Mushrooms (Part Duex)

I'm still investigating the possibility of using mushrooms for bio-assembly, (e.g. using mushroom "roots" to turn the products into a paper/plastic type material). I saw one of these at Whole Foods the other day:

Not my kit...but this is how it is intended to be used

It's a grow your own mushroom kit from Back to the Roots. I had been looking for a source for the spores I would need to inoculate the rice straw, and here it was, right between the ginger and the bean sprouts. The package contains a bag of spore-infused coffee grounds and a little misting bottle. All you do is cut open the cardboard, soak the grounds in water overnight, and mist regularly. My plan is to boil the rice straw so it is free from competing organisms, and then blend into small pieces so the mushrooms can do their work quicker. Then I'll mix the rice straw with some of the inoculated coffee grounds and hope those mycelium start to party. I'm hoping for tasty mushrooms growing out of some kind of bio-assembled papery product. We shall see!


Also, I couldn't resist noting that website for the mushroom kit proudly displays an endorsement from this guy:

Weird.