MORELS!

It's been raining a lot lately. Not today though. When I got home from work, the sun was shining, and I went to do a little weeding in the garden. I decided it would be a good time to look for mushrooms, and I started looking around the edge of the woods. Near a fire pit that I built a few years ago, there is a spot where we roll the burned logs and throw the ashes when we empty out the pit. All around this area, about 20 sq. feet in total, I found about a POUND of MORELS growing WILD in my backyard!



Morel mushrooms are some of the most sought-after and expensive gourmet mushrooms in the world. They cost about $150-200 a pound. They are delicious, and they are one of the only mushrooms whose environment has never been created in a laboratory setting. This means you can't have a controlled commercial morel-growing operation like you can with most other mushrooms. The reason for this is that Morels are incredibly particular about where they will colonize. They only can grow in areas which have been recently burned by fire. Usually, they fruit in great abundance in the aftermath of a forest fire, which is why, after a big burn out west, you can find morel-hunters in the woods shooting each other for these things. I can't believe these are just growing wild in the backyard. The ashes and burned logs from my fire pit must have re-created the circumstances necessary for morels to do their thing. I have no idea how morel spores ended up here, but...

Awesome!

I am going to cook these tonight at low heat with some butter and cream and little fiddlehead ferns that I picked in the woods and almost nothing else because nothing tastes better than fresh morel mushrooms. They do not need to be fucked with. A $200 meal from the backyard. Anyone who comes over in the next 2 hours can feast with me.