Mushrooms and A Chantrell-moblie in the kitchen

 Today was a beautiful sunny fall day and Chance and I spent it in the woods mushroom hunting.It is not often we go on this kind of trip just the two of us and Sol left for school this morning with a very disappointed face.
   We spent around 3 hours poking through the woods and we saw lots of interesting mushrooms along our way. I am hoping Farmer Deville will stop here and name some of them from the photos.

I think someone once told me this is a Cauliflower Mushroom.

This is the same mushroom as above just poking out of the soil.

I have never seen this one before.It was amazing.

Check out that funky green that did not show up until I shot the photo.

 What we were hunting for today were Chantrells,our favorite wild mushroom to eat.Last year we found a bumper crop all in one area.Today's journey took us three stops in different areas.We did not bring home as many as we had hoped for but a day spent in the woods is never a waste no matter what.
 . Driving up the road to our final stop we came head to head with a logging truck,ack! Chance had stopped our truck to look at something along the side of the road when I looked up and out the front window I shouted "Logging Truck!" Chance had to back the truck down the road about 3/4's of a block before there was a spot we could pull over.Back road/ logging road tip: Logging trucks stop for nothing,it is up to you to look out for them and you have to figure out how to get out of their way.Loggers are paid by the load,time is money they have no time to stop.
   Last year when we brought our Chantrells home we put them in the freezer.This worked fine but the mushrooms were much more soggy than we really wanted them. This year we are drying the Chantrells.Two of our preserving books say that this is the preferred method of preserving Chantrells.Chance strung the mushrooms on some heavy string.He then took this funky laundry drying rack we have and hung it from the kitchen ceiling.The drying rack has clips that Chance attached the strings of mushrooms to.Both preserving books say to hang the mushrooms above the Aga/ stove where it warm and dry but we don't have the right kind of space there.The books also say that the drying should only take 3-4 days,the books say the mushrooms will look wizened. 

Some of the Chantrells before they were strung up.

Our Chantrell mobile,right in the middle of the kitchen.

It was hard to pull ourselves away from the woods today.The weather was perfect ,warm fall sunshine that will leave us soon,the wind whispering in the trees,the knocking of a woodpecker near by and just each other for company.

Rois