"It's a promising start to what could be a particularly good mushrooming season." That's my feeling about Fall, 2012 mushrooming on the southern Oregon coast.
We'd been hearing rumors and reading e-mails about how the chanterelles and lobsters were fruiting everywhere. It wasn't until yesterday that we actually walked the property searching for fungi, and we were not disappointed. White and golden chanterelles along with lobsters were easily spotted.
We found a nice collection of perfect specimens!
The lobster in the photograph weighed just over 8 ounces, 4 ounces of which went into preparing a mushroom sauce to serve over pork steaks for dinner last night. Try our Incredible Edible recipe for September, 2011, Pork Scaloppini with Lobster Mushrooms in a Marsala Cream Sauce, and you won't be disappointed. It's wickedly good!
Truthfully, we hadn't been too optimistic when we started our foray. We're at 850 feet elevation and typically out of the fog zone, or "marine layer" as some locals like to call it, that can frequently hover over Port Orford. Sure, we'd had a couple of days of low clouds, but the weather had been warm, close to 90 degrees, last week. In spite of our doubts, though, the mushrooms were there in their usual, predictable locations. What a delicious start to the fall mushrooming experience in Curry County!
This year's fawns are growing fast!