morels, please!

Last year we went hiking on Mother's Day.  You may recall there were bears.  There were also morel mushrooms.  When I was a kid, my parents discovered morels and got really excited about hunting them.  For a while, there was a pretty reliable patch in our back yard, and a couple others within a ten minute walk from our house.  Admittedly, I was never that excited about them back then, but it had been over a decade since I'd had any, so I was excited to try them again.

If you go out mushroom hunting, the first thing you should do is make sure you don't pick something poisonous that just looks like morels.  If you don't know, don't eat them.  I'm not telling you how to tell the difference--find someone who's willing to take that responsibility with your life, and ask them.

Second, the forest and park services advise using a mesh bag to carry your haul so the spores can stay in the forest.

When you get your mushrooms home, clean them and soak them in salt water.  This will help drive out any bugs that might have been living inside and didn't fall out of your mesh bag.  Then, slice them lengthwise and do what you will.

On the night I cooked mine, I had also happened to cook some sausage, so I just threw the mushrooms in the pan of sausage juices and sauteed them.

Butter will also work, obviously.  There are plenty of sites that are full of recipes and suggestions.  They probably also have better presentation on the plate than I do.

They taste better than they look.  Honest!

Ii was happy to get to try them again, but I was a little disappointed once I did.  Generally speaking, I love mushrooms.  I put them in salads, pasta sauce, lasagna, pizza, whatever.  But since I had cooked these in sausage drippings, they just tasted like sausage.  None of the original mushroom flavor survived the onslaught of seasoned meat.  Oops.  But they were still very good.  The Chief Taster, however, was wary of them, despite being excited about picking them, and refused to try more than a bite.  Good thing I didn't put them on the pizza I made that night, or I would have had to eat the whole thing myself.  And wouldn't that have been sad?  (for her.)

I make an outstanding pie.  My humble pie is not as good.