Sunday Fun Day Giveaway: Back to the Roots Mushrooms & Last Week's Winner!

Happy Sunday! Hope you enjoyed your weekend and you're in comfortable in your corner of the world. A pretty intense heat wave has been spreading across the country over the past week and I'm pretty much read for fall. Well, not really but some cooler weather would be nice! I know once the temps do cool down, I'll definitely appreciate it much more. Before I get onto this week's fun giveaway, I have a winner to announce! Last week the lovely folks of Rizzuto's Pizza sponsored the giveaway for a Rizzuto's Pizza Party. A lucky reader will receive a 4 pack of Rizzuto's pizza crust of their choice, complete with sauce and a pizza cutter. A special thanks to Rizzto's for sponsoring and I look forward to having another Pizza Party using their crusts again soon. Here's a big Congratulations to the winner of this past week's giveaway! Please shoot me an email at itsjoelen@gmail.com to claim your prize...

Rizzuto's Pizza Party!
 

Winner: Comment #7!

So back to the hot temperatures lately, I wonder what avid gardeners are experiencing with their outdoor gardens. I hope their crops are holding up, given the season! I, for one, do not have a green thumb. I wish I did though! However, I did have some luck with indoor gardens in the past. I have an Aerogarden which has given me some nice fresh herbs to use. That was a year or so ago since I used it but I may get back to it again at some point. Now growing herbs seems pretty common... but have you ever tried growing your own mushrooms?! I recently did - oyster mushrooms, to be exact - and it was so easy and fun to watch! This was made possible by a pretty awesome company, Back to the Roots Mushrooms.

Back to the Roots was founded by Alejandro Velez & Nikhil Arora during their last semester at UC Berkeley in 2009. Two months away from graduation, and heading into the corporate world of investment banking & consulting, they came across the idea during a class lecture of being able to potentially grow gourmet mushrooms entirely on recycled coffee grounds. Inspired by the idea of turning waste into wages & fresh, local food, they experimented in Alex's fraternity kitchen, ultimately growing one test bucket of tasty oyster mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. With that one bucket, some initial interest from Whole Foods & Chez Panisse and a $5,000 grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellor for social innovation, they decided to forget the corporate route, and instead, become full-time urban mushroom farmers! 

Inspired by the idea of producing local, fresh food from what was an urban waste stream, Back to the Roots has since grown to create the Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden which lets anyone, across the country, grow their own gourmet mushrooms at home as well!

Who knew you could grow mushrooms at home and so quickly too? The Back to the Roots grow-at-home mushroom kit lets you grow up to 1 1/2 lbs of gourmet, tasty oyster mushrooms in as little as 10 days...right from the box! Some features to note:

• Grow up to 1 1/2 lbs per crop (pearl oyster mushrooms)
• Grow multiple crops (at least 2, though some have got up to 4!)
• Grow your first crop in as little as 10 days!
• Just 3 Easy Steps - Open, Mist, and Harvest (spray mister included).
• Grow mushrooms indoors - just set on a kitchen window sill and mist twice a day.
• The soil inside is 100% recycled coffee grounds - safe & sustainable

My friends at Back to Roots have generously offered to sponsor this week's giveaway and a lucky ready will get a mushroom kit to start growing their mushrooms! This is one giveaway that I'm excited about because it's a sustainable food item that's also eco-concious as well... definitely a win-win concept to be proud of.

Some guidelines:

- Giveaway is only for those who live in the United States - my apologies to my non-United States readers!

- You must check back in a week when winners are announced and email me to claim your prize if you win.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment answering: 

What's your favorite dish involving mushrooms?

Deadline: Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 12 midnight CST.

One winner will be randomly chosen by Random.Org's Interger Generator based on the number of your comment and will be announced on Sunday, July 31, 2011, within next week's Sunday Fun Day Giveaway. Good luck!

Full Disclosure: The giveaways are sponsored by the same company that provided me with the food related product to review. Products I review and offer as a giveaway are ones I personally recommend and would use/enjoy myself and opinions reflected are mine alone.