Wow - this one was fun. We were out wandering the woods on the back of our place, and found that we had a bunch of Shitaki Mushrooms growing on our oak logs! Score!Two years ago a friend game me wooden dowels with spores on them, and we cut up oak logs, drilled them, and placed the dowels inside. Its been two years, and now in June, we find they've started to grow! Very fun to discover this last night.
Here is my stack of logs. I've put them back in the darkest part of our place under DougFir trees. As you can see, slugs have been at them a bit...
The mushrooms were quite dry - the typical season is Nov through March, so these have been dried out fine. Very strong and dense meat.My wife threw a few pieces into a chinese dish she was making, and they tasted FANTASTIC! It seems they taste better coming from our place...
We took the rest of them, cleaned them off, and sealed them in a mason jar. We also put some rice in the bottom - we do this with truffles, and the rice takes on the flavor, so we wanted to see if it would work for mushrooms.
Always new discoveries and fun things to find in the NorthWest - if we are out and looking...
