move over morels!

Move over morels, we've hit the big-time with boletes! We have struck out this year with the morels, but with all of the rain we've been having, there are bolete mushrooms popping up everywhere! Robin and I collected a few while on a hike with Madelyn the other day... we cooked them up for dinner and found them to be the consistency of a slug... tasty, but could hardly put it to my lips!? We later discovered that there are two types of boletes in this area (both edible, don't worry!): slippery jacks (slug-like) and these beautiful orange boletes we've been finding in the aspen stands. The later tastes much better and is far more firm.

Today we headed north of town and met up with Bryan. Combined, we pulled in 30 pounds!?

Yes, that's a picture of Bryan weighing the bags.... We spent the next 2 hours processing the mushrooms - washing, scraping off the spongy gills, and slicing up so that we can freeze or dry them. Had a few for dinner tonight -slightly more flavor than your regular button mushrooms in the grocery store, same texture.






The other pics are from collecting today, boletes are much easier to find than morels that is for sure. Mk with a bag full and Maddie getting in on the action, and finally a picture of some other mushrooms I found - I was hoping they were chanterelles, but when we got back and tried to ID them, it didn't quite match up, so we tossed them. But they sure are beautiful!