1-Up Hunting

I went mushrooming for the first time: chanterelles in the bay area on Saturday with Duncan. Tilden is over-hunted because of all the Berkeley foodies, so we went out to Sibley and filled a backpack, then out to Redwoods and filled it again. How far off the path had we gone? We found a pristine pull-tab era Budweiser can.

That night we cooked up a slamming pasta fungi (with chard from the garden) for 9 and Duncan still had 15 pounds (clean) left to sell to a restaurant (whose name I won't drop here). He got $11/lb on Sunday morning. Whole Foods was selling them for $22, but I doubt they got them from a couple of random dudes who cleaned them with their mini Swiss Army knife keychain and had them in a backpack they may or may not have fell on once while sliding down a slippery hill.

Slicing the mushrooms made the kitchen smell like peppery apricots, and browning them alone smelled so complex you'd think we were cooking with dozens of ingredients. Now I need to learn about Chicagoland mushrooming.