We have a little spot off a road we drive, where the soil is the right kind of soil, the trees are the right kind of trees, the ferns are just good old Pacific Northwest ferns — here, we find chanterelles during the fall.
Today we talked a lot about Oregon’s forestry budget and business model on our drive. Seriously, we need to fix that. These are public forests, our forests, and there has to be a better way to preserve them and not use them as funding sources.
But back to the hunt. The Gentleman found some, maybe some of our last ones this season, hidden under logs, obscured from the other folks that pick here. We now have an oven rack filled with the orange beauties, drying out their Oregon rain. These will probably be our last ones. They don’t do so well once it freezes. Or maybe we’ll go out today, one last time, and see what we can find.
I did find some mushrooms, but they were all small little things — and then there was this. Each joint that looks like a branch cut off was a mushroom. The stick it was growing on was maybe 3/4 of an inch in diameter, each cut or cup being about the size of the tip of my finger. Very interesting.
Have a beautiful Sunday morning, folks! May it be filled with good food, strong coffee, and people you love!
(There is rumor that we’re making chocolate doughnuts.)