The Art of Foraging

If you saw this growing in the darkness on moss laden ground under a huge fir tree in the deep woods would you think, "Hey...now there's some good eats!"?

Not me.  I would think about that awful scene from the book/movie Into the Wild where the guy eats the wrong root and goes crazy and dies a slow, painful death!  (Spoiler, much?  Even though I just told you how it ends you should read that book.  I'm haunted by that book.  And the movie, too.  Really.  It's a true story.  I find the guy fascinating.)

Then again, I wasn't raised in the woods and haven't spent the better part of my free time from birth until now learning all there is to know about the forest and its many inhabitants, like Randy has done.

He loves it and every year during the right season he can't wait to go hunting for Chantrelle mushrooms that grow in this part of the world.  They are a  creepy looking things but are considered a delicacy and they aren't that easy to find in the wild anymore.  Randy said that when he was growing up he would pick buckets and buckets full and sell them for spending money, but he has a harder and harder time finding them now because of over harvesting.

Here is this year's yield.

The mighty hunter.

Yum!