Went for a walk in the woods two days ago with my little explorer extraordinaire, Lexi Sage, and we happened to make a wonderful find not too far from our home. At the bottom of a little valley, a fallen hunk of oak sat brimming with beautiful clusters of fan-shaped, white-brown oyster mushrooms.
I'd forgotten to bring along any sort of bag, so I took off my hoodie, cut the mushrooms from the log, made a heap in my hoodie and tied my sweatshirt into a satchel to carry my find homeward. Lexi examined every mushroom I cut, studying the gills and the form of the strange things.
She's been quite the connoisseur of gourmet mushrooms since she began eating real foods, I think mushrooms are definitely one of her favorite foods. Thus far she's tried oyster, lion's mane, shiitake, black trumpet, morel and of course portabella, or Agaricus bisporus.
Our little lady loves her mushrooms so much that when my wife and I cook them up, it's a wonder there are any left for us to eat at all. This particular hunting expedition yielded 2 pounds of mushrooms.
We've been eating well this weekend. With the cold winds blowing through Atlanta, icy roads, single-digit temperatures outside, can't think of a better meal than some crispy, sauteed oyster mushrooms. After the obligatory Southern Snow Day French toast, that is. Our recipe for oyster mushrooms is pretty simple, sauté them in a little bit of butter, high heat because after rinsing them, they soak up quite a bit of water, the high heat helps that evaporate quickly. We cook them to a good crisp, not just golden brown, but dark brown, really makes them taste best. A little bit of salt and pepper toward the end and you're good to go.
On the same note, I might as well share the failure I had with this product, and provide a quick review, the Back to the Roots Organic Mushroom Farm.
Got this Oyster Mushroom growing kit as a gift for my birthday in October and was super excited to try it out. Had success in the past with an oyster kit from Fungi Perfecti , so I felt confident that I could get these to grow. Despite following the instructions to the letter, spritzing it with water twice per day, keeping it at the proper temperature and light level, unfortunately, all of the bright white mycellium rather quickly turned yellow, it lost that distinctive, healthy mycellium scent and began to smell faintly of earthy decay. I attempted to salvage it, scraped away some of the dying mycellium to reach healthier growth down below, but this too failed to take hold and grow into a flush of oyster mushrooms. At the point at which green mold started to form, I gave up and I threw the mushroom kit away. I'm not entirely sure if the issue was that at the time I started this kit, Georgia was still undergoing a rather severe drought and this might have caused general humidity levels to be so low as to have zapped too much moisture from the substrate, or if this was a bad kit, or any number of other variables. I may attempt this again in the future.
Peace!
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