Sunday, May 4, 2008

Mushroom Madness

DH was about to go and mow the lawn play around on his zero turn mower when DD came in the house asking my opinion on what was the funny looking things growing in our yard. Like I'm a botanist, or something.

"It looks like brains, mom."

Okay, taking the chance what DD had found was in fact not brains, I ventured a look.



There, nestled in the grass was a...morel. Now, mind you, I live in town, not a wooded glen or anything. But, there they were, about 10 morels scattered in the grass, as if the Mushroom Fairy stopped by for a visit. Yeah, I know, she usually just deals with mushrooms of the "magic" variety, but her supplier must have dried up, so we got morels instead.


Of course, knowing that mushrooms are known to be poisonous, I had DD Google "morels". We discover that there are "false" morels. *POISON!!! DO NOT EAT* After reading a long, detailed dissertation explaining the difference between "real" and "false" morels, at the very bottom, the last sentence explained that real morels are hollow, whereas false morels are not.

Now, if the article had stated that at the beginning, I could have saved 5 minutes of my life.

So, out we go and pluck the ten morels from the ground, determine that they are indeed hollow, soak them to remove mites (and I am not turned off yet, between the looking like brains, may be poisonous, and could be mite-infested?), slice them into quarters, dredge them in flour with a little garlic powder and deep fry.

Now, if I had MY druthers, I would be delicately sauteing them in butter and olive oil, but, hey, what do I know.

So, now we have 40 little breaded and fried shroom slices draining on a paper towel. We all have a taste. It was kind of a silly sight, the four of us daintily picking at the plate of fried fungus.

"You have the last mushroom" "No, by all means, you have the last mushroom".

Mushroom Heaven. And I didn't even hallucinate.

And for all you mushroom hunters out there...no bothering trespassing in my yard to find my horde of morels, I am sure their appearance was totally a fluke.

Really.

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