Morels

Since it has been raining for the past few days and it cleared up this evening we (the kids and I) decided to go out on a mushroom hunt (an additional impetus for this decision was the fact that Alison was sick all day and the kids were stir crazy and Alison wanted a little nap).

We walked a while and found some oyster mushrooms (which was a pretty good find). Oyster mushrooms are fairly safe, tasty, and grow in big clumps on trees so they are very easy to spot and gather.

They are probably the mushrooms that they put in dishes in oriental food, since they taste like most mushrooms in Asian cuisine. Here they are:

We walked over to the trees that we found oysters on last year and then I saw something I have never seen before:

I excitedly told Andrea and Sara to come over and see what I found,  and sure enough they were morels. I have to explain at this point that I have been looking for morels since I started hunting mushrooms (about three years now) and have never found any. They sell dried for about $200 a lb, so I have also never tasted any either. They are supposed to be amazing.

We talked with some guys who were also walking around and they were mushroom hunting too. They were very friendly and invited to show me where morels normally grow, and thereafter we found a ton of them.

Rea and Sara were very helpful - Rea was an excellent picker and Sara would put them into the bag. They played at being bears while they were hunting.

When we got them home we counted them and found that we had gotten 72 mushrooms. 

That is all for tonight, however we will be going hunting more in the immediate future. If anyone wants to join us this weekend we welcome anyone.

We will taste them tomorrow as well and let you know how good they are.