Shrooming
On Thursday, March 26, a small group of us headed to Kennett Square, a town that called itself “the Mushroom Capital of the World.” Originally, I’d tried to see about getting to tour a farm, but none of the owners were too receptive to a group of college kids coming to poke around their mushrooms. They blew me off, muttering about it not being tourist season. Apparently they only like to give tours around September, when Kennett Square’s annual Mushroom Festival takes place.
Not too many people showed up at the campus center when it was time to go. I mean, to be fair, I wouldn’t have showed up. People had classes, it was rainy, and we were headed somewhere that didn’t smell too nice. But, it was a good group anyway (myself, Harrell, Sam Kaplan, Duncan Cooper, Molly Seegers, Tom Carroll, Katherine Lo).
Once we’d gotten there and parked, we wandered to the downtown part of Kennett Square. Pretty much as soon as we hit the street, we found this very touristy little mushroom store. They had mushroom tea, postcards, jars of dried shrooms, models of mushroom farms, mushroom-shaped table and chairs, postcards, and, in the basement, baby clothes. The woman who ran it sat us down to this video about mushroom farming in Kennett Square. We didn’t finish it. I think she was offended.
After the store, we went into a grimy little diner-ish restaurant to try to grab some mushroom food, but all they had was mushroom soup and a burger with shrooms on top. Not so good. A couple people got soup or a burger, but Duncan wasn’t really into it, and he left to find someplace else to eat. He did. It was better than ours. There, we got mushroom crepes, a giant glass bottle of chocolate milk (I still have the bottle, and its pretty rad, although the iced tea it has in it isn’t anywhere near as good as that chocolate milk), and a peanut butter cookie sandwich. Much better than grimy counter place. The pastries there looked amazing, and the woman who ran it was an expert on cheese.
We had to leave fast, though, to get back in time for Pope.L’s performance. 25 minutes and a few run red lights later, we were back.