It would be understandable to love mushrooms purely for their flavor. The evidence – hello porcini and cremini, enoki and oyster, morel and maitake and shiitake – is abundant.
In Monterey County that’s on display as much as ever, with rains giving life to plates at places like Lucia (where Cal Stamenov has a wild mushroom tasting menu debuting next week) and il Tegamino (chanterelle risotto) – and trophy-taking goodies at Big Sur Foragers Fest like Tim Wood’s duck confit-chanterelle ragout and Matt Glazer’s wild boar chili with black trumpets, hedgehogs, hen-of-the-woods and porcini.
But loving on mushrooms for their yum alone is a lot like appreciating Superman merely for his dashing cape.
There is so much more to mushrooms and the mycelium that produces them, like a tree does fruit. Outrunning speeding bullets and bounding over buildings is cute. Fighting disease, sustaining soils, and rescuing the food web is superheroic stuff.
Paul Stamets is part author, part entrepreneur, part inventor and all mycologist. He has been cultivating fungi truth for decades, collecting 250 cultures of medicinal mushrooms along the way. The more views of his TED Talks and his book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, the more powerful his discoveries become.
Stamets visits the 37th EcoFarm Conference for a workshop and a talk this weekend at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove (763-2111, www.eco-farm.org). His 1:30pm Friday tutorial aims to discuss things like inoculating mulch with mycelium and growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms on ag scrap heaps. His keynote closes the conference 10:30-11:45am Saturday (tickets are $95 for Saturday, $175 Thursday or Friday, $350 for the full conference) and will fill Merrill Hall to overflowing.
Stamets’ TED Talk is subtitled in 27 languages, with more than 6 million views to date. The 17-minute talk is as fast-moving as it is fascinating, and deserves a place in science curriculums everywhere.
“I love a challenge,” he starts out, “and saving the Earth is probably a good one.” He then wonders: If every organism had a right to vote, whether we’d be voted on or off the planet.
“I think that vote is happening right now,” he decides. Later he elaborates: The sixth major extinction the Earth finds itself in, the first caused by an organism (humans), would swing the vote decisively. But mushrooms can help.
Stamets can use mycelium to prevent pests like ants and termites from destroying homes and crops – and has eight patents to prove it (U.S. #9,399,050, for example, one of 20 he has pending or owns). Mycelium can decompose toxic and biological waste. Distributed in self-contained “sandbags,” it can provide pockets of life to repair habitat post-natural disaster. It can convert cellulose into ethanol. It can filter pathogens from polluted streams. It resists bacteria, which is why many antibiotics can be found in mushrooms. It can prevent the spread of disease. (Provisional Patent 13/373,719: “Controlling disease vectors from insects and arthropods using preconidial mycelium.”)
That’s a lot of weaponry against nasty stuff, backed by obsessive science and love for the old-growth forests Stamets calls both his “church” and worthy of protection “for national defense.” It’s also a lot to admire, without getting into mycelium’s sentient qualities, nutritional pop, psychedelic benefits in treating PTSD, or how humans are more closely related to fungi than any other kingdom.
Plus there’s this: Since Stamets gave that talk he’s discovered more big-picture power that we need as urgently as any – at least if we want to continue to eat anything much besides mushrooms.
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The future isn’t what it once was. Arctic ice is disappearing. Abnormal weather is the new normal. Record heat is an annual ritual. Resulting civil and political turmoil beckons.
But scores of peer-critiqued scientists like Stamets will worry about that later. There are more pressing concerns – namely, bee colony collapse disorder.
The West lost 90 percent of its main bumble bee species over the last 30 years. Country-wide, bee stocks dropped 44 percent from spring of 2015 to 2016. The previous year it was 40-plus percent. That makes for harrowing news considering much of our diet – and economy, particularly here – depends on pollinators.
“Our immediate, near-event catastrophe is definitely the bees,” Stamets says.
Carmel Honey Company’s CEO Jake Reinsdorf puts it well: “Remember: no bees, no food, no people.”
Fortunately Stamets had been turning over fungi-driven solutions in his mind for decades when he happened upon a scene in his backyard: The bees he keeps were marching to a mushroom pile and nudging aside wood chips to tap beads of nectar from a giant garden mushroom’s matrix of mycelium. He observed closely for 40 days. Ultimately, resulting studies led to a research initiative with Washington State University. They’ve been introducing mushroom extracts and watching as bees’ viral burdens have dropped by as much as 99 percent.
WSU’s Dr. Steve Sheppard has partnered on the project after 39 years studying bees. “I am unaware of any reports of materials that extend the life of worker bees more,” he tellsNorth American Permaculture, popular among EcoFarmers.
I am similarly unaware of anything as deliciously promising as mushrooms. Or of Superman owning any patents.
~QUICKBITES~
- Owls now patrol The Haute Enchilada in Moss Landing. More on the blog
- Katie Blandin Shea of Golden Bear Botanicals scored a Good Food Award for her spring tonic syrup.
- Whaling Station GM Freddie Ortiz is the very deserving recipient of the 2017 John “Spud” Spadaro Hospitality Award.
- Temple Beth El Salinas (424-9151) has its epic kosher-style lunch and bake sale benefit Thursday, Feb. 2, with added pick-up spots in Monterey.
- Another potent pop-up from jeninni kitchen + wine bar (920-2662) features Me and the Hound Memphis Barbecue Monday, Jan. 30, starring pork slow smoked for 24 hours ($36++).
- Best recruitment ad of 2017 so far goes to Carmel Belle (624-1600): “What’s up hustler?! We’re looking for a few BAD ASS BALLERS… If you think you’re the s*** send me your resume.”
- Figge Cellars is moving its tasting room from Carmel-by-the-Sea to Carmel Valley across from Roux. Opens in April.
- At Rio Grill (625-5436), its superlative 11:30am-3pm weekend brunch now features bottomless mimosas ($15).
- On Thursday, Jan. 26, from 4:30-6:30pm Ratel Cider is having a tasting party at the Wharf Marketplace in Monterey (649-1116). Ratel’s also working on a dry-hopped apricot cider.
- Free composting class 10am Saturday, Jan. 28, at Monterey Regional Waste Management District, www.mrwmd.org.
- Grasing’s in Carmel does a paired wine dinner Friday, Jan. 27, with Miura owner and master sommelier Emmanuel Kemji ($145, 624-6562).
- American Legion Post 41 in Monterey (375-9015) holds its annual crab feed 7pm Saturday, Jan. 28 ($50).
- Boardwalk Sub Shop’s (264-1171) sandwich of the week Jan. 26-Feb. 1 is pastrami reuben with melted provolone, fried onions and homemade pizza sauce ($11.49). BSS does a mean meatball-sausage-pepperoni calzone ($10.59) too.
- Earthbound Farm now serves select Revival Ice + Cream treats.
- Dr. Seuss: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”