My kids foraged some chanterelles this week and they brought them over tonight. We made beef stroganoff with the freshly picked Chanterelles! It was my first time eating wild Chanterelles!
My experience with chanterelle mushrooms only occurred once.
My neighbor hit 80 years old while I lived next door. His wife had lived in the town all of her life. They made regular camping trips to Moyie Springs, near the ID/MT border and always seemed to return with chanterelles.
Morels seemed easy for me to identify. I have just looked at some pictures of false morels and I am still reasonably confident in saying this. When they showed up with some woodchips that I used to cover periphery paths in the community garden patch I had once — I was delighted. They seemed to appreciate secondary pine forest growing near where I used to live near Pend Oreille Lake.
Beef Stroganoff was probably a perfect use for the chanterelles!
I consider successfully identifying and harvesting mushrooms to be magic.
I am no mushroom wizard and I am content to let the grocery store tell me which ones I can eat.