This is what $20 looks like

When I got my morels ready to cook, I was very surprised to find that they're hollow inside - I guess I expected the part that looks like a brain to be solid inside, like a button or portobello.  It's more like a gnarly-looking balloon.

This was spring experiment number 2 (last year we tried ramps, which we liked enough to play with again this year), and again it involved lots of bacon.  Basically, I fried up some bacon pieces and ramps, pulled out the bacon and used the grease to fry the morels, which I cut into wedges so they'd end up being bite-sized when they were done.  When the morels were mostly done I added some salt and pepper, and some milk that I thickened with flour (because I was out of cream).  Served it over some fettuccine with the bacon sprinkled over the top and liberal amounts of Parmesan cheese.

It was good, but honestly you couldn't really taste the mushrooms that much - it would have been as good (and much cheaper) with any of the regular varieties of mushrooms you can buy at the grocery store.

And then we tried fiddleheads.  This was much less of a success, due in large part to the fact that when boiled they're fuzzy and curled up and have little leaves that look like feet and it's very hard to get over the "Ack!  I'm eating caterpillars!" factor.  Jason and I each had one bite and threw the rest away.  Luckily, those were only a $5 investment ... it would have killed me to have to do that with the Solid Gold Fungi.

So now we've tried the three most common wild-harvested spring vegetables!  Yay!