The Pheasant is dead

Not surprisingly, I discovered the carcass of a dead pheasant in the middle of the road this morning. It was almost certainly the same bird as seen flying down the road the other day. There is a mass slaughter of pheasants on our roads at this time of year. When, in the past, I travelled country lanes into work, I would regularly find dead birds, some of which would end up in the pot. The real waste comes when the birds demise occurs on a motorway, for, anyone considering collecting them as road kill would undoubtedly be risking their own lives, besides breaking the law.
Another waste this autumn has been due to the large quantity of fungi that has gone unpicked. It has been a very productive year; the mild weather combined with sufficient wet weather ensuring the growth of these fruiting plants. Yesterday I consumed a lovely horse mushroom for lunch, and, in earlier weeks I have enjoyed parasol mushrooms and one day collected so many field mushrooms from a nearby nature reserve that I have many of them in soup form in my freezer. Most of these mushrooms were discovered growing on the grass areas in the car park of the reserve and had clearly been fruiting there for some time without being picked.
It is understandable that people should be cautious about this matter, and in France, where collecting is a much more common occurrence, so are fatalities from poisoning. But, if you take care and try some simple tests and only eat the fungi you can be one hundred percent certain of identifying correctly, there should be no problem. Having said that, even after watching me eat them, Daphne, my partner, utterly refuses to partake.