Growing Mushrooms

Every year for Christmas I try to think of a present for my significant other that I know he will like and that is not related in anyway to airsoft or military history or paraphernalia.  This past Christmas I came up with the idea of a gourmet mushroom kit.

I forget how we originally heard of this, but we both knew that there were kits available for growing your own edible mushrooms.  Food Network addicts that we are, we are always looking for something new to add to our culinary arsenal.  My initial research came across two companies that I was interested in ordering from,  FUNGI PERFECTI and GOURMET, MUSHROOM & HEALTH PRODUCTS.  After perusing the kit options from both companies I decided to go with Fungi Perfecti since while their kits were less romantic being blobs of saw dust instead of actual logs they appeared to produce more mushrooms.

Now I had to decide which variety to order for Ed.  The many options (some of which I had never heard of) made it difficult, when I noticed that there was a special price on the shitakes if you ordered 3 at once I decided to get one for my Mother and Stepfather and my Father and Stepmother.

Initially I had thought of this as something interesting and different to get everyone and was interested to see the different reactions.  Something wonderful happened as a result of these gifts though – at my daughter’s 3rd birthday celebration just a couple of weeks after Christmas we all spent an hour discussing the different stages our mushroom kits were in.  It was nice for my daughter and me to see both sides of my family having something to discuss that wasn’t just related to us.

The ironic part is – our kit is the only one that hasn’t started producing mushrooms.  We keep referring to the troubleshooting guide and will keep trying, I’ll call the 1-800 assistance line if I have to.

These kits are great to do as a family, there are even books you can get for kids about mushrooms to go along as a sort of project.  Plus, once you have exhausted the kit it is 100% compostable!  Certainly one of the neatest things I have ever given as a present to anyone.