KirstyNeed ideas for what to do with your unwanted TERF-authored books?
Use them to grow mushrooms!
(yes, my first posts from this account are about non-plant entities)
I found a kit here https://www.annforfungi.co.uk/shop/50-shades-of-grey-oyster-mushrooms-on-paperback-books/ and when it arrived I got to work. I removed the hard covers from my books then put them in the plastic bag provided. I poured boiling water over them to sterilise them, then pressed the books down until the bubbling from the pressure stopped. At that point it was time to let them cool until I could handle them without saying ‘ouch’ a lot.
I recommend being very careful and sitting your bag of books in a sink while you’re pouring the boiling water in, as plastic bags are not very sturdy and I may have had a hot water spilling incident and had to use my cat-like reflexes that I’ve honed from living with a cat. Also, work gloves or oven gloves are helpful for this stage!
Once the water was safer to handle I poured the water out and gave the books a squeeze to remove the excess. I had a nice bagful of soggy books now. I went and made something to eat while I let them cool down further so I didn’t accidentally cook the spawn.
I used the bag to grip the pages of the book so I could open them and do some spawn sprinkling throughout the book.
The next step was to use a bit of kitchen roll as a plug, gather the neck of the bag around it and tie it with string. I think this is to filter the air flow to prevent any other fungal spores from entering the bag and colonising the books. I now had a little Molotov cocktail mushroom bundle.
The next step was to put them in a shady place and wait! The mycelium takes 3 to 6 weeks to grow.
... which takes me to today!
We have lots of nice fluffy mycelium! The instructions say to put the books in the fridge for 2 days, presumably as a cold stratification technique to simulate the kind of colder weather needed for mushrooms to start growing.
... two days, so I have removed the book of mycelium from the fridge. The instructions now say to open the bag to let more air in, and it's time to water the book once or twice a day with '5cm of cool, fresh water and then drain immediately'. 5 cubic cm? I don't know, so I got my measuring jug and decided to interpret this as 100ml because the 100ml mark looks like it's around 5cm from the bottom (I am bad at gauging measurements)
I think I've got a few tiny pinhead growths on the books now! Too tiny to get a decent picture of, but it's looking promising (as long as they are in fact oyster mushrooms and not some other kind of horrible growths)
They're looking more like mushroom clusters now! Looking forward to them turning into fully-grown mushrooms so I feel less itchy when I look at them
They grow so fast, a lot of these will probably be fully grown and ready for eating within a couple of days
Update: I marinaded the four mushrooms that were fully grown in some soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil and they were so good