By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

I know I haven't yet told you about the first 7. I've been avoiding it...soon I'll spill the beans. But there's no avoiding disaster #8, the mushroom log we've been relying on for shiitakes for our fall one-block dinner. Which is in 5 days.

Eeesh.

I've tried to revive this log with soakings in diluted bleach, with mold-shaving sessions, with tight wrappings in plastic. I may have done the wrong thing; makers of other kits suggest rubbing alcohol and no bleach under any circumstances. Who knows. The mold lives on.

Luckily, Far West Fungi will replace incorrigibly moldy logs for its customers, as long as they're reasonably satisfied you haven't mistreated your log (stored it on the floor next to the trash, for instance.) In the meantime, does anyone have suggestions for how we can keep our next log mold-free?

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Our shiitake mushroom log gave us such a lovely first crop. Then came the weekend.

The log on Monday. Not pretty.

The poor thing was so dried out it was practically weightless. Plus, green mold was beginning to creep over its surface. 

I called Ian Garrone, co-owner of Far West Fungi, seller of the logs, and asked for advice.

"Well, the green mold likes the same environment as the fungi," he said. "Most people freak out about it. But it's natural. Just soak it for 24 hours in water with a little bit of bleach." How much bleach? "Half a capful for every three gallons. Then take it out and wipe off the mold."

The shiitake log, beneath a plate and topped with a weight to keep it from floating.

This bucket caused a bit of a stir among the cooks in our test kitchen the next morning, who couldn't figure out what the nasty brown stuff might be.

I put the log back out on the table in a fresh clean mold-free bag, tied it near the top as it had been, perforated it carefully, and hoped for the best. The best did not happen.

Four days later: serious mold.

So I called Far West Fungi again, and this time John Garrone answered. John is Ian's brother and the co-owner of Far West. I described the situation. 

"The molds flourish in the same environment as the mushrooms," said John. "Try scraping it off again, putting it in a brand new bag, and letting it rest for two or three weeks."

Resting for a mushroom log means being wrapped in the bag rather tightly (to discourage the mold) and being left alone. After a couple of weeks, if and when we begin to see--instead of mold--a little brown popcorn-like nubbin, that will be the log's signal that a mushroom is about to emerge. We should then unwrap the bag and re-tie it at the top, giving the log some space to shoot forth mushrooms.

Oh, another tip from John: Don't keep your mushroom log in the kitchen. Mold spores from kitchen trash can apparently travel and fix on the logs' surface. So now the recuperating log and the oyster mushroom log, which at least is not molding, are hanging out with me in my office.

They share space with bags of unwashed quinoa, old honeycomb, a Tupperware container of homemade salt, weird shriveled-up potato fruit, all of our chicken's first eggs (just the empty shells), and an old vial of brewer's yeast...souvenirs of our one-block diet so far. I realize that my office may sound the tiniest bit freaky, but  it really isn't, ever since I moved the vinegar crocks to the kitchen...they were kind of, um, overpowering.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

With our new mushroom logs suddenly exploding with fungi, the members of Team Mushroom tackled the logs with sharp knives. It was easy and fast--took us all of five minutes.

Shiitakes on the left, oyster mushrooms on the right.  

"They look like something out of Dr. Seuss!" said associate food editor Elaine Johnson. They were definitely the cleanest, most pristine mushrooms I'd ever seen. You could almost mistake them for porcelain, were it not for their fragile texture.

I cut up a few shiitakes and sauteed them in olive oil.

They were curiously fragile and tender, without the heft and chew I normally associate with shiitakes. Some of us loved them; others missed the meatiness. I suspected we'd waited too long to harvest the mushrooms, Their caps had opened so much that they looked like Victorian parasols.

I called Far West Fungi, the producers of the logs, and talked to sales manager Ian Garrone. He confirmed that we should've harvested them as soon as the caps had opened, when their edges were still rounded. An overly mature mushroom is soft, "like a really ripe banana."

As long as I had him on the phone, I thought I'd ask what the log itself was made of, since we'd all been wondering. The answer was surprising: basically, it's the shroom itself. Here's Garrone's explanation:

Birth in a petri dish. Germinated mushroom spores are added to a petri dish of agar (a seaweed extract) and potato dextrose (food for the baby fungus). Within days, mycelium--the rootlike filaments that are the main body of the fungus; what we call mushrooms are merely the fruits--start to appear and form a white ring in the dish.

Adolescence in a Mason jar. The petri-full of mycelium is cut into wedges. Each wedge goes into a jar filled with red oak sawdust mixed with rye seed or red-oak seed, and the jar is chilled. The mycelium begins to run through the jar.

Maturing in a bag. The jarful of mycelium gets dumped into a bag of more sawdust and, this time, rice bran. Mycelium growth continues for another couple of weeks. "This is what we call your master spawn bag," says Garrone.

Grown up and ready to fruit. A small bit of the master spawn is added to yet another bag of sawdust and rice bran and given lots of water. Now the mycelium really takes off, creating a spongy loglike chunk as it weaves through the sawdust. (Remember the last time you were walking on a nice, soft forest floor? That's probably because mycelium were underfoot.) We received our log in the mail, and mushrooms popped out within a week.

This is exactly the method that Far West Fungi uses to grow its mushrooms for sale at farmers' markets all over the Bay Area. Without even knowing it, we're using what the pros use.

What can we expect from our log? It should give us two or three more "flushes" of mushrooms about four weeks apart--until the mycelium runs out food. Will it die? The brochure advises us to "retire it to your garden where it will enrich your soil." I wonder if we'll see a mushroom or two sprout from that spot. Hmmm. Hope so.

Before I finish, I'd like to introduce Team Mushroom's new co-leaders:

The Spore Sisters: Assistant to the editor-in-chief Brianne
McElhiney (left) and associate food editor Elaine Johnson.

Ever since we found a giant morel mushroom in our compost pile, we've been thinking about adding Team Mushroom to our growing list of one-block diet projects. Well, last week, with fall on the way, the thought of cooking up a bunch of earthy mushrooms was just too tempting, and we went ahead and ordered a couple of grow-your-own "mini farms" from Far West Fungi, in Santa Cruz.

They were not impressive upon arrival. They looked so much like moldy loaves of bread that I worried they might get accidentally trashed.

Shiitake loaf on the left; oyster mushroom loaf on the right.

They came on Thursday. Tiny nubbins had formed on Sunday. Today it's a freaking forest. We'd better start cooking!