A Royal Flush of Oysters

These are such beautiful fungi!







Recent damp days and warm temperatures have brought forth flushes of mushrooms on the inoculated logs.

Blue oysters . . . and pink ones too. (No, they don't taste like oysters -- I suspect they got their name because of the way they grow in little colonies.)

It's such a treat to see these delicacies appear!

And there are shitakes too . . .

A big basket of oyster mushrooms . . . what shall we do with them?

I found a recipe for Pasta with Oyster Mushrooms, Sage, and Parmesan.

Saute' garlic, onion, and mushrooms in butter. Add some chicken broth and chopped sage. Finish with light cream and toss with shredded Parmesan and cooked pasta. Salt and pepper to taste.





It's a lovely, simple recipe that lets the delicate taste of the mushrooms come through.

'shrooms!!!

We have mushrooms! Remember those logs John inoculated back in late March? They're beginning to produce!! Here (above) we have six shitake and two oyster mushrooms, ready to go into a stir fry this evening.

Below, a flush of tiny oysters break through the paraffin that coated the plug of spawn and sawdust. We have regular oysters and blue oysters (so that's where the band Blue Oyster Cult got its name!) -- not sure which these are.

They have a strange beauty -- like tiny alien life forms bubbling out of the logs.

Below are the minute yellow crescents ( not much larger than a fingernail clipping -- I'm really asking too much of my poor camera) of Chicken of the Woods. I've never tasted this mushroom and look forward to seeing these reach eating size.

All these mushroom pictures made me think of the books about Mr. Thallo and the Mushroom Planet. The first one, published in 1954, was my introduction to science fiction. Charming, innocent fantasy about children from Earth visiting a planet where all life is fungoid.

No, it wasn't creepy at all -- it was, rather, a good way to introduce a child to the notion that a being very different from oneself isn't necessarily scary.