The Mushroom Farm

This real mushroom farm, Earth Angel in Pacific, shipping 400 or more pounds of mushrooms daily, is an old warehouse with four rooms: the first one for starting oyster and shiitake mushrooms from clones, using slices of mushroom, because spores won't work for commercial growing -- in a sterilized "clean room" in sterilized growing media: sterilized compressed blocks of sawdust pellets or sterilized cottonseed hulls in a plastic bag. Then the bags are shelved in a room kept at around 70 degrees to encourage mycelium, or threads of pre-mushroom, to grow. In the photo you can see mycelium, the brown stuff, at its most developed in the bags on the top shelf, while the other bags are in process. It has to be organized.

In the cold-and-humid room, ceiling pipes dripping chilly condensation, the mycelia bear fruit: oyster and shiitake mushrooms. Shiitakes are on shelving. Standing in columns are the oyster mushrooms, pictured, growing out of pinpricks in the bags, multiplying dementedly. Imagine a 20x40-foot room full of mushrooms.
They're harvested here. The fourth room is for packaging.

How to learn to grow mushrooms on this scale? The owner cheerfully answered, "Failure." Any grower must experiment dozens or even hundreds of times and waste tons of materials before he gets mushrooms -- shiitakes, especially, are very difficult to grow. I personally asked him, "Do you like cooking and eating mushrooms?" He said yes, but if he had a pound of mushrooms he'd rather sell them than eat them. This eye-opening tour was arranged by the Missouri Mycological Society.

Did You Ever Have a Day with a Theme?

Poland. . .never thought I'd miss it as I do. . .in a supermarket in Wielazija I bought Polish soup packets and have hoarded them since. When the day dawned dull and cloudy I opened the one for instant mushroom soup. Poles are great fans and pickers of forest mushrooms.  I cooked the soup and let it sit while I caught up on a few hours of outdoor chores put off because of heavy rains. Then, bored, unwilling to drive anywhere, I tried entertaining myself looking for fungi in the soaked lawn. All sorts and sizes, 13 varieties in all, but the most glorious and only edible was a fresh chicken mushroom at the base of a tree less than 20 feet from the door. If I hadn't made myself look I wouldn't have found it.

At once I trimmed and collected some, cleaned it, sliced it, sauteed the pieces in butter, added them to the mushroom soup, and now I had genuine Polish wild-mushroom soup. And figured I might as well boil some potatoes and turnips and bring out the sauerkraut and Krakowski sausage (rations kept for homesick-for-Poland days) and eat a Polish lunch, and for dessert had strawberries, and it is June, and I was the happiest person in the whole world.

Lust for Lunch and Fall Colors

A certain aura surrounds lunch; it is like no other meal, a civilized refreshment in the meat-grinder of the workday, twice so if you can consume it outdoors. I packed a picnic lunch of ham and cheddar on a seeded bun, a dill pickle and a bottle of well water, drove to Babler State Park (2300 acres), had my lunch there and have never had a happier meal. The woods are still green, and that made me happy, but I lusted too after the orange and chocolaty tones suddenly so satisfying at this time of year. On my lustful lunch hour I bushwhacked until I found some. I'm attending courses to learn my Missouri mushrooms but am not set to eat any. I do know one must cook all edible wild mushrooms; never eat them raw. The bright orange mushroom is Cinnabar Polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus); the striped one, fresh Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor). Both are pretty. Neither is edible.

Meadow Mushroom

Mushrooms are not animal, vegetable or mineral, but alone among all things in nature are in a class of their own. This year's soggy pre-summer weather, with thunderstorms afoot every evening, is great only for fungi, and a sprinkling of these, Meadow Mushrooms (Agaricus campestris), popped up in my lawn overnight, full-sized, four inches across with solid, inch-thick stems (which I removed for the photo) and fresh pinkish gills. I love wild foods that I don't have to hunt for but instead come to me. As much as I'd love to taste these (with bacon), and they're said to be edible (especially with bacon), glamour photos is as far as I'll go.

Chicken of the Woods

This is "Chicken of the Woods" or "Sulfur Shelf" (Laetiporus sulphureus) seen today on a dead oak in the Divine woods. This meaty wild mushroom according to Mushrooms of North America is "the most popular edible polypore. Fresh young specimens are delicious..." However, I enjoy wild mushrooms solely as works of art. Chicken of the Woods (not to be confused with "Hen of the Woods" (Grifola frondosa)), is parasitical, and in its early stages, attacks a tree's heartwood, and by the time the "chickens" you see here appear on the tree bark, "they are definitely coming home to roost, as far as the tree's health is concerned," says Mushroomexpert.com. You can see that the undersides of this tree fungus are sulfur yellow. Looking into joining the local mycological society, I found its homepage plastered with dozens of warnings: They are NOT RESPONSIBLE if you go hunting mushrooms with them, then eat one and croak! I didn't feel the love. For comparison, here's the spectacular 24-ounce Grifola frondosa I found in the woods in October 2008.