While not exactly a new food, I’ll consider this to be part two of the ‘new food series’ since it’s at least a new do it yourself project that is food related. Ok, it’s not actually me, it’s Ms. J who is in charge of this.
As a Christmas gift, she received a mushroom log from the Lost Creek Mushroom Log company of Perkins Oklahoma. The fact that there was a company that sent out logs that have been injected with shiitake mushroom spores came as news to me, it seemed like a fun thing to do especially since Mr. C likes to see how plants grow.
Once you receive the log, you immerse it in a container of spring water. You’re not supposed to use tap water since some of the added chemicals in tap water, like chlorine, can kill your mushroom spores. Let the log sit in a somewhat shady area, and then a week or so later, you have mushrooms growing on your log.
The fun thing is that the mushroom spores don’t grow all at once, you can harvest the first set of mushrooms that grow and then water the log again and more will grow. Mr. C loves to check it out every day to see how it’s doing and lets us know when it looks like a new mushroom is coming in.
I’m not sure what we’re going to do with the mushrooms yet. Maybe mushroom soup.
Mr. C's Dad 
Really cool! I have often wondered if it worked…and you don’t need a sunny place…sounds like I should try it…
I was a little doubtful that it would work, but it seems to be doing fine. From their website, it looks like a small company run by a married couple.
Having been a mushroom hater for most of my life this recipe turned me into a mushroom skeptic. I’ll eat them I just can’t think about the fungusness of them…
Lettuce Wraps with Spiced Pork : http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/lettuce_wraps_with_spiced_pork.html
I didn’t know that Eating Well was still around, I’ll have to check that out!
I only started eating a lot of things as an adult – especially onions, mushrooms, and peppers, which caused my Italian Mom a lot of grief when she was trying to cook for a picky kid.
Baked with lots of onion and garlic gone under a fire with cognac you can have a nice meal with dark brown bread.
Sounds good! We used some cognac in a pie recipe recently. The recipe called for rum but we didn’t have any, so we used cognac as a substitute, and it actually tasted better than the usual rum version of the recipe.