Forest Treasures

Mushrooms. Something that would make me go "ewwww!" while growing up as I grew up with a mom who hated eating mushrooms so my sister and I naturally adopted that attitude. I was a picky eater in general anyway so what's one another item on my list? When I became a vegetarian for a few years in my early 20's, mushrooms were still the one thing I refused to start eating. It was only about three years ago that I started eating some store-bought mushrooms after having some in a curry dish that my sister made. It still wasn't something I'd buy, but if it was in a dish, I'd eat it. Once I started dating my love, a person who grew up going mushroom picking with her family, I started to eat mushrooms on a fairly regular basis.

After yesterday, I can now add mushroom picking to my list of favourite activities. I was able to join my partner and her family while they went out and searched for mushrooms. It felt similar to hunting for easter eggs. The rush of finding the right mushrooms felt addictive, and puts you in a zone, wanting to find more. Of course, I brought my camera so I kept wanting to stop and take pictures of every cute mushroom I found (edible or not edible). I had to really restraint myself to only take a few pictures so I wouldn't slow everyone down and remind myself I'll be back in a week or two. At first I felt pretty clueless, pointing at every mushroom and going "is this edible? No... ok.... how about this one?" But after a while I started to get in the groove and know which ones we were looking for. I found myself not wanting to stop when it was time to. THERE'S MORE, JUST OVER THERE BY THAT BUSH, I KNOW IT!

Last night, Maya and I made pasta with mushroom sauce. It was my first time tasting all these types of mushrooms and it was delicious! I'm looking forward to sampling different types of mushrooms and developing my own favourites. Nom!


(The first three pictures are NOT edible, but they sure are pretty to look at!)

We were thrilled to find some super adorable (and yummy) Cep mushrooms! Some of them were quite large and colourful!

So proud of the mushrooms we gathered, can't wait to start eating them all! Other than cep mushrooms, we gathered Slippery Jacks, Milk Caps, and Shingled Hedgehogs (the black ones).