We moved to our 40 acres of woods, creek and bottom ground and hills in the fall and the following Spring we headed hopefully into the woods in search of morel mushrooms. We were ectastic to find some growing on an East facing slope - and now, years later we still hunt that same slope in honor of those first mushrooms even though the ecology of that area has changed and we have found nary a one there for years. We've have poor years, good years and great years - defined as finding so many that we had to both share with family and dry a winter's supply and we ran out of ways to fix them that we hadn't already gotten our fill of. But no matter the year, it is always heavenly searching the woods in the Spring - for us mid-to late April, usually finishing around mother's day.
Mayapple in bloom. When we moved to was to become WishSong Farm, cattle had been grazing it so many of the native wild plants were scarce. We now have huge patches of mayapple or what we, as kids, called umbrella plants.
A wild geranium.
Maidenhair fern with a geranium flowers poking its little head through the fronds of the fern.
This is an orchis, a wild orchid that I see more and more of every year. They are still a special treat every time I find them. They usually bloom right at the height of mushroom season.
A jack in the pulpit flower, not quite open yet. These are usually in the moister, low-lying areas of the woods with lots of shade.
The soft greens of the woods when the leaf buds are open but the leaves are still small always has a bit of fairyland feel for me.
Finally, I find a morel playing hide and seek under a mayapple leaf.
Four of us seached up and down hills for hours to find just this few. A cold dry spring and no mushrooms until these few. By the time we finally had the rain, the vegetation was so tall that if they were out there they were hard to find. My brother-in-law Dale timed his retirement just so he could drive up and hunt mushrooms. While the lack of morels this season was a dissapointment, what we did find made good eatin and we had lots of fun hunting.
Traditional way to eat mushrooms in our area is to bread them in egg and cracker crumbs and fry with lots of butter. I used to like them this way but as we started finding large batches of them ourselves, I experimented with cooking them other ways and today, this is my least favorite way to eat them.
Top 5 ways to eat morels in our household.
- Morel pizza layered with lots and lots of shrooms. Heavenly!
- Pasta prima vera with mushrooms and asparagus (which is in season at the same time and pairs beautifully with morels).
- Asparagus and morel stir-fy.
- Quiche with - you guessed it, morels and asparagus.
- Grilled - the large ones cut in half grill up quite tasty. Naturally we grill some asparagus alongside.
