Collecting Chantrelles on the Coastside

Here some Chantrelles that I collected a little inland from the coast, as well as some other, inedible, varieties I found while collecting.

I love that all the mushrooms are so different! 

After being frustrated and looking for edible mushrooms for over two months on the coast and coming up with no edibles I finally decided to go inland a bit. 

I pulled over next to a live oak tree and jumped out of my car with my “fruity” looking mushroom basket and found the mother lode under a live oak tree!  They were the smaller little button/golf ball sized ones—still I was very pleased.

Chantrelles have a very delicate flavor and should be cooked with little else.  I made some cream of Chantrelle soup that a was great!

The next few days I returned to the same spot and saw a few “humps” of leaves that were pushing out of the ground closer to the tree.  I pulled the leaves away and found some larger mushrooms—approximately one pounders. 

Later that day, also a little inland from the coast I found another collecting area with large one pound Chantrelles.

As a note:  I don’t collect all the mushrooms in a given area because I want them to fruit in those spots year after year and I only collect the larger ones from here on out as we all want them to release their spores so we get more tasty Chantrelles next year.

I hope to find a King or Queen Boletus, the Prince Mushrooms and the giant horse and or meadow mushrooms in the future. 

As a reminder, never eat any wild mushroom ever unless you can make a positive identification. Very innocent, white mushrooms can kill you very quickly—beware of the Death Cap and the Destroying Angel!

Matthew des Tombe