It's chanterelle season. And there's a tool for that.

And...I’m back. Last Friday marked the end of Miss Holly's two week visit, and she and I pretty much exhausted the list of things you can do in and around Oslo. We also had time to - gasp! - relax on her vacation. And go to Sweden! (More on Sweden soon. That was entertaining to say the least.) I guess that’s the benefit of a long vacation in a not-so-large city (only ~600,000 residents) as well as staying with the ‘locals’ (um, that would be us): see a little, chill a little, repeat.

One of the things we did while Holly was here was go mushroom hunting. You may be thinking that, since I am originally from the rainy, wet Pacific Northwest, I am a regular mushroom collector. I am not. In fact, the extent of my past mushroom collecting involved visiting the produce section of the local grocery store. So, when some German friends of ours invited us to go hunt for chanterelles (or kantareller, in Norwegian), we said, yes, yes we can. There were nine of us that went which seemed a little crazy at first, but we quickly spread out near Songsvann, a nearby lake, and hunted.

Now, I cook. A lot. So, I was pretty sure what a chanterelle looked like. Pretty, soft, and kinda orangey-yellow. I am here to tell you that’s the grocery store experience. In the forest, all bets were off. They call it hunting for a reason. In the first hour, I had seen so many mushrooms and had no idea what they were, but none of them were chanterelles. Which was pretty much okay with me because of the awesome wild blueberries and raspberries.


For example, this is not a chanterelle:

These, however, are wild raspberries (I was blurry with excitement.):

And then I spied a slew of mushrooms on an arid hillside. Could it be? Yes it could. It turned out I had found the elusive chanterelles!

After that, people began to find a bunch, but I only found a few more. For me, tromping through the woods was just as enjoyable. It was so quiet and peaceful, and really made me miss hiking in the Cascades. I will assume G felt the same way, although I swear he was also hunting for trolls.

After a few more hours we headed back to our friends' house where we cleaned and sorted the mushrooms and drank some wine while two of the guys made dinner – quiche and crepes:

They took their crepe making very seriously, which was fun to watch.

Note to self: this is a rødskrubb. Turns blue when cut. Edible when cooked. Funky. Check for worms first.

It was a long day, but the end result was great. We had a tasty dinner with friends, good conversation, and a fun story to add to our Norwegian adventures. 

A few days later, I paid tribute to our fun outing by shopping, of course. Seriously, what would a new culinary pursuit be without adding a new tool to the toolbox? Come on, did you really expect me to pass up the opportunity to own a mushroom knife, complete with brush and metric ruler? I think not.