Settling the babies in their carriers before the hike.
Joshua, Cheyenne and Ronin have returned to Oregon, and we are sad to see them go. Ronin was a real sweetheart and Alden has been missing her terribly. We all had great adventures with the Coxwell-Wiel clan and ate like royalty. Damn, can Joshua and Cheyenne cook! And forage!! The gatherer gene is strong in this family. We took a hike up Mt. Pisgah (Monmouth) in search of chanterelle mushrooms (we've had luck foraging them there in years past). It had rained hard the night before, which led to a very disappointing mushroom harvest. I didn't know this before, but pre-existing fruiting bodies turn to mush pretty quickly after a rain. If we had been able to hike a week or so after the big downpour, we might have found a whole lot more. So it goes with fungi. We only managed to scrounge about a dozen soggy chanterelles on the way up to the top. When we got there, we caught an glimpse of the neighboring lakes and valleys from a very shaky lookout tower. Alden wasn't having any of it, so we moseyed back down the old road on the front of the mountain. On the way down, Cheyenne spotted a high bush blueberry loaded with ripe fruit. We stopped to gather a handful and before we knew it, we'd damn near filled the paper bag we'd brought for mushrooms. As we progressed down the trail, we came across more and more blueberry bushes, each more laden with fruit than the previous one.
Can you spot the Purple-tongued Monkey with his young foraging among the blueberry brambles? They are shy and elusive creatures...
When we got home and tallied everything up, we had about 6 cups of wild blueberries, enough for a
fantastic pie. It took us nearly all night to make the pie, between two tired, cranky babies that wouldn't stay asleep, but it was worth it!
Settling the babies in their carriers before the hike.
Joshua, Cheyenne and Ronin have returned to Oregon, and we are sad to see them go. Ronin was a real sweetheart and Alden has been missing her terribly. We all had great adventures with the Coxwell-Wiel clan and ate like royalty. Damn, can Joshua and Cheyenne cook! And forage!! The gatherer gene is strong in this family. We took a hike up Mt. Pisgah (Monmouth) in search of chanterelle mushrooms (we've had luck foraging them there in years past). It had rained hard the night before, which led to a very disappointing mushroom harvest. I didn't know this before, but pre-existing fruiting bodies turn to mush pretty quickly after a rain. If we had been able to hike a week or so after the big downpour, we might have found a whole lot more. So it goes with fungi. We only managed to scrounge about a dozen soggy chanterelles on the way up to the top. When we got there, we caught an glimpse of the neighboring lakes and valleys from a very shaky lookout tower. Alden wasn't having any of it, so we moseyed back down the old road on the front of the mountain. On the way down, Cheyenne spotted a high bush blueberry loaded with ripe fruit. We stopped to gather a handful and before we knew it, we'd damn near filled the paper bag we'd brought for mushrooms. As we progressed down the trail, we came across more and more blueberry bushes, each more laden with fruit than the previous one.
Can you spot the Purple-tongued Monkey with his young foraging among the blueberry brambles? They are shy and elusive creatures...
When we got home and tallied everything up, we had about 6 cups of wild blueberries, enough for a fantastic pie. It took us nearly all night to make the pie, between two tired, cranky babies that wouldn't stay asleep, but it was worth it!
1 comment:
Sorry you didn't have much luck with chanterelle's, but your pie looks delicious! If you have great chanterelle recipes from your previous hunts, check out our chanterelle recipe contest at MarxFoods.com - we'd love to have you enter a recipe. You can throw in your pie recipe too. :o)
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