Cookbooks and Chernobyl

I recently purchased a copy of ‘Russian Regional Recipes’, by Susan Ward, published in 1993. I was fascinated to read a recipe for Marinated Mushrooms, which advised the reader that ‘…some of the enthusiasm for wild mushrooms is now tempered with fear, since fungi – particularly the thick-stalked cep or boletus…..have been shown to be severely contaminated by the fallout from Chernobyl’. How telling is this of our cultural and societal histories?

Are there cookbooks from the ‘cold war’ in the 1960’s, that give similar warnings about foraging for wild foods, where nuclear testing occurred, for example, in New Mexico or Nevada?  If you have come across any, please share them.

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