morel hunt and first dinner of series this Saturday

[Alan Muskat]

Hi folks, 

I had a long, peaceful winter, once again focusing on The REAL Center. That is, aside from working with an LA production company on possibly hosting a wild foods TV show. I don't think they're gonna go for my title, though: "WHAT THE FUNGUS THAT."  

"The poetry of earth is never dead" (Keats), and now the mushrooms have arisen -- with a bang. I found 250 morels last weekend (see photos below). I'll be serving most of them this Saturday at the first "No Taste Like Home" five-course dinner. There will be nine of these forage-and-eat events, once a month, until December, but this one and our September event are the only two focused on wild mushrooms.

This is a major event, the first of its kind in the country. There are about fifty people on staff and it has been a year in the making. Seats are filling up quickly: we're in the ACT, the MX, The Laurel, Smoky Mountain Living, The Indy Weekly, and this summer, in The Boston Globe and Southern Living. Looks like foragers are finally gettin' some respect! A story on wild food just ran on NPR today. How do you like my latest ad idea? 

Beyond Organic

Closer than Local

WILD

The Final Food Frontier

This morning I was out with Zack Lemann, our October chef, and here's a few photos. We found over twenty edibles, including over a dozen morels, stonecrop, and a snake; you can see where it bit Zack below. We left the snake, but Zack is hunting wild turkey tomorrow for our Saturday dinner (see menu here), and our theme for his Halloween dinner is edible insects. If mushrooms are weird enough for you, there'll be plenty of that too, all season long. Check it out. 

I'm teaching at least once each of the next four months, but this will be my last public morel hunt of the year. If you can't make it, I do private walks as well. In fact, I'm going back to my morel spot this week...

Foraging ahead,

Alan Muskat, Grand Poobah

No Taste Like Home

If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard.

Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?

Dorothy Gale

last weekend:

blister bug, definitely not edible

just this morning:

morel and wood nettle

stonecrop

black snake--edible!

Alan Muskat

The REAL Center

No Taste Like Home