Mushrooms are a great gift

My Christmas present is finally growing. It started out as a cardboard box that contained a plastic bag full of coffee grounds. Doesn’t sound much like a present does it? But when I tell you that there were mushroom spores on the coffee grounds then it becomes a unique gift.
The directions said to cut an X in the plastic bag and soak the bag in a bucket of water overnight. Not having a bucket handy I commandeered an empty Christmas tin. After soaking the bag I was to place it back into the box and set it on the kitchen windowsill. I had to improvise again as the kitchen window has no sill so I set the box beside the coffee maker.
After the promised 10 days of misting twice a day nothing happened. Not only wasn’t there “1 1/2 pounds of gourmet, tasty oyster mushrooms,” the box looked exactly the same as it did when I placed it by the coffee maker. I figured we kept the house too cold for the fungi to grow but I continued misting the contents anyway.
I was surprised a few days later with what looked like tiny aliens squirming under the plastic. I was afraid it might be mold but it has grown into the familiar shape I have come to love. I currently have one mushroom that is about an inch or so in diameter. Still not the promised quantity of product, but it is a start. I don’t know whether to pick it now or let it grow some more.
In addition to being a unique gift, the kit is an example of American ingenuity. A couple of kids were inspired by one of their college classes that suggested that gourmet mushrooms could be grown on coffee grounds. They began to experiment. They obtained a grant and contracted with a local coffee house to reuse their coffee grounds. They expected to reuse one million pounds of coffee grounds last year. That’s a lot of coffee.
Plus they say to recycle the grounds and the box into the garden once all the mushrooms have been harvested. That appeals to my latent environmentalist side.
This is just one of many companies that offer mushroom growing kits for sale. I had never heard of this company before but am impressed at their resourcefulness. I am looking forward to tasting the fruits of their and my labors.
Mushrooms are no longer classified as plants, as they were when I was in school. These days they are seen as separate life forms, neither plant nor animal, but fungi. They inspire love and devotion from their fans and turned up noses and disgust from their haters.
I have an old newspaper clipping showing my grandfather holding some giant morel mushrooms. He used to take me morel hunting when I was little. He was an expert at spotting the elusive creatures. Sadly, I was blind as the proverbial bat and couldn’t see what he was pointing at when he would show me what to look for that indicated the coveted prize was near at hand.
He would fry the spongy caps in butter with a little salt and pepper and enjoy them by himself as nobody else in our family would even try them. I never knew what I was missing until long after he died. Now, I am the mushroom lover in the house. But since I can’t tell a wild morel from a deadly toadstool I have to rely on the supermarket to provide for me.
Since I have found out how easy it is to grow fungi from a kit, I want try different varieties than what is offered nestled in plastic covered containers at the grocery store. Plus I know what to ask for when family members ask what I want for Christmas.[[In-content Ad]]