There has been a recent peak in interest in mushroom hunting at work. A few weeks ago a coworker had brought in some Oregon White Truffles he had found. The good news is that no truffles are known to be poisonous, but apparently there are a few look-alike varieties that don't taste so great. Jonathan was able to convince this guy to cut up one of the truffles and look at it under a scope to identify the spores. Turns out - they were the good kind! We were given a few and made truffle butter with them (Tasty, but worth the price they go for in stores? I don't really think so).
This weekend we headed out to Lebanon with some friends from work to search for truffles at another coworkers property. Apparently he had just the right trees at just the right age to make finding truffles likely. The only problem was, none of us really knew what we were looking for. We'd heard things and read things, sure, but no one in our group had actually ventured out and searched for them before.
The first hour proved rather unsuccessful - a few "almosts" and "maybe that's one... just a really small one!" and we were about ready to give up. That was when we heard shouts of excitement through the trees - Carrie had found them! We had been going about it all wrong - all you need for finding truffles is your hands, not tools and digging utensils!
We spent the next half hour or so pawing at the ground and found a few handfuls of various size truffles. Nothing super impressive, but we were at least happy the trip had yielded some success!
Here's us with our loot minus Jonathan since he was taking the photo (I know you can't see it, but trust me - there are truffles in there)!
-C
P.S. Don't worry - no one has eaten any of the mushrooms yet. We are waiting to verify that we definitely know what they are before we do that!
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