One of the most memorable dishes my mother cooked — and there were many great dishes to choose from — was fried morel mushrooms. My dad and uncle went out in the woods each spring to look for the elusive morels and usually found enough for several meals. One year my uncle found some really big ones, 6 to 8 inches long.
One day when I was a teenager — no, just a young boy, we didn’t have teenagers as a special segment of the population back then — I went with my dad to look for morels. He took me to an abandoned apple orchard near Tappan Lake in rural eastern Ohio where he had had good luck before.
This being my first time looking for morels, he gave me some hints as to how to find them. First, walk slowly and carefully or you might step on one and not know it. Next, look carefully all around before your next step. The morels come in various colors such as black, gray and brown. The brown ones are the most common and blend in with the dead leaves where they are most likely to be hiding. If you are lucky, the morel will be big enough to stick its fluted head above the layer of leaves, and be easier to spot.
That day I may have found a few, but not enough to make it a good first outing. But with Dad’s find, we had enough for dinner.
Favorite spots
Now skip ahead 35 or 40 years to my next encounter with morels. We moved back to Ohio, near my original morel experience, and lived next to the pastor of the Methodist church. Pastor Doug was an outdoorsman as well as a minister. He loved hunting and fishing, and he came across many places where morels grew.
While talking to Doug one day about his hunting experiences, we got around to morels. Since he was getting ready to leave the area for another church, he agreed to show me some of his favorite spots. This was unheard of since most people protect such information, like a favorite fishing hole or the best place to find wild turkey — the birds, not the bourbon. We visited a few spots and he told me where some others were. I made notes and tried to remember which of the back roads we took.
The next spring, after the last frost, some rain and a few warm days, my wife, my visiting aunt and I took to the woods to look in Doug’s spots for morels. No luck at all. After a few days we tried again. Still nothing. I gave up on Doug’s spots and decided to go out and look on my own. I tried the old apple orchard where I had searched with my dad and had no luck there, either.
There are many reasons for not finding morels. Is it too early, too late, too cool, not looking close enough, not looking in the right place, a bad year, and so on. Even when there are morels in the area, you need to stop after each step and look behind. Looking at an upturned leaf from a different direction may reveal the morel you have overlooked.
Sometimes you just want to forget morels and have fried oysters instead.
Fantastic find
After several years in Ohio, I decided to take a walk down behind the cemetery next to the Methodist church. It was spring and I thought I would take a look around in case there happened to be some mushrooms in the area. As I stepped off the dirt road near a broken wild cherry tree, I looked down and was amazed to see morels in every direction. Not huge ones and not hundreds, but enough to make my heart beat a little faster as I picked enough to have with our eggs the next morning. The next day I was back again and explored a larger area and found more morels.
What a find — no more driving all over the countryside. Just walk across the road and down the hill and there they were! But it didn’t last. After a few good years of spring picking, they became harder to find, and then none at all. There could be several reasons for this. Bad weather, not enough spores dropped to the ground when picking, or other pickers getting there earlier than me. The Amish were great mushroom gatherers and they would arrive in the area in big vans in the morning to walk the woods.
Now, here in Vancouver, we get our morels at the farmers market. A lot easier then hunting them but they just don’t taste the same. I know that the wild ones are out there someplace, I just haven’t heard of anyone who knows, yet. Do you?
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