It appeared that the VII. Gömör Fruit Festival in Aggtelek would be rained out again, so we took the morning to process some of our tomatoes. I was finally able to make use of Jóskabácsi's great tomato juice recipe I got years ago, and Kata and I made 5 bottles before the skies cleared in the early afternoon. We arrived around 13:30. I was quite hungry, but we window-shopped for quite a bit before we eventually made it to the food stands. We spent a lot of time chatting with Dorka and István, silver smiths from the area that make jewellery in traditional Hungarian folk motifs that we have seen around at various events but had not yet had a chance to speak with.

Both local producers and local authorities from Aggtelek, Alsószuha, Dövény, Gömörszőlős, Imola, Kurityán, Ragály, Szuhafő, Trizs, Zubogy had stands offering all and sundry made from with or from fruit: cakes, pastries, jams, cordials...

Our friends the Koltays from Aggtelek were there with their jams and dried mushroom products, and Janos Ambrus from Szendrő was there with his honey. We met Krisztina and Lajos Dapsy from Alsószuha who seem to do a bit of everything. They run three guest houses in Jósvafő and Alsószuha; and make plum jam, quince "cheese" and kenyérlángos (like a Hungarian pizza). Their kenyérlángos looked delicious, but we had just eaten. It was so big it looked more like Georgian khachapuri. There was a surprising amount of free palinka available, but being a fruit festival I guess I should have expected it.

Our lunch was potato pancakes from one of the Alsószuha stands. Hungarian tócsni/lapcsánka is nothing like my grandmother's potato latkes, but it is still good. At 150 Huf the price was very friendly, unlike the 400 HUF charged for the equivalent by the Jósvafő local authority at the Hucul Days 2 weeks ago. We sampled some cakes, but finally hit on the steamed plum dumplings, something like the German dampfnudel, recommended by Simon and Dori. They dumplings were only steamed about 12 at a time on a piece of fabric stretched over an üst. Since everyone was ordering 5-6 at a time, this made for a very long wait. We had nothing better to do, and the 200 HUF dumplings rolled in butter and ground walnuts were very good. They use a challah recipe for the dough and stick a glop of homemade plum jam between two rounds of dough before steaming.

The Miskolc Mushroom Association with whom I am doing my basic mushrooming course set up a mushroom exhibition of seasonal edible, non-edible and poisonous fungi. I saw my first death cap and deadly panther cap, but there were also examples of edibles such as the beefsteak mushroom and giant puffball. They even gave our little friend Ema a smaller puffball. There was also an interesting exhibition of the hugely diverse fruits in the Gömör Region.

Although there is not a lot of fruit this year, there is still enough combined with mushrooms and medicinal herbs to warrant an investment in a solar fruit dehydrator. The wood-powered fruit drier in Bodvaszilas will not even be put into operation this year for lack of fruit. However, looking to the future, Simon spotted a construction that has been making its way around the Internet for years - the beer can solar dehydrator has finally come to Hungary. You can find many plans and videos on the net, especially on Mother Earth News. The Roma Local Parliament in Kelemér is making these wooden towers that funnel hot air through black-painted beer can tubes for only 50000 HUF (including transport). The 5 x drying rack version can handle up to 25 kg of product and can dry most things between 2 hours and a full day. We are seriously considering one, but would like to see it in operation first.

Music was provided by the talented Magyar Vista Social Club.

The next day my mushrooming course went on an excursion to Miskolc Tapolca. There are mushrooms "in them thar hills," just not anywhere nearby. I did find a few giant parasol mushrooms last week, but the mushrooming course was led by guide Láci through an area near Miskolc-Tapolca. Even if there had not been a drought, the area was a treasure trove. My new basket was literally full of many varieties of boletes (porcini) within the first 10 minutes: Safron Bolete, lots of ruby boletes in the middle of the road and suede boletes among others. Finally a good mushrooming outing this year! I felt my mushrooming eyes were coming back. The problem ironically was too much of a good thing. Most of us being beginners, we still are not able to determine which are edible and which are not. Even the teacher has trouble. As a result, we were all lugging at least one full basket and a couple plastic bags full of mushrooms for several hours through the woods waiting for them to be identified. I figured I would be happy with one basket of edibles, and I was right. Even by throwing out most of the boletes that turned blue when cut (many of which were probably edible), it took hours at the end to sort everyone's take home. The woods were also full of brittle gills, charcoal burners and blushers, but I left most of these because they were too fragile to carry with the others. Blushers are easily confused with deadly panther caps - and I was happy to be able to identify my first deadly mushroom in the wild. I also found a huge, beautiful single poisonous jack o'lantern mushroom at the base of a tree. This was unusual because these are usually found in small bunches. I also found some poisonous livid pinkgill, and edible ringless honey fungus and a big patch of summer oyster mushrooms that were sadly in poor condition. I have still not found a beef  steak mushroom, but one of my classmates gave me one she had found and we cooked it up that evening. It really looks like meat when you cut it, and bleeds like a steak. I also found an interesting bunch of tiny horsehair parachute mushrooms. The full list is here, and the photo gallery here.

During the excursion, our neighbour Vincze called and said I had to come over within the next couple days to check out a mushroom. By his excitement and the season I figured it was a chicken-of-the-woods, and I was right - it was a beauty. Vincze gave us a large section which we took home and breaded in a delicious powder the Krishna's make and we got as a gift a couple weeks ago from Ági. In the meantime, I had to process the beef steak mushroom. It really is a beautiful mushroom, even from a vegetarian's point of view. I only found three recipes on the net, all in English and none in Hungarian. I chose the simplest and fastest recipe which sautéed the fungi in a butter and thyme sauce with shallots and garlic. The mushroom's consistency completely changes into something like sliced slugs, but the taste was not bad at all.