It was a rather poor harvest for me last year, as far as chanterelles go. Hoping I'll find more this year. I do have some dried, but your right, freshly picked ones are always better.
Did pick mushrooms earlier in life also. Always with my dad (and other folks often/group of friends/couple of dogs about/nice memories) and he was the one with the knowledge about 'wild' mushrooms. Not 100% watertight though
. One afternoon, um/me 'reminiscing' now/about 20 years ago, we collected quite a bunch of birch boletes mostly and someone of the group picked a mushroom that had a quite trancey effect when one takes in the sucker.
Dad prepared the lot (p/m recipe with chantarelles/ingredients I've posted in this thread earlier, I think) and we, group of 9 or 10 peops, ate the dish on toast a little later.. and ja, all of us spaced out for at least half an hour.
No idea what went wrong (well, for sure, my dad missed the mushroom that wasn't intented to be in the pan) but we all went on a nice trip collectively after we ate the dish. We all went silent at first and then we all laughed our socks off, doing/saying silly stuff for.. (?) half an hour.
MISS those afternoons. Genuine folks, nature, dogs around, hiking, food, love, philosophy, real stuff, etc..
~
Um? Ate a homemade tomato soup and a wrap filled with stuff all totally healthy for dinner this evening.