Monday, November 29, 2010

Mendocino Matsutakes


Immediately after sleeping off my Thanksgiving food baby, I awoke to drive off to Mendocino to participate in David Arora's Thanksgiving Mushroom Foray weekend. It was an awesome gathering of 60 or so folks all focused on learning more about, and of course picking and eating wild mushrooms. I spent a lot of the weekend chatting with Dr. Ryane Snow, my foraging mentor - and if you ever want to learn more about the art of being an outsider, it would behoove you to spend some time with this great individual.

Anyway, as a follow up to my post last year at this same time - My Most Memorable Mushroom Hunt - I present to you a photo of my weekend gems, found in exactly the same area as my find last year. These are all #1 Matsutakes, with their partial veil still fully formed. In Japan matsutake are apparently given as new year's gifts as symbols of freshness and growth and good luck. These are on top of an amazing screen print by Ashley Veselka commemorating the season. May it live on!