A tisket a tasket

[tho1mas]

When is the funeral ?

[BilletHead]

Tho1mas,

Mrs. BilletHead will be planning that. Just think if I croak you all can have a chance to bid on all my accumulated fishing and hunting crap. Just stay out of my mushroom patch! Ha

RPS you are on the book as my first free client. No trophy fees but only one mountable specimen per hunt Just like in all hunts there is ground shrinkage especially if you dehydrate them,

BilletHead

[ness]

So, it's been a few hours. How are the innards doing, BH?

I gave it a half-hearted 45 minutes this afternoon. My results reflect my effort.

[BilletHead]

Innards real happy Gosh I even posted the new finds on the page for you. Also Mrs. BilletHead says you have to get out of the city park to find the good stuff. Too many dogs peeing in those high traffic areas. Joggers stomping on them and kiddos kicking them into oblivion. Golf courses have been sprayed.

[ness]

Ha! It was a county park, and not in the 'off-leash' area. And, I was actually in the woods, nowhere near a fairway (not unlike a lot of the time when I am playing golf).

I was looking in the bare spots between the vegetation. Lots of dead leaves, some mossy spots around dead trees. Some rocks, but not rocky. Pretty damp, and the temp was around 75. According to Weather Station Mongo, in the last week, we broke 90 degrees just three times -- 6/28, 29 and 30. It's 62 out there right now!!! That's not helping, right?

[Al Agnew]

Mary and I went for a hike in a public area this morning, not really thinking about chanterelles...but geez, those things shine like beacons in the woods, especially if it's cloudy. The hike turned into a chanterelle collecting binge. Got a couple pounds, nearly all of them pretty small. Kept a few of the red-orange ones, too, even though the book says they don't have much taste. They were all very small but we could have loaded up several shopping bags with them had we wanted.

So, encouraged by our find, we took off for our land on the Meramec this afternoon, hoping for more. They were scattered by we got another pound or so. I got all excited for a bit, because there were what looked like coral mushrooms all over the place, and I was sure I remembered my grandpa eating corals. But consulting the book, they appeared to be jellied false coral, which the book says can be safely eaten but not worth the effort. Too bad, because we could have collected a dump truck load of them. Then we came upon some huge things that I was sure were edible...according to the book, they were Berkeley's Polypores. It says excellent when young and easy to cut, but gets woody and bitter with age. Well, some of them looked a little aged, but we kept two that looked and felt fairly soft and tender. The things stood up about 10 inches high and were nearly 12 inches across!

The lane leading into our land goes for about a mile before reaching our land itself. Driving out, we were chanterelle hunting the lazy way, just driving very slowly with the windows down and looking for spots of bright yellow. If we saw something far enough away from the lane that we weren't sure about it, we glassed it with binoculars. We got some of our biggest ones that way.

[trythisonemv]

Nice Al!

[Al Agnew]

Now that we have the chanterelle fever, I went out behind the house Sunday afternoon. Found two more pounds. Only bummer was, I first brush hogged the lane leading through the woods behind the house so I wouldn't have to wade through so many high weeds. Looked behind me on the tractor, and the mowed strip of the lane was littered with chanterelle parts. There was a big patch of them hidden in the weeds, and I demolished it. Only found one outside the edge of the mowed strip.

Took two pounds to Mary's sister's house Sunday evening, sauteed them with butter, olive oil, and garlic, and served them with bruschetta. It was a big hit. Had the rest of them tonight with Mary's brother and his wife, this time roasting some of them and fixing the rest in a cream sauce with pasta, along with new green beans out of his garden and roasted chicken. Now he's going to search his land for them.

Of course, I also have a dozen or so chigger bites starting to show...

Mary looked and they are going for $27 a pound. We just ate about $125 worth of them in the last three days!

[rps]

"Mary looked and they are going for $27 a pound. We just ate about $125 worth of them in the last three days!"

Bravo!

[wuteversbitin424]

I come up with close to 8lbs sunday...i didnt know they went that high. If a person was to get a bunch where would you sell them?