May Michigan Morels--Keeping 'em for Winter

It’s morel season here in Northern Michigan. I’ll be picking for another week. Then I’m headed north to one of my favorite fishing spots, where if I’m lucky, the morels will just be emerging.

As I prepare another batch of morels today, I thought I might share my method for eating morels in the middle of the winter. I used to dry them. Then, on a cold winter day, I would re-hydrate my morels enough for scrambled eggs or throw them dried, right into a soup or a sauce for pasta. A pesto sauce with morels is heaven! But always, in the middle of winter, I missed the delight of eating fresh morels.

Here’s what I do now to get as close as I can to eating fresh morels all year. After I’ve picked a fresh batch in May, I always, rinse the morels in cold water and cut them in half lengthwise, in order to rinse out any dirt or bugs inside the morel. Next I lay them on a paper towel to let all the excess water drain. As the drying continues, I change the paper towel often. I continue this process until the morels are still fresh, but beginning to lose their moisture.

Of course, I keep a few for my next meal. As far as I’m concerned, one should be eating morels every day during the season. But a few I want to preserve for the long winter months. These, I dump in a paper bag with white flour and just a little salt. I shake the bag lightly to cover the morels and then I remove them and shake any loose flour from each morel. You want the morel totally covered with flour, lightly, but not caked. If your morels are heavily caked with flour, you didn’t remove enough moisture first.

Next, I set each morel on a baking sheet and place them in the freezer. I take care to make sure they are not clumped together but spread out. The morels need to be individually frozen. I usually let them freeze overnight, enough to make sure they are well frozen.

When I remove my morels from the freezer, I quickly put them in a freezer bag and get them back in the freezer. Lately, I’ve been using freezer bags that have a suction cap which allows me to remove excess air. I can't remove too much air. Morels are delicate and I can crush them if I'm over zealous.

Here’s why this method works so well for me and what you need to do when you cook your morels. Freezing floured morels individually on the baking sheet allows me to easily break them apart and cook as many or as little as I like. I simply remove the amount of morels I want to cook and immediately return the others to the freezer. But before I take them out of the freezer, I get my pan hot with melted butter. Then, I place each morel, cut side down, in the frying pan. I don't mess with them! They are thawing as they cook. Once one side is thoroughly cooked, I turn them over, individually again, and cook the other side. When my morels are thoroughly cooked, I then stir them in the pan the way I normally do when cooking fresh morels.

Follow this method, and you’ll be amazed at how fresh your morels taste and feel. And I'm all ears. Share your morel cooking techniques right here please.

Surprise!

As a coach, it's always gratifying to hear a client enumerate all the things he or she has accomplished. But last month, when one of my clients told me, “I've become accustomed to being surprised,” well, it just made me thrilled and proud. 

Surprises, yes, can be as unwelcome as waking up to three inches of snow in the middle of May or some other hurtful onslaught. But most often, a surprise is an unexpected feeling of wonder and astonishment that has been triggered by something we have come upon suddenly. Sometimes it can be startling, but generally we think of surprise as something good. There may be disbelief, but surprises are usually enveloped in amazement. And what a great way to be, expecting and becoming accustomed to being surprised. Surprises make our life so much more special.

For me, May is the month of surprises. It's morel mushroom season and so I spend even more time in the woods around my home. Any other month of the year, you can find me walking the dogs for an hour or two each day. During May, I clear the calendar a couple of days each week and take to the woods from sunup to sundown. So while racking up all that time and all those miles in the woods, I have plenty of opportunity to be surprised by wildlife, both flora and fauna, rarely seen. And I'm on the hunt for the elusive morel, never knowing when I'm going to walk around the other side of a tree and be surprised by a jumbo white morel. Or a whole patch of them!

There's something instinctual or intuitional about finding morels. Most often, I have a sense, a physical feeling, in my gut and heart, just prior to making the discovery. I notice I slow my pace and breathing and become more alert. I've noticed the same intensity just before a fish hits my lure. I've learned how to detect the oncoming surprises at a cellular level that does not take away from the surprise but, instead, enhances it. 

You can too. We're all capable of having these feelings or “hints” prior to being surprised. Most of us, however, don't notice them because we haven't practiced. When we practice an activity that involves hunting or searching for something, we more frequently have the opportunity to notice what we were feeling and sensing just prior to the discovery. Go on the hunt, I suggest. And become accustomed to being surprised. 

“The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” ~Ashley Montagu 

”Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” ~Boris Pasternak

Yikes!

My Backyard on April 8

Well, I thought it was Spring. But here we are in early April and I'm sitting in about 2 feet of snow in 48 hours. What's that all about!? I was just beginning to think about some Morel Mushroom hunting. Now it feels more like Christmas than Easter. Just April Fools a few days late, I guess.

The dogs and I are warm and somewhat happy. We're hunkering down. I've put a fire in the fireplace and I'm cooking some venison chili for dinner. Not my normal April activities and fare but, alas, when in Rome...

The Edge Of The Muck

It's morel mushroom season. I'm a bit of a fanatic about hunting the elusive morel. My friends know I'm pretty much unavailable during the season of the “shrooms” unless they want to hike with me in the woods from sunup to sundown.

It's early in the season and the weather has been cold. So last Saturday I chose a stand of woods that produces morels earlier than most. I had some success. But the ground was very, very dry. So I moved on to a place where the hardwoods grow right down to a cedar swamp. I was hoping that the close proximity to the swamp would mean the ground was a little moister.

That's where I hit the “mother lode.” Morels everywhere! And the closer I got to where the hardwoods met the swamp, the better the picking. At one point, as I was bending to pick a morel, I looked up and could see something large moving around in the swamp. Living up to my reputation as a wandering woman, I set my morel bag down, planted my morel stick in the ground, and crept into the swamp.

It was a beautiful cedar swamp, with various shades of green everywhere. Pale green plant shoots were just starting to appear amid the muck. Both the live and down cedar were covered with a deep green moss. The trees were a rich cedar green with pale green tips of new growth on the end of each branch. There was a subtle trickle of water that could easily be heard in the otherwise noiseless swamp. I was struck by the beauty of the sunshine filtering through the cedar trees, bouncing off the water, and creating a shimmering effect on the underside of the cedar boughs.  The swamp was dense and dark and light and colorful at the same time. The smell was both rich and pungent and sweet and airy. I’d never before noticed the contradiction within a swamp.

A few feet further into the swamp, I could see a black bear. Bears are not rare in Northern Michigan, but sightings are. Mostly I feel rewarded if I see signs of a bear or the occasional glimpse of the back end of one moving away from me. I wanted to get a little closer. Fortunately a few moss-covered logs allowed me to crawl quietly into the root system of a down cedar tree with a minimum amount of muck. Like all the others, this tree was covered with moss. It made a delightful seat and I settled in.

I watched this bear for no more than 5 minutes when I heard a sound off to my left. A second bear was coming into the area. Within another 5 minutes, I heard a sound to my right and bear number three was approaching. This was the point where I stopped patting myself on the back for my great find and opportunity and started wondering just what I’d gotten myself into. I was not in a good position to leave. I was at that point surrounded by bears on three sides. And my departure would not have been swift given my awkward perch.

So I surrendered to enjoying my predicament. I watched these bears turn over logs and dig in the muck for whatever had attracted them to this spot. One climbed a tree for what seem to me to be purely sport, up and back down swiftly. There were a couple of small confrontations over whatever it was they were feasting on. Two or three times they lifted their noses to the air and rocked from one front paw to the other. I was sure I’d been discovered. But each time they settled down and went back to their banquet.

It was an hour and a half before the trio had wandered to one side of me and my exit was open. I tried to stand up, only to find my legs would not work. And that's when I apparently got too noisy and the show was over. In a matter of seconds all three had disappeared into the deepening swamp. I'm always amazed at how quickly wildlife can go from seen to invisible with only a step or two.

Now good advice might be that when you find yourself on the edge of the muck, don't go further in. But sometimes being stuck in the muck is a rewarding experience. After my mushroom bonanza, I was in just the right mood to really see the beauty in the mucky mess in front of me and the bear sighting as an opportunity. Doesn't it always seem to happen that way? Once we start riding high on one delightful experience the next experience is delivered. And our only role is to notice and surf from one attraction to the next.

"Come to the edge," He said. They said, "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," He said. They came. He pushed them... and they flew. ~Guillaume Apollinaire

Hunting For The Elusive

May is the beginning of the annual spring hunt for the tasty yet elusive morel mushroom. And when I find it I'm rewarded first by the thrill of the find. Then, when I get home, I'm rewarded again when I relish one of the first tastes of spring.

Morels are mischievous. I can spot one 30 feet away, keeping my eye on it the entire time I'm moving towards it. And then, about the time I'm bending over to pick it, it disappears. I circle around the spot where I last saw it three or four times and then I walk away. When I turn back, there it is again. Once I sat down on a log to eat lunch. I swear I never moved from that log. I just sat, eating and enjoying the woods, and I must have been there at least 20 minutes. When I stood up to continue my hunt, there was one of those morel mushroom devils right between my feet.

It's wonderful to collect a bag full of morels. It's fun to count them and compare this year's harvest with last year's. But coming home with a large quantity of morels is just the product. It's really the process I enjoy so much. We think of our life as our accomplishments or products. But life is a process, not a product.

Chasing something elusive inside us is not all that different than hunting the morel. Sometimes we feel torn, out of sorts or puzzled and we seek the source of our confusion. We must go on the hunt and enjoy the process.

One of my favorite methods comes from Julia Cameron's book, The Right to Write. Cameron says to sit down with paper and pencil. Focus on what you find elusive. Ask and write down your question. Then before you analyze the question, just write the answer that comes to you. Don't sift through the answer. Just write. This answer will likely lead you to another question. Write that question and then let the answer that follows flow from you to the paper. Continue the process for about 30 minutes or until you feel done.

This is often enough to get to the delectable morsel you're seeking. Turn your back on the product, the outcome, and pay attention to enjoying the process, the hunt, and the elusive will present itself. It always does. Oh, and don't forget to reward yourself!

"Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away." ~Earl Nightingale

"The important thing is not to stop questioning." ~Albert Einstein