Morels

1985-ish. I was fully into the “mac and cheese” years. Some ramen too. But vegetables? No way, unless you count corn and raw carrots. Green beans were the worst. Broccoli was a close second.

And mushrooms? They always made me think dead, rotten thoughts.

Life happened, and 2008-2009 was the winter/spring of my pregnancy with our first daughter, Sierra. Suddenly, rice was not appealing, but every manner of vegetable was. Weird things. I started liking sauteed mushrooms and couldn’t get enough of broccoli.

Then 2011 rolled in, with our second daughter, Marina, born in a January snowstorm. She is our mushroom girl.

Marina loves mushrooms in any form, and is even adventurous enough to try the ones that we (cautiously) forage in our woods.

We were delighted to find morels in our very first spring in our new house, when Marina was just two years old. I sauteed them in butter and we ate them with some asparagus from my parents’ garden. She was hooked.

Now, it has become a Mother’s Day tradition for us to go out into our woods to see if we can find any. We’re lucky/unlucky to have many ash trees on our property. They make for great morel growing conditions, but we’ve lost so many to Emerald Ash Borers that the ground has become trampled with the remnants of our dead tree clearing.

I’m crossing our fingers for morels again this year. They’re a treasure just waiting to be noticed, right in our backyard.

But, if we don’t find any, we’ll curl up with The Mushroom Fan Club by Elise Gravel. The illustrations alone are a reason to pick up this book - mushrooms with eyes!!! Super informative while being entertaining as well.