After a nice 2012 morel-hunting season (but almost 2 months earlier than normal—!), a severe drought started here in central Missouri. Spring started out fine, but then it stopped raining, in MARCH. I lost my hiking/blogging momentum.
There was a nice rain about 2 months in, and I headed out all hopeful, but 15 minutes into it crashed into not one, but two horrific, enormous clouds of seed ticks—mission aborted.
We’ve had some rain recently, and I’ve been getting out there (still slim pickins), but why did I never post this stuff from last fall? So, here comes everything, in a few separate posts, in roughly chronological order. From last fall.
Above and below, gorgeous young chicken of the woods, mid-September. Saturated with rain, so the color is even brighter.
I swear the color is not tweaked. They really can be so bright it almost hurts your eyes.
Below, more Laetiporus sulphureus, but older specimens, and not wet from recent rain.
The pale grey horizontal stroke in the background is the trail in a very popular park! We harvested a lot of this, and left some, and later were swapping foray stories and found out that a friend of ours got what we left. “Oh, that was you guys? Thanks for leaving me some!”
I like them this young:
Chicken of the woods turns butter bright yellow:
Oh, man, if you’ve ever eaten these I know you’re in a reverie just looking at this! But wait ‘til you see the next one! Vegans, don’t look, you’ll hurt yourself!
Sautéed chicken of the woods on rib eye with gorgonzola and asparagus. That was a great day.