A small porcini bounty, found mid-August around 11,500 feet in the Colorado Rockies.

Since late July, my dear friend Butterpoweredbike has been emailing me about finding pounds upon pounds of porcini.

Meanwhile, in the last month and a half, I moved to a new home and a new job while trying to finish up my old jobs, working 100 hours per week or more, ad infinitum. What a change from the fancy-free wild food forager I formerly was!

So I lived vicarously through her finds, and this year, Butter did it right—she figured out the favorite forest conditions of the Rockies’ prize fungus, then consulted her maps and with a little help descended upon prime locations that rendered unto her a porcini windfall of staggering proportions. (This is in great contrast to the awkward fumbling we both did last year in the early days of our mushroom hunting obsessions, which were, coincidentally, the early days of our friendship.)

Still, despite being embroiled in a staggering amount of work at my new job, I made a point to search my spots when time permitted, generally one morning per week—but came up empty handed each time.

That was until two weeks ago, when Gregg and I found seven or eight young kings at our favorite porcini place.

Interestingly, the timing coincided with Butter’s pronouncement that porcini season was over. Read the rest of this entry