Forest candy

Thanks to Jason's latest post on candy theft for comic relief and the fresh, exhilarating anticipation I now have for hours with him and Kolz when we're in LA next month, as the disses fly. Maybe his lady and I can do lots of hand-clapping grade-school games (Miss Mary Mack, anyone?) to distract us from the mad tween dissing rhymes. Thanks also for the link shout-out that gave me a kick in the pants to write somewhere other than Facebook. Blargh.

But also, on the topic of candy, or good things to eat, I went home to Illinois last week and spent a lot of time playing in the dirt, in the woods, with the dog, in the kitchen. The combination of woods and kitchen yielded this beauty, one of several pounds that the family demolished in our usual way (breaded and pan-fried)...



They're nice in the wild, too.



We've never found morels in the woods before, though kind friends and family have brought over sacks of them from time to time. We'd go looking in southern Illinois when I was growing up but never found a single sorry 'shroom (and later rumors hinted that our neighbors always got out and found them first, because the window is usually pretty narrow). This was a once-in-a-lifetime motherlode of mushrooms.* How happy that made us is sort of captured here. My folks may kill me for posting them in our post-woods-tromping, freshly Jeep-bounced, dressed-against-bugs-and-weeds, mushroom-giddy state, but I love Mom's impromptu twist on American Gothic, and those grins are real, people. I was too excited to turn the camera on myself. And Dad did find them in the first place, in a spot that had been my grandpa's.**



Now, I just need to learn to sink a three-pointer from anywhere outside the arc and I'll be one step closer to being able to die happy.




* I learned that one's first instinct is to NEVER TELL ANYONE where you found the morels, even promising the silence of death to family and friends, and that you properly only reveal that you "found a few" when in fact you found four pounds' worth. However, you then also properly invite everyone over and don't tell them you have morels to share until you serve them or they sneak a peek in the kitchen. It's kind of like the best parts of Christmas. I brought home 10 or so in my carry-on Kolz could have his first, and decided that we should be frying more things more often.

** If you're wondering why they're in a citrus bag, it's because the mesh allows the spores to scatter when you move them. Anything to propagate more.