Paul, Rhiannon and I went out in the woods yesterday afternoon searching for wild mushrooms. Morels, to be exact. I've only seen and eaten one in my entire life. It was picked by a friend of ours up in Missouri, brushed off and fried in a little bit of butter and a pinch of salt. My memory of it is only vague now, but I remember saying "Wow, that's the mushroomiest mushroom I've ever tasted".
We walked up and down slopes, down the creek beds, flipped over piles of leaves. Found the only known sycamore tree on our place, found a few elms and looked for some ash trees. These are places where the morels are supposed to be found. Of course, we have very few of the trees that elusive mushrooms are purported to be near. But that didn't stop us from looking. What eventually sent us hiking back home us was the fact that the ticks were out in full force. Since we knew we were going to be out in tick territory, I sprayed Rhiannon's shoes and legs as well as mine but Paul had gone out before us and went un-sprayed so he got most of the ticks.
Even though we didn't find any mushrooms, we found a bunch of spring wildflowers, my favorite being
Rose Verbena, and Rhiannon found another skull to add to her collection:
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| Partial armadillo skull |
Since we didn't find the exact wild edible we were searching for, I had Rhiannon pick a different, and definitely more abundant wild edible and fried us up some fritters:
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| Dandelion fritters |
The smaller, individual flower fritters were just battered in a milk/flour/egg mixture, fried in some vegetable oil and dusted with a bit of powdered sugar. After about two pans of having to individually dip each stinking flower, I just dumped the remaining flowers into the batter with added sugar and I made Dandelion Doughnuts. Of course, Rhiannon liked the doughnuts better. Not that I blame her.
Nothing like battering and deep frying a weed from your front yard!
Now I am the worst mushroom hunter I know of. People have long tried to teach me how to find shrroooms and failed time and again. That being said they all tell me the same thing "to find shrooms one has to look up not down" They say you need to find the good dead trees by looking up and then look down for the shrooms.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they are lying to me though because I can never find those damned shrooms myself.
Carolyn,
ReplyDeleteWe used to have them all over the place in the upper peninsula of michigan. I love morels!!!! For the fun of it, you could grow your own. There are sites where you can buy the kits. http://www.buymorels.com/
I've only found morels once here. And I was very careful not to yank them out. But they were never there again. It doesn't seem fair.... So, how many skulls does Rhiannon have in her collection?
ReplyDeletePP, I hear so many differenty "ways" to find them. I just think people A) either do not know or B) DO know and refuse to give up their secret.
ReplyDeleteSandy, Oh, how I envy that! I've looked into the mushroom log kits.....but we're just too cheap :)
Susan, I think she's up to at least a half dozen; deer, opposum and armadillo....and that's not including all the other bones and turtle shells. She's quite the bone collector.