Shroonin'

Here's a lovely morel mushroom, peeking above the leaves.

On Mother's Day, during a small family gathering, the Hubs, Chase, and I followed my dad into the back forty to look for morel mushrooms. This is a yearly family activity on my dad's side, one that I had never participated in before. We had a nice time tromping through the leaves and trees, and we actually found six or seven nice mushrooms.

Tromping with fancy socks (under my sandals).

Looking for 'shrooms felt like fishing to me. On the rare occasions that I find myself fishing, I am constantly feeling anticipation. I'm always sure that the next cast will land me a fine fish. This feeling is heightened if I have an early catch on the fishing trip. That's what happened in the woods on Sunday. In the first 10 minutes, I found two cute morels sitting silently near the path. I was certain that the next few steps were going to bring me to more mushrooms, but it was a full half hour later before I caught sight of another one. Those little buggers are hard to see! Jim found one, my dad found another (besides two that he had strategically scoped out earlier in the day to show Chase an example), but sadly, Chase found none. He was disappointed, but felt compensated with the discovery of a large turkey feather.

The Hubs with his fine mushroom.

Yesterday, Jim fried up the 'shrooms. In the morning, he added them to his scrambled eggs and at dinner, he added them to his vegetable fried rice. I ate a small piece, but could just barely gag it down (it didn't taste bad, but my brain gagged at the thought of eating a mushroom). Astoundingly, Chase ate three or four pieces. We're still trying to figure out how that happened.

Mushroom pieces frying happily in butter.