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“I’ve always loved mushrooms – portobellos, criminis and shiitakes,” Clark-Getzin said at the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival as she sampled a pesto-stuffed crimini.
“This mushroom is so fresh, and it soaks up the flavors,” she said.
Clark-Getzin and her family joined thousands of other mushroom lovers at the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival, held over the weekend at the Thurston County Regional Athletic Complex. The event, organized for the third year by the Hawks Prairie Rotary Club, raises money for the service club’s programs, including a scholarship program for students who have overcome hardships, high school Interact clubs, contributions to the Homeless Backpack program and to the Little Red Schoolhouse, and for other Hawks Prairie civic projects.
Last year, the festival raised about $25,000 for the programs, and about 10,000 to 15,000 people attend each year, said festival co-chairman Bob Kagy. The festival got a grant of about $25,000 from the City of Lacey’s tourism tax, he said.
The mushroom theme brings in booths from different mycological societies, mushroom growers and garden companies and demonstrations by local chefs and gardeners. Five organizations, including caterers and restaurants, competed in a mushroom-dish contest.
The Rotary Club chose the mushroom theme “because it’s fun,” Kagy said.
“The heart and soul have been the cooking demonstrations by chefs, and the talks by (gardener) Ciscoe Morris and the information about mushrooms,” Kagy said.
Ostrom’s mushroom farm, which grows portobellos, crimini and white mushrooms at the farm across the street from the Regional Athletic Complex, has participated each year, as has some of its suppliers of other mushroom varieties.
“The idea is not that we’re promoting Ostrom’s, but that there’s an educational component,” said Fletcher Street, Ostrom’s director of marketing and sales. Many booths focused on how mushrooms grow and on the importance of mushrooms in the local forest’s ecology, she said.
One such booth was Provisions Mushroom Farm of Olympia, which sells weekly shares of gourmet and exotic mushrooms. Owner Ria Kaelin encouraged people to grow mushrooms in their own kitchens with one of their kits available for purchase.
“We prefer to sell them in person, so we can show people how to use them,” she said. “If you’re into mushrooms, it’s fun and great for kids. They are really educational.”
Mushroom-foraging clubs also touted the fun of hunting for wild mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest.
Melodie Gates, treasurer of the South Sound Mushroom Club, said that in Washington, different varieties of mushrooms are available from April to June and September to December.
“We’re the best (area) in the country,” she said. “We have a larger variety and a larger variety of mushrooms available at different times of year.”
Gates said that people new to hunting mushrooms must learn alongside a more experienced forager to avoid any poisonous varieties, which can look similar to the edible ones.
“We group the less-experienced people with at least one experienced person,” she said. “You need to learn to identify.”
Venice Buhain: 360-754-5445 vbuhain@theolympian.com
