Any Morel Mushroom Hunters?

[Ross]

With all this talk of salt and food and other things that make me fat, I was wondering if anyone here goes Morel hunting and if so, have you been successful finding any this year?

I haven't had them since I was a tiny boy, but something is peaking my interest in them lately and I have to find out who to idolize around here.

 

[hensylee]

do you need a pig for this, like in France? If so I could scare up an armadillo for you. They root, too.

Mushrooms are not typically southern. Daughter came from college one year, bought some, cooked them in butter and onions. We glommed on them and love them in whatever we can find to put them in.

However, my brother and cousin call them toad stools.

 

[Marge]

I never heard of using pigs to hunt for mushrooms. However, pigs were traditionally used in France for hunting truffles. Actually in both France and Italy dogs are used more than pigs for this purpose, because pigs like truffles and have to be restrained from eating them. Dogs aren't usually interested in eating truffles but can be trained to find them. Because truffles are so expensive, a really good truffle hound is a very valuable animal.

As for picking wild mushrooms .... you have to be very very sure you know what you are doing! There is a mushroom called a "false morel" that is quite similar to a morel if you do not know what you are doing.

When I lived in France going into the woods to pick wild mushrooms was a popular family outing during mushroom season. For people who aren't sure what they are doing, French pharmacies offer a service: they will check your mushrooms to make sure you've got an OK kind. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have lots of mushrooms in the spring when it is rainy and every spring we often have cases of people getting seriously ill from eating the wrong kind -- usually Asian immigrants, who know what kind of mushrooms to gather back home and who see a local mushroom that LOOKS like one they are used to -- but isn't. Can have fatal consequences.

 

[Nancy]

Have some growing in my front lawn. Since I'm no expert on mushrooms, I let them be. But they were crinkly and holey just like morels. We have all kinds of mushrooms growing all summer. Some of them are quite pretty, bright orange and bright yellow. We even have some that are like the size of a dinner plate or bigger. The squirrels love them. Puffballs, and the one that looks like the dog threw up, LOL, little brown ones that made my puppy very sick for a day.

We live in a foresty area with lots of organic material in the soil. So they just pop up after every rain, all over.

But no, no, I'll buy them in the market.

 

[Ross]

Mr Crawford where are you? I bet you do some shroom hunting?

 

[Bryan B]

OK here's the deal. Last year at this time in May I was staying in West Des Moines, IA and working at a hospital in Winterset, IA (home of John Wayne), which is located in Madison County (yes Bridges of Madison County fame). Today I'm watching the Champion's Tour on the Golf Channel and they are playing in West Des Moines at the golf course that was right next to the hotel I stayed at.

What does any of this have to do with Morel mushrooms (you may ask yourself )?

While I was there it was the height of the Morel mushroom season and that was the "big topic of discussion" at the hospital. The pharmacist even brought me some to try (they were very good btw...).

This was also the last client I was at before I got pneumonia, and I never returned to full health until I got endocarditis in October.

I wonder if it was the mushrooms?

 

[Sherry]

Hey, Ross,
My hubby has been out twice in the last month looking for them. Didn't have any luck this year for some reason. Most years he gathers a whole plastic grocery bag full of them. We really enjoy them deep fried when he does manage to find some. Good luck.

 

[Jean]

Have found only one lone morel this year.

 

[Christina L]

This Iowa-borne and bred gal's mouth is watering reading this post!! The last time I had fried mushrooms from Iowa was about two years ago, when my uncle gave me some to bring back to Colorado and serve to Wayne (he loved them! - I coated them in an egg/milk wash and flour and fried them up in a pan).

My Uncle Jim has since passed on from cancer, but he would go out to his secret mushroom-pickin' spots in the Iowa woods every spring and delight his office coworkers in Des Moines with the delicacies.

I guess they sell morels for a "mint" at the farmers' markets in California - and elsewhere.

Christina L.

 

[ccrawford]

Hey Ross - Sorry - been busy getting a house ready to sell. Yes, I'm a mushroom hunter, and my wife is even better. This year was a little dry, but we found enough for several meals, and even took some south to Mother-in-law. Our season, like most, is very narrow and you typically only have a week or ten days to find them. The serious hunters follow the season northward each year. We flour them and then fry them in olive oil. They are hard to beat but I'm glad they aren't around all year as that would be detrimental to my waistline. The biggest one I found this year was about six inches tall. Most good mushroom hunters learned from their parents, grandparents or in-laws and there is little chance of getting the wrong kind once you know what to look for.

 

[Les]

And the "morel" of these stories?

 

[Birky]

mushroom

mushroom

In our area, there is a big day for morel hunters. There is a weigh in and a general celebration. They are taken in buses and the given so much time to find them and bring them back to be weighed in. They also fry up a bunch for the public. Never been there myself but it usually is all over the paper. Love them,

 

[ccrawford]

Les - these Morels have no ethics training and are low spirited so I guess the "morel" of the story is that these morels have neither morale nor morals.

 

[Mary]

I think we've found our answer

I think we've found our answer

I think we've found the answer
Ross[/QUOTE]
. . .something is peaking my interest in them lately and I have to find out who to idolize around here.

Les, these Morels have no ethics training and are low spirited so I guess the "morel" of the story is that these morels have neither morale nor morals.
ccrawford


Seems perfectly obvious Les, what the "morel" is. Ross is chasing morels with no morals or morale.

 

[Susan BAV]

M-m-m-m... Morel mushrooms ! My mother usually finds tons of them (not literally, of course) on her Missouri farm every year (her land extends across a creek and numerous draws and ravines so she finds them every- and/or anywhere) and she gets so upset about the mushroom "poachers," who "glean" them on her land and sell numerous gallons of them in town for a small mint...

There's a place down in San Diego that sells them year-round and I've seen advertisements from a different (mail order) company occasionally that promise you can grow them at home if you buy their product (that sales pitch just might be a load of ... shroom fertilizer, though...).

My mother soaks the morels a couple of times in a solution of -- just what I've forgotten now, maybe vinegar water and then salt water, but they have to be thoroughly cleaned or you'll get a mouthful of sand and who knows what -- and then she flours them and fries them up and they are nearly out-of-this-world Delicious! They almost taste like you're eating a nutty hunk of chicken-fried meat! If I don't get back there in April, when they usually pop up abundantly, she'll do all of the preparation except for actually frying them and then she freezes them flat on a cookie sheet and then transfers the frozen shrooms into a container to fry for me later. They aren't quite as good as fresh but they're still better than any and all other shrooms on the planet, in my humble opinion...

Does that sum it up for any of you?