The National Mushroom Day is celebrated every 15th of October each year. This day gives recognition to mushrooms – everyone’s favorite food ingredient. It is used as an ingredient in various dishes, meals, and desserts. Mushrooms are the flesh of bodies of fungi. They are basically the fruits of fungus. There are different species of mushrooms. Not all are edible though because some are even poisonous. Vegetarians love eating mushrooms because of their high nutritional value. But in general, a lot of people love to eat mushrooms primarily because of their delicious flavor. If you are a fan of mushrooms, you definitely should not miss this event.
About the National Mushroom Day
During the National Mushroom Day, people conduct various activities that let them achieve the objectives or purposes of the celebration. For one, people make various dishes that make use of mushrooms. One popular example is the beef and mushroom steak. Other people take it as far as joining a cooking competition about mushroom dishes. Some people start cultivating mushrooms in their backyard. People also shout out on social media how they are participating in the celebration of the event.
History
With limited knowledge about the origins of mushroom, even less is known about the history of the National Mushroom Day. We don’t know when, where, and how it began. We also don’t have a clue as to who founded it. But still, we can make a good guess as to why such event was established in the first place. Perhaps a person or a group of people thought that mushrooms are much loved by the people. They must have then thought that it deserves a spot in the list of food holidays celebrated every year.
Dates
As mentioned earlier, the National Mushroom Day is celebrated every 15th of October each year. This means that the dates of celebration for this event are as follows:
- Thursday, October 15,
- Friday, October 15,
- Saturday, October 15, 2022
- Sunday, October 15, 2023
- Tuesday, October 15, 2024
- Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Celebration Ideas and Activities
The following are the best things to do to make your celebration of the National Mushroom Day as best as it can be:
Start Growing Mushrooms
One great idea for your celebration of this day is to start growing mushroom. This, however, is not as easy as it may seem. The steps involved include composting, using a heating pad, soil moisting, and allowing the mushrooms to cultivate and grow. There are readily available mushroom sprouts that you can buy online. Planting them in soil will allow the mushrooms to grow. You can find a lot of detailed guide on the internet about cultivating and harvesting mushrooms. Once you have them, you can make your favorite mushroom dish.
Make Dishes with Mushroom
Perhaps the best way to celebrate this day is to make dishes that make use of mushrooms. If you don’t have your own cultivated mushrooms, you can buy some from the grocery or supermarket. You can then take out your favorite mushroom recipe, follow it, cook the dish, serve it, and enjoy celebrating the event.
Host a Cooking Competition
If you want a more socialized way of celebrating, you can host a cooking competition where you can invite your family and friends to compete with each other – showcasing their cooking abilities by making their best version of a mushroom dish. Be the judge, decide the winner, and give them fabulous awards.
Participate in Mushroom Picking
There is a fun little adventure called mushroom picking. If you haven’t heard of this yet, it is an activity wherein a group of people is taken in a mushroom farm and they are given the opportunity to pick mushrooms by themselves. That one is formally done. However, there is also an informal kind of mushroom picking. It involved going into the woods and then picking mushrooms there whenever and wherever you see one. You can do this kind of celebration and even invite your family and friends to come with you.
Celebrate on Social Media
You can also take your celebration of this day on social media. You can, for instance, use the hashtag #NationalMushroomDay to let your friends and followers know that you are also participating in the celebration of this day. Let them know that such a celebration takes place every year and also how happy you are enjoying your day.
Quotes
- Mushrooms are miniature pharmaceutical factories, and of the thousands of mushroom species in nature, our ancestors and modern scientists have identified several dozen that have a unique combination of talents that improve our health. – Paul Stamets
- A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain. – John Cage
- Mushrooms have many helpful nutrients, including beta glucans for immune enhancement, ergothioneines for antioxidative potentiation, nerve growth stimulators for helping brain function, and antimicrobial compounds for limiting viruses. – Paul Stamets
- Don’t eat a mushroom stem and see colors, eat the whole bag and see GOD – Doug Stanhope
- Mushrooms can be very fancy. It’s the closest you can get to eating dirt. – Tom Colicchio
- Look around when you have got your first mushroom or made your first discovery: they grow in clusters. – George Polya
- If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. – Katherine Mansfield
- Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries. – William George Jordan
- People are going to start realizing, why take those antibiotics that are extracts of mushrooms? Why not just have the mushrooms? – David Wolfe
- From dead plant matter to nematodes to bacteria, never underestimate the cleverness of mushrooms to find new food! – Paul Stamets