food forests revisited

In the fall, the wet western forests of the Cascades sprout delectable yellow chantarelles - perhaps you remember me talking of them in previous posts.  And in the spring, mushrooms sprout too - but its the dry eastern Cascade slopes that put forth the bounty this time.  So today, AJ and I pointed our car east and went over the pass.

Morels were what we're after, and they do especially well after fires.  They send up their little caps in a last ditch effort to propagate after a burn.  Washington saw some record breaking fires last summer, which was heartbreaking for many - but all the silly mushroomers began to quietly chatter about how fantastic the spring season would be for the prized morel.

AJ studied the burn maps and chose the destination.  This was our first time in this terrain looking for these mushrooms, so we figured it would likely just be a learning experience (read: we'd be skunked).  Indeed, this was NOT the case!  We came home with more mushrooms than we've ever found.  We even stopped early because we didn't need anymore!  Now we're home, and AJ is making some homemade pasta and is going to whip up a morel cream sauce to go over top - its going to be fantastic.

Below are a few pics from the day.

 The first find - a few little caps pushing up through the duff.  Note the very scarred pine tree!

Here's a little nest of them that I found...

Brush away the duff, and this is what's under.

Lovely little morsels

Watch it, 'shrooms, or you're gonna get cut!

The Loot Pile

 Sauteeing...

 Truly the best dinner AJ has made - homemade spinach pasta (spinach from the garden), scapes and asparagus from the garden as well, morels from the forest!

Ps. Part of the reason we left today was because our bathroom remodel began at 8am - so we made ourselves scarce to get away from all the racket!