Fungus Amongus

I have an apology to make.
After posting this afternoon I practiced what I preached and pulled a bunch of garlic mustard.

While on this mission I made two wonderful finds:

1. The asparagus is up. (It was not 2 days ago!)

(When you pick asparagus, get the part under the soil too.)

 2. I found my first morel!!! The asparagus I knew to watch out for, so the garlic mustard doesn't get any brownie points for that. But for the morel I am truly grateful. I have never foraged for fungus because, like most Americans, I was raised to have a healthy respect for mushrooms. And by healthy respect I mean fear. I am still wary, but I read The Omnivore's Dilemma last year and it inspired me to try my hand at wild mushrooms. Just my luck, it turns out that Ruth's late husband was a connoisseur. Ruth does not claim to be an expert. She says there is only room for one fungus expert in a family. Apparently they went foraging with a husband and wife who both thought they knew what they were doing and the two fought the whole time—second guessing each other. From that day forward Ruth tried not to learn too too much. But she does know the obvious edibles on this property and she confirmed that this is a morel. 

Peter has passed on, but there is still a fungus expert in town. I have a call in to her to come over and ID the other ones I found. But I won't eat them until I know...

If it hadn't been for the garlic mustard I probably would have done something foolish like go for a run. So in order to apologize to the garlic mustard, I am letting them share a plate with the morel and asparagus. I threw some dandelion in for good measure. Not a filling meal, but that's why we have take out chinese.

Comments

[Ruwan Somawardhana]

Soo..... what did the shrooms taste like????? More importantly, what did you see after eating them?

[Barnblog]

Since there was only one there wasn't much to it. "Earthy?"
Your second question is valid. In fact, I think I texted you just so someone would know what happened if I was found dead the next morning.
I was confident that this was a morel, but still... as the night progressed I felt worse and worse. I very rarely get sick, but I was pretty sure I was coming down with something. But what if what I was feeling was poisoning?!
There were no rainbows or spiraling colors involved and over the next few days it became clear that it was a spring cold. Poor timing...but now I know the anxiety one feels when they think they are being poisoned.