{"id":49590,"date":"2014-06-24T00:09:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T07:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=49590"},"modified":"2014-06-24T00:09:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T07:09:07","slug":"forage-for-food-merit-badge-expert-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/49590","title":{"rendered":"Forage for Food Merit Badge, Expert Level"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThe adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our<\/span> Sisterhood Merit Badge program<\/a>, now with 5,892 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far\u20148,416 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Wondering who I am? I\u2019m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my<\/span> former life<\/a> \u2026\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For this week\u2019s Farm Kitchen\/Forage for Food Expert Level Merit Badge<\/a>, I begged, cajoled, pleaded, beseeched, and otherwise nagged my good friend at the Department of Fish and Game to accompany me on my first annual Wild \u2018Shroom Hunt. Dear, sweet Helen is pretty much my bestie. Okay, okay, we only met that one time last summer when I bought my fishing license, but I know we hit it off. I could feel the connection. I\u2019m fairly certain she felt the same way, because she was way friendly and told me to have a nice day. So, yeah. Besties.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Helen was leery at first\u2014amazingly, she’s not much of a mushroom eater\u2014s face it, girls, I cannot be trusted in the wild alone. I mean, there are lots of dramatic ways I want to go out when I meet my maker, so to speak, but poisoning myself with a mushroom omelet is not high on my list. Know what I mean, string bean?<\/p>\n

So Helen finally agreed to spend the afternoon with me, as long as I brought along some of my famous homemade granola snacks and some organic lemonade. So off we went,\u00a0we two intrepid foragers, into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. I accidently left the granola in the car, so to keep Helen\u2019s plummeting spirits up, I made sure to sing lots of camp songs as we hiked. Two hours and a few mushrooms later, Helen told me that not only was my singing attracting Sasquatches, but it was also scaring away all the fungi. Who knew? So, hard as it was, I concentrated less on my crooning and more on the ground in front of me. At the end of our hike, we had some delicious finds:<\/p>\n