Though these morels were found in Illinois, I feel there are some around Pagosa in May.
When I used to live in the Midwest, it was a common thing every spring to find morels in meadows and forests. We were fortunate enough to have many trees on our hilly five and a half acres which yielded many bodacious mushrooms every early spring. Sometimes they were eight to ten inches high! It was a thrill to find them and when I did, it was hard to keep my excited exclamations to myself amongst all the foliage. I’m sure the neighbors probably heard me at times. My husband and I also owned another property consisting of twenty-five acres, which was another place for us to hunt mushrooms. I was in the front part of a woods one day, and was busily hunting mushrooms when a teenaged boy, who lived on a hill across the road came by to say hello. Only minutes before he came, I had discovered a wonderful patch of morels and I was standing right in the middle of it. I pretended not to notice in hopes that the young man wouldn’t notice the patch either, but of course he did. You see it’s necessary to keep patches like that secret lest other people would help themselves to it, and then there wouldn’t be anything left for the owner of the property. Then, like now, people often do not heed posted signs on properties that say NO TRESPASSING!
Though I don’t like eating other types of mushrooms, the delicate taste of the morel soon won me over. I always fixed them the same way each time we had a batch of them. First, I soaked them in salt water for a couple of hours, to help get rid of creepy crawlies, then I’d split them down one side and open them up to make sure there weren’t any insects hiding there and rinse them off. At supper time, I’d dip them in egg mixed with a little milk, roll them in flour and deep fry them. Though they were split only on one side, the mushrooms would curl right back up looking like they were whole again. Very scrumptious!
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