shrooms

The morning started with waffles.  Waffles are a good way to start the morning.

This was followed by mushrooms, which is a good way to continue the day.

It finished with s'mores, which is an excellent way to finish.

It turns out that there is a Cascades Mycological Society, which hosts an annual Mushroom Festival (according to my local guides, this is a very Eugene type of things to do.  I wouldn't know, as I'm not from Eugene).

This event involved a scarecrow contest, various mostly local nature/ecological group booths (e.g., lizards, fish, flowers, the raptor center, a local author who writes books about hiking trails in Oregon, etc), a huge hall full of mushrooms of all sorts of varying colours, sizes, and shapes (with signs that said things like "edibility: probably not poisonous"), live music and mushroom-based food.

We chose roasted chantrelles on a stick (very, very tasty), wild mushroom soup (very tasty) and a mushroom ragout (so amazingly totally tasty).

We then went home and had more s'mores.

There is a book full of s'mores recipes.  While the owner of the book (my friend that I was staying with) asserts that the premise of the book is faulty (and I have to say I agree), it does have some good ideas.  The premise is that while s'mores are good, they're not perfect.  We believe that s'mores are perfect as they are... but they can be perfecter :)  It turns out that adding fresh raspberries and bananas to s'mores is genius and using different kinds of chocolate is genius.  And roasting marshmallows is fun regardless.

In the scarecrow contest:  Cirque du Scarcrow

In the scarecrow contest:  The Great A'Tuin, the space turtle, on whose back are the  four elephants that support the Discworld.  Apparently, this is over the head of at least some of the people who were there...

Western screech owl.  Yes, it's alive.

One of several tables of mushrooms.

Really cool mushrooms.

Artist's conk.  If you draw on it when it's fresh, it turns brown.

More really cool mushrooms.  Apparently there was a contest :)

Mushrooms can be used to dye stuff.

Roasted chantrelles of tastiness.

The coolest jack-o-lantern ever.  Turn the crank, and his eyes and mouth go in and out.