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Last week, the NYT ran a story about growing mushrooms at home: shiitake, oyster, and a bunch of other varieties turn out to be fairly reliable for the home gardener, and there are even "mushrooming parties" to get things started. (Chanterelles & truffles, alas, are not among the ones that people can cultivate easily.)
There are perhaps 200 billets now, stacked like Lincoln Logs. While the wood sits impassively, as logs will do, long strands of mushroom - or mycelium - are infiltrating the grain and starting to decompose it. Later this spring and in the fall, the logs should flush with "fruit" where the spawn went in.
The reward? About a pound of edible mushrooms per log.
Yet more mushrooms are growing in burlap sacks stuffed with wood chips. There are 250 of these bags stacked in piles three feet tall that snake around the garden's pathways.
"It looks like World War I," Mr. Morrison said. "Like you're in the trenches. In a way, this is the mushroom revolution here."
snip
The idea of mushroom "inoculation parties" may sound every bit as zeitgeisty - and unlikely - as the key parties of yore. But Ms. Kozak, who founded Field and Forest Products with her husband 27 years ago, reports that it has been shipping extra-large batches of shiitake plug spawn to gatherings across the country in the past five years.
"It's an activity meant for socialization," Ms. Kozak said. "Sort of like shucking peas."
And from the sidebar how-to:
"A couple of species are really pretty bomb-proof," said Mary Ellen Kozak, an owner of Field and Forest Products, an online retailer. "Oyster mushrooms are one. Shiitakes are one."
Both can be cultivated in hardwood. The logs should be dead, but not too dead. A diameter of four to six inches will work nicely.
Starting with a drill, a mallet and a dauber, here's what you'll need: a drill bit ( 5/16 inch); a bag of plug spawn; cheese wax; and the courage to be discovered in the garage, giving a bikini wax to a piece of lumber. You can buy all those things - except the last one - in the Plug Spawn Starter Kits (starting at $29.50) from Field and Forest Products (715-582-4997; fieldforest.net).
Not the liveliest video ever, and (as per usual with academia) everything is in passive voice, but it's the best (most complete) overview I could find. Please note that our NYT home-growers were mostly using dowel plugs: pull it out of its bag & mallet it into your prepared log right away: you can't let it dry out.
This one's livelier but not as informative as the video above:
There's also info available for people who don't have backyards to grow 'shrooms in their apartments. I'm not going to delve into that one right here, but maybe in the comments. Or maybe one of my firefly friends has some experience with this they'd like to share?
My favorite way to eat them is simply sauteed in butter, or as fettucini alfredo con funghi (use your favorite fettucini alfredo recipe, but saute the sliced mushrooms in some of the butter before adding the rest of the butter and the cream: yum: especially when you have some of the tastier varieties of mushrooms available -- feel free to play with this method, btw, b/c I made it up on the fly one day in NYC: it's not a "real" recipe).
