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 Over the last couple weeks, the big news in our neighborhood has been that the morels are out. For those who aren't in the know, a morel is a type of wild mushroom. As a general rule, I think that foraging for mushrooms is a pretty scary thing to do because so many of them are poisonous. Read any book on wild mushrooms or a Web site that talks about "mushrooming" and you'll read about all the people who die from eating the wrong type. However, morels don't look much like any other mushroom, so if you confine your foraging to these type of 'shrooms, your life expectancy improves.
Morels cost gazillions of dollars in the store, so I would never buy them. On the other hand, if I can find them in my yard, well that's a different story. So I read up on mushrooming. I read about all the various things that ignorant people have ever "thought" were morels, and I looked at many pictures. (In my opinion, a "false morel" looks almost nothing like a morel!) I also read and discussed a whole lot of tips and theories on where morels are likely to appear. Everyone seems to have an opinion.
Depending on who you ask, likely places for morels might include:
- South facing slopes
- East facing slopes
- Swampy areas
- Dry areas
- Areas with other fungus
- Near stumps
- Areas away from other vegetation
- Disturbed areas
The bottom line seems to be that no one has any clue. As a friend said, "basically you have to tromp around in the forest until you find one." So that's what we did. On several excursions into logged areas, swampy areas, dry areas, and slopes of every possible angle, I have learned that morels grow where they feel like growing.
After traversing about 150 acres in our neighborhood, we collected enough 'shrooms for two batches of mushroom cream gravy, tempeh stroganoff (the recipe is in our cookbook), mushroom risotto, and a sort of odd zucchini/mushroom concoction I made. Plus, I have a bunch still in the freezer.
In the end, I learned mushrooming is fun. It's an excuse to go wander around in the trees and really look at the forest around you. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.
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