This post got lost in the pile. I stayed at Michael’s house in Greene CO, PA after Morel Madness and before I went north to McKean CO. Michael had morels in his backyard. Pretty much the only morels I picked all season. Thanks, Michael.
Eatmore T
Posts Tagged ‘morels’
Finally a Few Morels
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010On the Road to Wild Food
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Think twice about going here:
Definitely go here:
While driving from Greene CO to McKean CO, PA, I stopped at a small grocer in a small town to buy some homemade sauerkraut. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could use his bathroom. He started yelling and cursing at me. I then brought the food up to pay for it and I told him I’d buy it even though he wasn’t very hospitable. He yelled and cursed at me again. So I left without buying anything. Maybe he has Tourette’s, maybe the owner is doing a good deed by hiring the handicapped. But I don’t need that kind of disrespect.
I proceeded down the road, stopping at the Allegheny National Forest Ranger Station. I inquired about morels. The ranger in charge told me he had never seen any in those woods and he was from a part of PA where they are reasonably common. So much for morels in this part of PA, where I have searched in vain for decades.
I then drove to Kane, PA, where I stopped at Jack Bell’s store (http://www.jackbellsmeats.com). Jack is a pro fisherman turned shop owner and is a genuinely nice guy. The only quarrel I have with him is he recommended a motel that had pretty much non-existent internet service, which is why I am still catching up with blog entries. But the other choices may have had similar problems, and the one he recommended was definitely clean. I have had trouble with hotel/motel WiFi throughout my travels in recent years, as sometimes noted in this blog.
Jack also told me where to dig plenty of ramps. I never got there because Cat (next blog entry) took me to some of her locations. Maybe next time.
Eatmore T.
http://eatmoretoadstools.com
Morel Madness… More Madness than Morels
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010Continuing my search for morels, I headed for Mingo Creek Park in Washington County, PA on May Day. There the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Club, together with the Washington CO park staff, hosts a weekend morel program with camping in the park. Mingo Creek Park is loaded with dying elms, a favorite morel habitat. Some years they find Avogadro’s number of morels. But some years it is just madness. Like this year when it was too dry to bring forth quantities, yet some of us were mad enough to walk for hours in the woods in the pouring rain on Sunday for very few mushrooms. I guess we shoulda been there last week and shoulda been there the next week. This is not to say that nobody found any. Some trees had pounds of morels beneath them, but these trees were few and far between. However, the club’s program was excellent, especially for beginning mushroomers. Put it on your calendar for next year.
A lucky picker.
John Plischke III with a handful of choice edibles. Oh wait! Maybe not! Not everything that looks like a morel is edible and some will even make you sick. Can you identify these mushrooms? If not, be very careful out there. The stomach you save may be your own.
Eatmore T.
http://eatmoretoadstools.com
Note: I do not always give full names of those people I mention on this site. But John is a well known amateur mycologist and mushroom photographer. If you look hard enough online you can find photos of him with bushels of morels.
Pisgah National Forest… More of the Same
Monday, May 10th, 2010I support the National Forest Service’s program of requiring permits to harvest certain plants, especially if they are resold commercially. But I really wish Pisgah National Forest would step into the last decade of the 20th century and use the internet. There is simply no reason why people should need to travel to one office to buy a permit from the one person who handles permit sales, who is not always available. Everybody else knows how to sell things online. I can buy a driver’s license, a fishing license, pay taxes and do most other transactions with state, local, and federal agencies online. But I can’t even get a free permit to harvest a few pounds of ramps for my own consumption from Pisgah without driving to their headquarters.
Also, I would advise them to give up any starry-eyed dreams of selling permits for the commercial harvest of wild mushrooms. It works well in Western national forests. But the East is an inconsistent producer of commercially valuable mushrooms.
It had been bone dry all spring when I arrived in the Asheville area. It rained all night before Jim and I went out to look the morning of April 25. We climbed up and down through some beautiful tulip poplar groves. There were Mayapple, cohosh, bloodroot, trillium and other plants one might expect to find in woods where morels normally grow. But not here, not now.
Eatmore T.
http://eatmoretoadstools.com
Marching Through Georgia
Monday, May 10th, 2010I am writing these blog posts almost a month late. Better late than never, I guess.
I next went to Valdosta, GA, where I was raised, and met George, a lawyer and one of my oldest childhood friends, for a few hours of riding around in the country to see what we could see. We were looking for deer tongue, among other things, but neither of us could remember what it looks like. We found weeds that neither of us could identify. Zephyr lilies that I had never noticed as a child. An old pecan orchard that may have pecan truffles in the fall. We shall see. But no fungus of any kind. Too dry.
What is this?
Zephyr lilies
Old pecan orchard.
George gave me access to his farm west of Macon, GA, which I visited the next day. He said he had seen morels there before, but could not identify them at the time. The woods seemed perfect for morels. Yellow poplar rising 30-40 feet up a slope to a stream. But the leaves crackled beneath my feet. Too dry.
Buckeye on George’s farm.
I drove up the western side of GA to Dalton, spent the night and then drove across to the east along the edges of the Chatahoochie National Forest. I got directions to a poplar grove at the Ranger Station, but it was so hot and dry I didn’t bother to look. I drove on to NC and then home the next day. No morels or other fungi for the entire trip
Eatmore T.
http://eatmoretoadstools.com
The Morels Are Coming!
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010They’ve advanced as far as Guatemala according to my favorite morel site, http://morels.com. They have photographic evidence. Actually, morels are out in the winter in Northern California, but that’s a totally different habitat.
Eatmore T.
http://eatmoretoadstools.com
Morel and Ramp Gravy
Friday, November 27th, 2009
I made this for Thanksgiving. It was great and it does not add much fat to your meal. Feel free to improvise.
Wolfgang didn’t pay me to advertise his stock and it is “all natural” instead of organic. It tastes so good with the mushrooms and ramps, that I am naming the brand.
1/2 cup of frozen morels and ramps sauteed in olive oil before freezing.
1 quart Wolfgang Puck “all natural” vegetable stock
3 tablespoons unbleached flour
1/2 cup cold water
Bring vegetable stock to a boil. Add frozen morel/ramp mixture and stir until it thaws completely. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir flour into cold water until dissolved. Add to the gravy and simmer 5-10 minutes, until it looks just right. Serve over whatever needs gravy.
Eatmore T.
http://eatmoretoadstools.com
Morel Season Post Mortem
Friday, May 22nd, 2009Every year I say that this year cannot possibly be worse than the last. Yet every year it is. This year it was too cold for too long, then we had 4 days of July weather. There were a few out after that, then it rained so hard that they turned to mush. Some people were successful… maybe even the well-known sports writer who was seen by another sports writer going into the woods where it is illegal to pick (and enforced, unlike the case on many public lands, where it is “don’t ask, don’t tell”).
One problem for those of us who don’t own acreage in prime morel habitat, is that there are too many people searching a non-expanding supply of public land. I never quite know for sure if the mushrooms are not out, or somebody beat me to them.
Onward to the next season!
Eatmore T.
Dryad’s saddle
Monday, May 11th, 2009These were just appearing where I was hunting for morels last Friday. They can be eaten when they are very young and perhaps used for chewing gum (or broth) when older. Is the morel season over in the Mid-Atlantic? Let me know your thoughts.
Eatmore T.
Morel Philosophy
Sunday, May 3rd, 20098 hours in the woods, 7 miles total hike in the rain and drizzle, 3 hours on the road, too many ticks, too sore to go to a party. All for about 2 lbs of morels. Was it worth it?
It all depends upon your perspective. I am happy I can still climb mountains in search of morels. There are plenty of people younger than I am who cannot. I like to try to identify the other plants in the woods. I usually take a fishing rod along if I am near a stream, and go for brook trout if the morels are not available. There was a new farmer’s market open along the way and I do love farmer’s markets.
On the other hand, the ticks are a problem. One always manages to get in my skin and it’s a race against time to find it and remove it. I guess what I need is a good tick inspector.
Eatmore T.
The largest morel of the day