DIY Mushrooms

I stumbled across a really cool oyster mushroom-growing kit produced by Back to the Roots in which used coffee grounds are seeded with oyster mushroom spores and sold to you in a handy little box. All you do is cut some slits in the plastic, spritz it occasionally with water, and watch your mushrooms grow! It's awesome, and while you can get a replacement bag, it's still something you'd have to constantly replace if you wanted a steady stream of mushrooms.

Well...today I stumbled across Williams Sonoma's new Agrarian line online, and discovered this shiitake log. While it only "fruits" once every 2 months, it's supposed to last at least 3 years. And considering that everything at Williams Sonoma is at least $26000000, it's kind of a miracle that it's only $30. Well, I want one. If I'm going to have a garden, I might as well be able to pick my very own shiitakes from my backyard, too :)

I just finished Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the last 50 pages or so is about mushroom hunters. It sounds pretty fun to me, but it's one of those things that you can't really get into halfway...you have to really dive into the culture and have an experienced mushroom hunter respect and trust you enough to show you their confidential mushroom-hunting spots.  So for now, I'll get friendly with a log. I mean, a mushroom log. I mean, ugh. You know what I mean.