A Hunting We Will Go

Truffle hunting, of course.

Oregon has the perfect climate for this rare food. The expensive mushroom-like rarity is apparently 'pungent' and has a unique flavor. I am so curious to know what they taste like!

Preparing for the hunt:

 The drive. 

Oregon forest law- harvest a tree, plant a tree. 

Often, baby trees are by huge towering pines.

 We went with a truffle hunting group our friend is part of.

As I hopped out of the car with my giraffe rain boots, I noticed every other person in the group of 30ish people had on brown hiking boots. There is no way to hide giraffe boots. Or three kids.

I was officially an outcast.

No one seemed to care in the least:)

 We had no luck finding truffles among the douglas firs, but found tons of other cool things. 

This is blurry, but it's a cat-tongue. Kind of squishy and soft, growing off of the wood.

 Chantrelles, a kind of mushroom:

I cooked some up tonight and put them in cous cous!

 This is something like witches hat, kind of squishy little orange things.

Macey and Cody each found one of these things below. I think they're called 'konks', but really, I have no idea.

You can cook them and make a medicinal type tea.

Macey kept smelling in her bucket and telling me it smelled so good!

The smell made my stomach turn and smelled like rancid wood so when we got them home I just couldn't do it and ended up throwing them away.

Sorry!

It was nice to get outside and enjoy being away in the forest.

Even if one hand was for Mackayla and one hand was for Macey as they each took turns face planting it, we managed to have a great time on a Saturday while Ben is out of town.

****

As I was tucking Macey into bed last night she firmly told me, "Mom you can go now without laying by me and I won't be scared of those white shapes in the room that look like scary ghosts or the dark shapes." I rarely lay by her-it sounded super reassuring, right? She's actually a pretty brave little girl when she wants to be.

A few nights ago, about an hour after we had put him to bed, Cody came into our room looking a little dazed and amazed. "I just counted to one million!" he exclaimed. The next day I told him it would take three days to count that far and he said maybe he had skipped a couple of numbers. ;)