Mushroom Mania

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I'm a complete mushroom slut. I love any and all* mushrooms--the chewy texture, the earthy flavor, the colors, the shapes--all of it! This is another perk of living in the Pacific Northwest (aside from the amazingly green nature we have all around us, the breathtaking mountain and water views and the beautiful, sunny summers... er... well, excluding last summer)--the locally foraged mushrooms! For much of the year, our farmer's market sells a variety of locally foraged mushrooms, and we've tried every single one. I hope to one day take a class and learn how to identify wild mushrooms (hello awesome homeschooling activity for Zora and me!), but for now I'm relying on the professionals. Even though there is no comparing foraged mushrooms to grocery store mushrooms, I will still eat the grocery store ones--and like them!

We now have a new class of mushrooms to add to our list--homegrown mushrooms! A couple weeks ago, we bought an oyster mushroom growing kit at the farmer's market, thinking it would be a fun project for the family. It was--once it got going...

*I actually just ate Lion's Mane Mushrooms a couple of weeks ago, and wasn't too impressed. They were way too wet and had a funny bitter taste. We might have waited too long before we got around to cooking them though, so I will be giving them another try sometime soon and therefore they are not completely off my list.

The Chart: We were to mist the mushrooms three times a day, so I made a big chart with morning, afternoon and evening boxes to X off for each day. This proved to be just as exciting as the mushrooms.

 The Kit: The kit was quite simple to set up. It consisted of a block of wood chips covered in mushroom spores, then wrapped in plastic. All we needed to do was to cut slats in the plastic, stick four chopsticks in the top (this proved to be difficult since I cleared out all our take-out chopsticks a couple months ago, and the only ones we had were kind of nice and we didn't want to use them. Alex eventually stole some from work) to hold up a plastic bag that would act as a "humidity chamber". And then we waited.

Alex explaining the slit-cutting to Zora

Covering the kit with the "humidity chamber"

The Problem: After a week of absolutely nothing, Alex pointed out that, even though the temperature of our house was within the recommended range, our completely un-insulated windows were letting in a draft that was going directly on our mushroom kit.

The Solution: We moved the kit up to the top of the refrigerator, and within one day, there were already adorable little mushroom buds. From there, they took off! There were four openings in the plastic, out of which grew four clusters of mushrooms.  There was definitely a dominant one, and a runt. It was really cool to watch them grow though, and all three of us really got into it!

Day 9: mushroom buds

Day 10, morning...

...and Day 10 evening!

Day 11: Zora's in charge of misting

Day 12: They're growing like crazy!

Day 13: A lesson on gentle touching

Day 13: Close-up

Day 14: Alex decided it was time to harvest

The Harvest: The "runt" cluster consisted mostly of tiny, dried-out mushrooms, and was no longer growing. Alex decided it was time to harvest. All we needed to do was to twist the mushrooms off at the base, and then (hopefully) new ones will grow from the same location.

The first twist

Zora takes a shot at it

Our harvest (well, part of it)!

The Feast: Alex made a delicious stir-fry using the oyster mushrooms and some greens. We gave Zora a little plate of them to enjoy while she was waiting for the rest of lunch to be ready...

Z totally scarfed them, so I'd say it was a success!

We are now working on our next batch of oyster mushrooms. It's another slow start, so perhaps it wasn't because of the draft, after all...
This was an exciting project for the whole family, so I foresee us doing more of this in the future. Next time around we'll try the shiitake mushrooms!