Family Fun:: When the chanterelles bloom

This is a favorite time of year, when the chanterelles begin to bloom.

Chanterelles in bloom!

It used to be that the transition into autumn was a melancholy time for me. I delight in the summer sunshine, the days when I can comfortably walk half-naked around the home, the mountains of fresh vegetables and fruits in the garden. September marked the imminence of the rain, the chill, the wind. So long blue skies, so long swim suit, so long dry feet on trail runs.

However, since I started getting into mushrooms many years ago, I have come to delight in the coming of autumn. Those first rains at the end of summer are harbingers of the mushrooming glory days of the year, months of mycological adventures!

Mushroom adventure!

Warren has been a workhorse on the house all summer and is in danger of burning out. Mushrooming is one activity that can tempt him away from progress. Our first mushroom hunt was a couple weeks ago when we hunted for king boletes. Grandma babysat and we went to the Mount Baker Wilderness to a tried and true bolete spot. It did not disappoint!

Boletus edulis galore!

We certainly get giddy for kings, but chanterelles are our favorites. One reason they are so dear to our hearts is because we can walk out our back door and find them! Hundreds of acres of DNR land connect directly to our property, so we have an extraordinary amount of room to play. It's an added blessing that our area is ripe with chanterelles in the fall.

We have lots of room to play, but not so much time to play. It is an asset to have incredible work ethic as Warren does, but it is also so important to take the time to play! On Labor Day, Warren took a much-needed respite from working on The Project to go on our first chanterelle hunt of the year. We packed up the dogs, packed up the babe, and headed out to the hills. All the while I excitedly recited on repeat a part of a popular children's book replacing some of the words:

     We're going on a mushroom hunt.
     We're going to find so many big ones.
     What a beautiful day!
     We're not scared.

Labor Day is on the early side of chanterelle season here, but we thought we'd give our spot a try anyways because it had been such a wet August. Lo' and behold! The mountains were covered! It was by far our best harvest we've ever seen. We saw so many it was overwhelming; where to start?! We were like Oh, what fun. We could tell we were not the first ones there, but even so there was plenty to go around.

A perfect patch of chanterelles.

I unfortunately found two different hornets' nests. Mushrooms went flying both times as I ran away yelping (I react very strongly to stings). Trekker, one of our trusty canine companions, suffered the brunt of the blows. I got one sting, but thankfully the baby was safe from harm in her carrier. Not one to let a chanterelle go to waste, Warren braved both nests to rescue the mushrooms left behind in my haste to get away on both occasions.

This time next year she'll be the one collecting mushrooms. :)

Isla did great on her first chanterelle hunt! She slept most of the time and only started to get squirmy at the end of our five or six mile jaunt. We could have spent hours more at the top collecting, but I was worried Isla would lose her composure and we were miles yet from the car. We split parties briefly at this point; I started meandering back down the trail with Isla and Q while Warren took Trekker and did a rapid pick of an insane patch he had found. He set the timer for fifteen minutes and picked like crazy, then ran down the trail with his bounty to catch up with us. I couldn't believe my eyes when he showed me his bag; he doubled our harvest in that fifteen minutes after hours of picking!

Carrying that many mushrooms and a pack for miles is no joke!

Granted, the rapid pick mushrooms were quite dirty compared to our standard carefully cleaned bunch.

You can see the difference between the dirty rapidly-picked mushrooms on the left versus the carefully cleaned mushrooms on the right. Bonus chicken of the woods front and center!

It is so worth it to take the time to pick the dirt and conifer needles and sticks off the mushrooms as you collect them. It makes the final cleaning at home so much less daunting.

Cleaning for days.

In total we collected over twenty pounds of chanterelles! It took days to process all of them, but it was worth it. I fear Warren is tiring of all of our chanterelle meals... We've enjoyed chanterelle tacos, chanterelle-stuffed butternut squash, roast chicken thighs with sage potatoes and chanterelles, chanterelle soup with homemade herb bread, and endless simple onion, garlic, and chanterelles fried in butter.

Chanterelles don't dry well, so to store them we instead dry-saute them to get out the bulk of the water and freeze them.

Had some friends over to drool over this meal with.

Mushrooming is my favorite kind of bonding time. We enjoy consuming them, certainly, but not more than the finding them.

Family fun!