I usually pull them out and throw them in the compost pile, but I don't know if it really matters. I found some in the mulch nect to my daughters sand box that were rather phallic looking it was unlike any mushroom I had ever seen. I definitely felt I needed to remove it before my neighbors started making too many jokes about what I was growing these days.

That sounds like a great place, and very nice people, Beachlily. I bet they'd love to hear from you. There's a couple of videos out there (at least) showing some techniques to making risotto. One is by Mario Batali, (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/dining/02mini.html?_r=1) and he's making asparagus risotto. He doesn't actually stir all that much. The other is Tom Colicceo, making roasted tomato risotto. I made that the other night, and it was quite good. In this video he shows his way of telling when the risotto is done. The only change I made to his recipe was to use vegetable broth. I'll put a link to that video below, but I don't know how to do more than one link, so I just included the address for the Batali video above. ) (By the way, I stumbled across that website when I did a search for tomato risotto [I have an abundance of tomatoes right now]. It looks like a pretty cool website, but I haven't had or taken the time to explore it further.) Sally

Yes, was growing along the side of my lilac hedge in the back yard. Guessing 6" tall, pretty incredible imo. Hope more come in the future. Hunting for morels can be challenging. And you need the right weather. At least around here. We always had the best picking right at the time when the poplar trees were breaking bud and showing some greenish hue at the tops. And you needed a nice rain with nights above mid 50's df . That doesn't happen every year. Even then, you had to search out the areas that you know from experience grows them. Semi low ground, poplar trees etc around here. We covered a lot of acres some years and some years of course were better than others. They only lasted a few days then sort of disappear again. Different areas and soils can be different types of morels and timing.

My kitchen cabinets were finally (one year later) delivered on Monday but are not yet installed. The SW shiitake color is PERFECT! My inspiration was also Devol mushroom but needed to go with a SW paint color. The Shiitake is similar but is slightly less gray and actually has the teeniest green/beige undertone but can only be described as a greige. The SW shiitake color as shown on its website is SO off. Someone said it looked like pantyhose and on the website it truly does. The actual color is greige, greige, greige. Hope that helps.