Mushrooms a-gogo

Sunday, December 30, 2007

One thing that never seems to be out of season around Philadelphia is mushrooms.  Granted, if you’re foraging for mushrooms in the wild, that’s a different story.  Spring and Fall are the usual times for that (although certainly, there are Winter and Summer mushrooms).  But cultivated mushrooms can be grown both indoors and outdoors.  And sometimes even underground, in the case of Creekside Mushrooms Ltd..  Mushrooms are Pennsylvania’s largest cash crop, and a quarter of all the mushrooms grown in the U.S. come from the Kennett Square area.

The chances are good that if you go into any grocery store, the mushrooms you find there will have been grown locally.  They won’t be organic, however.  Considering how easily mushrooms absorb water, it might be worth it to go out of your way to find organically grown mushrooms.  There are several local farms who use sustainable farming methods and raise mushrooms organically.  The two that I normally run into are Mother Earth Organic Mushrooms and Oley Valley Mushrooms.

Even now at the end of December, it’s not difficult to find locally grown and organic white button, cremini, yellow and gray oyster, shiitake, portobello, even trumpet mushrooms.

On a related note, I’m still trying to track down a local mycologist or mushroom-hunting tour.  The idea of foraging for mushrooms is appealing to me, but I don’t relish the idea of getting sick or dying because I misidentified a mushroom.

(Photo taken yesterday morning at the Fair Food Farmstand, Reading Terminal Market)