Wild Ohio Morels

The hunt for the ever illusive morel mushroom has begun. Okay, so I've been attempting to hunt them for three weeks now, but today was my first successful hunt.

After an hour of fruitless hunting in the woods, after half twisting my ankle and tripping on sticks about twelve times, I spotted my first little mushroom. Just patiently waiting for me under a tree. Hi there.

 And then, shortly thereafter, four more appeared under another dead elm tree!
 Like magic.

 A little grove of mushrooms, waiting for me to come and fry them up.

Two hours and five mushrooms later, the hunt was done. I wasn't returning triumphantly with the bagfuls of 6-inch mushrooms I'd imagined, but still, five is better than none.

And all that tromping through the woods works up an appetite.

Fried Morels (Sponge Mushrooms)
Ingredients:
As many morels as you can find
Lots of butter
Flour
Cornmeal
Salt water

Directions:
Cut off the dirty ends of the mushrooms, the parts that were in the ground. Rinse the mushrooms to remove clumps of dirt. Cut in half.

Soak in salt water. This cleans the mushroom and gets out any bugs or whatnot. Don't think about it, just do it.

Remove from salt water bath and roll in flour and cornmeal mixture. Add a touch of pepper.

In a medium-sized pan, melt butter. When it is hot, add the mushrooms. Cook until they are crispy and most of the butter is gone.

A big hunk of butter is mandatory.

And voila! Buttery, crispy morels still hot from the pan. Very few things in life are better.

Okay, so my hopes for foraging my dinner didn't quite work out. A pizza was necessary to fill in the gaps in my provisions. Hopefully next time the hunt is on, I'll find the legendary mushroom fields where there are so many, you couldn't possibly eat them all. But until then, I'll eat my few but mighty morels and be happy.

** Only eat the morel (sponge) mushrooms. If you aren't sure what type of mushroom you've found, don't eat it. Don't mess with fungi.