A Scrumptious Meal

My friend Rudi went mushroom picking and he brought us a few from his bounty. These are Chanterelle, a delicacy  you can't buy in he stores. We used to go picking for them, but we haven't gone for years now. They only grow at a certain time of the year and the conditions have to be right for them to grow. They usually grow under old conifers in the moss and under cedars. Mushroom pickers are secretive people, like fishermen. They will not divulge the location of their mushroom patches unless you torture them, and even then they may not be that easy to break.

There is nothing worse for mushroom pickers to see their  patch destroyed by deforestation, because Chanterelle grow mostly in old forests. It takes patience and luck to locate a productive spot. Once you have one, you can go back there year after year to find mushrooms. We've gone through those sad events of losing a spot twice. After finally locating a patch it was destroyed a year later by the clearing of that part of the forest.

We ate those mushrooms last night with roasted pork. They were delicious.

In the frying pan

Chanterelle on roast pork

This is an Easter Lily that popped up in my wife's flowerbed this year. She transplanted it a couple of years ago from a flower pot she got for Easter. It never came up last year, and suddenly this year here it is--in September. These lilies are not that hardy, meant to grow down to zone 5. We are zone 3, which is too cold for some plants. This one survived two winters.