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Cooking Demonstration and Tasting Event With Chef Chris Starkus and Lumen8 Rooftop Social

Chris Starkus is the Dual Director of Food & Beverage for the Springhill Suites (@springhillcsdowntown), Element (@elementcsdowntown), and LUMEN8 Rooftop Social restaurant (@lumen8rooftopsocial) in downtown Colorado Springs. He has achieved numerous awards during his Food & Beverage career, including “Best New Restaurant 2018 (303 Magazine) and Best Eco-Friendly Restaurants in America (opentable.com, April 2019).  In 2019, Colorado Biz Magazine named him one of Denver’s Most Influential Young Professionals (Top 25 Under 40).   Chef Chris Starkus

Starkus moved to Colorado from the Pacific Northwest driven by a strong desire to forage the Rocky Mountains. He brought with him 25 years of experience in hospitality, with an accent in sustainability, farm to table operations and epicurean philosophy.

For Starkus, sustainability is success.  His strength is developing leaders and Food and Beverage sustainability programs that produce positive fiscal, environmental, and concept branding results.  He is a frequent contributor and guest speaker for creating and maintaining 360-Degree Sustainability in professional F & B operations. His work can be found at 303 Magazine, Diningout.com, themoderneater.com, 5280 Magazine, Heritage Radio, and Slow Food Nations. 

Chris became a member of the Pikes Peak Mycological Society two years ago. On Wednesday, July 27, 2022 at 6:00 PM, he will do a Chef’s Demo for our club at the new Springhill Suites in downtown Colorado Springs, located at 402 South Tejon Street. All activities will be held in the courtyard area. 

There will be a cash bar available, featuring Chef’s own Cordyceps cocktail, as well as other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Chef will demonstrate different ways to prepare many types of mushrooms, including   how to serve them dried, grilled, sautéed, and pickled, and give you the opportunity to sample each dish. 

A special thank you to Microvora and Fungus Farm Colorado for donating fungi!

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Structural Mycelium

What if there was a way to make sustainable, strong and affordable building materials? 

Artist/designer Joshua English and founder of Okom Wrks Labs, has a plan that could make this a reality. Okom Wrks Labs uses low-tech means of creating load-bearing, structural components using only 3 organic ingredients: mycelium, hemp hurd, and cotton.

Joshua English, CEO
Joshua English, CEO

Joshua’s 27 years of experience in large system design and data visualization come to life in his 1,500 square foot industrial work space, located in Colorado Springs.  Here, he and his talented crew indulge their not-so-mild obsession by finding and creating material solutions to human problems.

Joshua chose Colorado Springs to be the home of Okom Wrks Labs because one of his key ingredients, hemp, can be grown legally here, and because Colorado Springs also gives his new start-up access to some of the nation’s top science and engineering talent. 

On Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 6:00pm, Joshua English will demonstrate his patent pending process of growing structural mycelium for Pikes Peak Mycological Society. See firsthand the marvelous strides he is making toward a greener future using fungi!

We will be meeting at Bear Creek Nature Center, located at 245 Bear Creek Road. 

This event is free and open to the public.

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Pikes Peak Mycological Social welcomes Austen Brinker, owner of Fungus Farm Colorado

Owner, Fungus Farm Colorado
Owner, Fungus Farm Colorado

Pikes Peak Mycological Social welcomes Austen Brinker, owner of Fungus Farm Colorado, as our first speaker of the season on April 27, 2022. Austen is a Colorado Springs native (Coronado–go Cougars!), a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a stand-up comedian and a pro-disc golfer.  When he isn’t competing in professional MMA events, touring the country as a comedian or killing it on the golf course, he is growing mushrooms. 

Adding to his already impressive repertoire, Brinker turned his COVID hobby of mushroom cultivation into a successful business. What began as a small operation in his garage, is now Fungus Farm Colorado, an urban mushroom farm in an impressive 1600 sq. ft. warehouse. He sells the fruits of his labor to local restaurants, such as The Famous and Urban Steam and The Joint, a local vegan food truck. You can also find many of his varieties at local Farmer’s Markets and at his comedy shows.

For the first club meeting of 2022, Austen will demonstrate how he grows lion’s mane, pioppino, beech, shiitake, reishi and several varieties of oyster mushrooms.  You will be able to check out examples of grow bags and agar plates. If you have ever been interested in growing your own fungi, or just want to learn more about how fungi grows, you won’t want to miss this presentation! 

For more information about Fungus Farm Colorado, or to find out how to purchase his mushrooms, visit https://www.fungusfarmcolorado.com/.

We welcome everyone at our monthly club meetings, held on the 4th Wednesday of the month April-September. Meetings are free and open to the public. Our first meeting is April 27, 2022 at 6:00 pm at Fire Station 16, located at 4980 Farthing Dr. (Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood). 

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The Burn Morel Angle- Trent & Kristen Blizzard

 

Trent Blizzard to Discuss Burn Morels in Colorado following the 2020 Fires

Self proclaimed “modern forager” Trent Blizzard resides in Glenwood Trent & Kristen BlizzardSprings, Colorado. He has been trekking the forests of Colorado, the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest for years mostly with wild, edible mushrooms in mind. At first a hobby, the hunt for mushrooms quickly became nothing short of an obsession. Trent is a certified Wild Mushroom Identification Expert in Colorado. As a modern forager, he utilizes digital mapping, social media, GPS, phone apps, and even satellite internet while on the road. You will find lots of info about his foraging adventures with his wife, Kristen, at modernforager.com.

Trent and Kristen Blizzard are the authors of Wild Mushrooms: A Cookbook and Foraging Guide. Whether you are a seasoned forager or new to the wild and wonderful word of edible forest fungi, this book has something for you! You will find a wealth of tips and tricks for harvesting each mushroom, along with general cooking techniques and preservation methods. They endeavor to explore not only a selection of delicious cuisine and new methods of cooking these wild edibles, but the question of how to preserve and enjoy your harvests all year long. The book is also a celebration of people they have met over the years. Order yours today!

Trent and Kristen will be presenting on May 26 at 6:00pm.  This speaking event is free and open  to the public. Join us via Youtube and prepare for a great time!

 

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PPMS Welcomes Olga Tzogas on October 21

Pikes Peak Mycological Society is please to welcome Olga Tzogas on October 21, 2020 for her presentation on:

The Love + Power of Medicinal Mushrooms

Together we navigate the complex web and ancient world of medicinal mushrooms.  Explore how they grow in nature then, how they nurture us in return.  Explore the deep history humans have with medicinal mushrooms and their power to heal and identify uses and ways to prepare them. We will demonstrate the vast options and diversity of properties within just a handful of selected varieties. The most common and popular we will look at & work with is the Reishi or Lingzhi mushroom, the legendary ‘Mushroom of Immortality.’  

Journey through other divine healers in the wild, the Turkey Tail mushroom, Lion’s Mane mushroom, and the common culinary mushroom, the Shiitake.  Learn about how each of these mushrooms exists in nature, how we can cultivate a working relationship with them in our health regimens and of course keep them sacred and wild where they deserve to remain.  Raising awareness of the growing market for these healers and what it means for us to do our part to grow our own, explore the ethics of this huge growing industry. 

Olga Tzogas, a native of Greece, created and operates Smugtown Mushrooms in Rochester, NY. Her journey with fungi and plants began over ten years ago.  She has been with these allies by foraging in both urban and wild settings, while developing skills to identify  food and medicine in both environments. 

Smugtown Mushrooms was established in 2011 based on a need for mushrooms and mushroom growing supplies, workshops, events and community-based science in  her local community. She is continuously learning and embracing the never-ending  potential of mushrooms and the wonderful world of fungi.

Olga teaches workshops throughout the world about wild mushroom identification, medicinal mushrooms, biology and mushroom cultivation. She was a core organizer for the Radical Mycology Convergence and the MycoSymbiotics Festival from 2015-17, and helped to establish the first ever New Moon Mycology Summit in 2018. Olga returns to her native country annually to offer mushroom- and plant-focused tours.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

at 6:00 pm

Live on Youtube

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September Lecture by chef Zachary Mazi

Chef Zachary Mazi joined us virtually from Thailand for the September 2020 PPMS meeting. His 10 week trip has turned into an 8 month stay, due to the COVID pandemic and travel restrictions. But, he is making the most of his time there learning the language and hunting the many different species of fungi. From earth stars to chanterelles, he shares stories and recipes you don’t want to miss!

Zachary shared a couple of his recipes, which you can find here: Nam Prik Hed_Gaeng Panaeng

And here’s a visual chart of wild edible mushrooms of Thailand: