When Allison called, wondering if I could do a small favour while she and her husband Hank were on vacation, I jumped at the chance to help a neighbour: water the plants; feed the dog; pick up the mail; just ask!

            It turned out that they had received a rather unusual Christmas gift, unless you know Hank, and then it actually seems quite perfect. It was a mushroom growing-log. They had initiated the growing phase of the mushrooms, in this case shiitake, by soaking this Red Oak sawdust chunk and now it required daily “watering.”

            I was a bit sceptical about this whole thing.  As we went over the one page of instructions with words like “pin” and “flush,” obviously written for someone with a bit of mycology background, I started to tune out. At the point when we reached the, “adjust the PH to 5.5” Allison admitted that if it died, not to worry about it. Died! It looked dead already. And there was the part further along about what to do in case of either green or blue moulds developing. Green or blue moulds! I couldn’t believe that mushrooms were going to grow from this hunk of wood with what looked like bird poop all over it.

            I wished her well on her trip, promising to take care of the stump, secretly harbouring thoughts of hiding it in the laundry room and forgetting about it.

            But then something started to happen. In just a couple of days, those splotches of guano began to erupt into what must be the pins they were talking about. And a few days later, I had a bumper crop of mushrooms. I became curious about how they tasted, but then the suspicious side of me stepped in.

            How well did I really know Hank and Allison? And, more importantly, did I trust them? I had only this rather unprofessional looking reproduction of typed—on a typewriter!—directions assuring me I was growing shiitake mushrooms. There wasn’t even a website or email address on the sheet, just the rural route number of some remote farmhouse in Ontario.

            Had we been partying too loudly all summer; had our cat been digging in their garden; had we built our fence over the property line? These questions and more began to plague me as I realized that someone was going to have to be the first one to taste one of these mushrooms, and I knew it wouldn’t be Jordan.

            I have no idea where the inner strength (or stupidity) came from, but a wave of bravery (or stupidity) came over me and I picked one off and shoved it into my mouth, chewing down ever so slowly. My mouth was immediately filled with the most sensual, rich, buttery, sweet, slightly garlicky flavour. It reminded me of the wild leeks, or ramps, we used to find in the woods at camp to use in our Hunter’s stew. It was divine!

            And now I waited. Was my mouth getting perhaps a bit numb, my fingers swelling, or my intestines beginning to tie themselves into knots? But nothing; just the faint lingering taste of that delectable morsel. And so I harvested my crop, planning the delicious meals ahead.

            The first night we had a stir-fry; nothing short of spectacular. I have purchased fresh shiitake before and although similar, they lacked the richness of flavour and meaty texture of the home-grown. The next night, Jordan and I enjoyed a luxurious mushroom omelette. I used the remaining few mushrooms, as well as the trimmed stems, which tend to be extremely tough on shiitake, for seasoning in a soup stock I was making. I craved more.

            The literature promised 4-5 flushes (new crops) from this one log, so I read on. I would have to let the log dry until it weighed 3.5 to 4 pounds —I’m sure they didn’t mean exactly—and then soak it in cold water for 24 hours. Have you ever tried to submerge a sawdust log? I’m not sure how Allison accomplished this in the first place, but it was no easy task. It required great ingenuity, a couple bungee cords and a large canning kettle. I finally ended up with a contraption that even Houdini couldn’t have broken out of, but I got it soaked. An unexpected benefit of the soaking process was that when we were without power for 2 days, it provided a full pot of water for flushing the toilet.

            In the meantime, I did a bit of research into this odd hobby, and found it to be not so odd or even uncommon. There are many websites dedicated to the practice of cultivating your own mushrooms on logs. You can order complete kits with sawdust logs already inoculated with various mushroom spawn, or order spawn-impregnated wood dowels or spawn pastes used to inoculate your own hardwood logs. This is the method preferred by shiitake aficionados. Even the type of wood used can make a huge difference in the flavour of the mushroom, with white oak, poplar or alder considered best, but almost any other hardwood will do. One company markets plastic bags that will yield mushrooms, but doesn’t that just seem so sterile?

            And now I stare at the log every day, singing to it and talking to it nice, encouraging another “flush” before Hank and Allison get back. Perhaps I could tell them that in the heat of the power outage crazies, we accidentally mistook it for firewood?