Looking for Mushrooms Part 1

Sep 09, 2020,14:24 PM
 

“The West Coast is about to burn off the map” As stated on WPS today! So you can imagine it’s NOT a good time to forage in the woods for mushrooms. In fact, all the national parks and forests are closed now in California. Our house and cars are covered with ashes. 


So we went searching on the web instead and found Mountain Meadow Mushroom farm. Only a gallon or two of gas away — since we aren’t  getting out much nowadays we decided we could take a run at it... (as my friend Nick said, “I’m getting 2 weeks to the gallon”). 🧐



If you’re not familiar with mushroom farming, the process starts with bales of hay and some other nutrients which serve as the "soil" or medium. And of course they need mushroom spores. 


The innoculated spores go onto the medium which is placed inside sterilized "containers", tunnels or warehouses, and the spores go to work on the medium. Each of these dozens of containers (Below) is full of one type of mushroom.



Mountain Meadow is a pretty big business. These covered areas hold just the nutrients. There’s 4x the amount of hay shown in my pictures. 



Since we went to the trouble of driving up we decided to buy the "Variety Pack" which as you can see is a lot of mushrooms. Six varieties, approximately 10 lbs. My wife was happy, happy.



and you can take home all the sweet smelling compost that will fit in your car or truck, free. We took about 200 lbs; she was even happier then. 


To top it off we cruised to a nearby winery and picked up a few cases of wine the ladies ensured us was mushroom-compatible. 



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Cooking for Mushrooms Part 2

 
 By: cazalea : September 9th, 2020-14:48
Part 1 described how we found the mushrooms at the farm. Sorry they are not foraging now either, because the hot, dry, fire-ravaged conditions in California do not permit collecting wild mushrooms this year. So we are happy to be safe and use farmed mushr...  

Thank you very much for the wonderful trip to mushroom county dear Mike! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

 
 By: renerod : September 9th, 2020-19:25
And also for the great recipe! And... also for the humorous PS with the Jaguar! Best regards. René

Wow beautiful day

 
 By: Cookies : September 9th, 2020-19:26
Thanks Cazalea for the beautiful tour and I am sure it was a great relaxed day, especially with the wine.

We had some with dinner, not before

 
 By: cazalea : September 9th, 2020-20:44
but it was relaxing none the less. Thanks for reading! Cazalea

Thank you for the post on mushrooms, learned

 
 By: K-Lo : September 9th, 2020-16:44
about how they are grown, at least in Cali.

Thy are grown the same way in France

 
 By: cazalea : September 9th, 2020-17:28
Only underground in limestone tunnels excavated for fancy chateau. I’ve been o several tours there in the Loire valley. Mike

Back when we grew our own mushrooms

 
 By: cazalea : September 9th, 2020-20:33
It was possible to buy a home kit of mushroom medium, with the spores already inside. We poked holes in the plastic bag, kept it in a dark humid spot, and oyster mushrooms came out for a 4-5 week crop. I have never been a mushroom hunter in the wild, but ...  

Okay, first 2 pics show me just how diff

 
 By: K-Lo : September 9th, 2020-22:16
Mushrooms are, who could ever imagine a plant growing like this, and we eat them!! The world is such an interesting place.

“Looking for mushrooms”

 
 By: quattro69  : September 9th, 2020-19:38
Seems like a good “theme” for 2020.