First crop of 2013

First find

This Saturday I made yet another trip to the forest, and at last brought back some wild food. Just chanterelles as I expected, but it's a start.

As I thought, the first fruitbodies appeared in warmer places, mostly on south-facing path edges. Quite a few sprouted in the sand where dunes of the heath meet the forest - clearly, there has been enough rain to sustain their growth.

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to check on wild strawberries, but to compensate for this, I found some wild blueberry plants (or "bilberries", as they are known in Scotland), and this is something that I have not seen in this forest before. I'll definitely be returning to that spot in August.

It has been raining every day since, with reasonably warm weather. The pickings this weekend were just enough for a small omelette (cooking report coming tomorrow), but next week I hope there'll be enough for a quiche. We'll be going into July by then, so who knows, perhaps there'll be a couple of ceps, too!

The pickings. To give some idea of the scale, the largest mushroom in the foreground is about 1" wide.