

I don´t know many different sorts of mushrooms, but I know more than most. I have no idea if this is edible, but it´s beautiful anyway.

It was so dark in the forest so I had to adjust my camera to be able to take any pictures. A bit to light I feel.

The ones we catches here isn´t enough for our needs of this delicious little animal, related to spiders :-) So we import loads of them from many places of the world. Mostly Turkey and China, but nowdays also from Louisiana in the US. But for many people the catching is the important thing. They put out cages late in the evening and emrties them early in the morning. So You can imagine the panic amongst them when they heard that it´ll be a bad year for crayfish catching. The summer has been to cold so they aren´t big enough. I have friends that had a crayfish party last weekend. They were twenty people, but only cought fourty crayfish that was big enough :-)

For the party we docorate the place we are going to be at with colorful lanterns, usually moon shaped with prints of crayfishes on and there are usually lots of candles and kerosene lamps. Flowers of course and usually sprigs of dill ( dill is important when boiling the crayfish here). Lots of strong drinks are served (different kinds of schnaps, I can´t stand schnaps though it´s disgusting) and mostly snapsvisor (schnaps songs) are sung.

This mushroom however I know. We call it "Finger mushroom". It´s edible, but not more. But I love the color on it. I wish there were a way to keep them to use as decoration inside. But these rot immediatly.

This and the one below is edible though. it´s perfect to mix with other mushrooms.

Further north it´s another tradition that starts now (down here to but mostly further north) It´s the fermented herring party. This is something I avoid though. The fermented herring doesn´t taste that bad to be honest, but the smell!!! I once dropped a can of fermented herring on the floor and it exploded. I was covered with it and I was sure I smelled for several weeks aftewords :-) But those who likes it does this every year.

The morning started out as very foggy and cold, it was only five degrees centigarde (41 fahrenheit) outside. The sun did get through for a couple of minutes, but then the fog came back again. Later on rain and thunder passed by. Now it looks as if the sun might get through the clouds again. Autumn is here now even if it will be longer or shorter periods of heat too. Well that´s the way it is. Now mostly of our forestflies will die, but an even worse will come. It´s creepy and we call it Moose fly. I´ll tell You about that fly when I´ve seen the first one. I get cold chills down my spine just thinking of it!

Have a great day now!

My plums will soon be yellow and ripe. They are many and really big this year.