Madness

Morel madness, that is.

I don't have too much to say about the subject other than, "I've got it bad."

The craziest thing about morels (at least in my experience) is that you only find them when you're not trying to. I do realize that there are commercial morel "hunters." (I once told my boyfriend he was actually foraging, and he wasn't too pleased with my terminology. They usually do go by morel hunters, though. It's not really hunting at all.)... side tracked again. So there are these commercial morel hunters who go around and collect as many morel mushrooms as they can, and then they sell them for ridiculous amounts of money. I saw some at the farmers' market for $35/lb! My friend's brother-in-law is a chef somewhere and once told her he'd pay $50/lb for some.
What was my point?
Hmmm... oh! My point was that even though there actually are lots of morels out there, and there are some people who find enough to sell, that I only find them on accident.

Today was a burn day at work, so we were burning a few prairies and small woodlots. Well, when we're done making fire we have to put it out so we can go home. And in the middle of mop up (which is what we call putting out the rest of the fire) I screamed a little. Just a little scream, a scream of excitement. And then I screamed again.. and again.

And this is what I screamed at...
Then this:
Then this:
Then this:
There were morels all over the place and most of them had been, at least a little bit, charred in the fire.

I took a good portion, everybody got some actually, and when my boyfriend looked in the bag when I got to his place, all he said was, "These smell like smoke."
Well, they did just survive a fire. Kind of survive a fire. Well, there was definitely fire on them.

I washed them.... and they still smell a bit smoky.

I lost my point again. Partly because I'm really tired and partly because I'm generally a little bit of a scatter-brain.

But I think I'm stealing Angela's idea and these will end up in a wild rice/morel dish. Mmmm... I'm hungry.