Fresh sweet corn and BBQ! Both of them made from wild mushrooms foraged in my yard! Come into my post for a favorite summertime meal - in the winter, thanks to wild mushrooms!

Finding My Favorites
For this week's Steemit Iron Chef contest, we are supposed to highlight our favorite local fruits and vegetables. What are my favorites? As a forager, my favorites are whatever is growing outdoors, ready to pick, right now!
I was tempted to make a great wild weed salad, like I made for @lenasveganliving's FruitandVeggiesMonday recently. But nearly every plant I would include is not local! They were all introduced into North America during the European settlement or later. Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) is the only native local salad green ready to pick this time of year. I foraged some behind a neighborhood church. But what else did I find to eat? Wild Mushrooms! :D

In the Kitchen
The Split Gill mushrooms have a little woody knob where they attach to a log. So I cut that off each one. I took the needles off the Grand Fir twigs - and pulverized them in my coffee grinder. Otherwise, there's not much processing to do with the ingredients.

The challenge in cooking with Split Gill mushrooms is that they are tough. I slow roasted the Split Gills with the onion, dried tomatoes and dried peppers, for hours, until the Split Gills were soft enough to eat. Then I added a little BBQ sauce. I simply grilled the Shaggy Stalk mushroom cap. And then topped it with the Grand Fir salt mix.

Serving It Up!
This little plate of food was absolutely amazing! It's a hyper-local Pacific Northwest Winter version of a summertime BBQ -- with pulled pork, sweet corn, and a salad. But the BBQ and sweet corn are made from wild mushrooms!




What Do You Think?
- Have you ever seen Split Gill or Shaggy Stalk mushrooms?
- Have you ever eaten either of them?
- Have you ever eaten conifer needles?
- Do you forage for any wild food?
- Would you eat my Wintertime Wild Mushroom Summer BBQ?
I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.
Thanks @progressivechef for creating the Steemit Iron Chef contest series!
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Plant List
- Shaggy Stalk mushroom - Floccularia albolanaripes
- Split Gill mushrooms - Schizophyllum commune
- Miner's Lettuce - Claytonia perfoliata
- Grand Fir - Abies grandis
- White Poplar - Populus alba
- Sequoia - Sequoiadendron giganteum
