"mushrooms" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

Next Food Network Star winner Melissa d'Arabian wants to save you money for Thanksgiving -- $20 for gobble grub!

We know you've been procrastinating -- rustle up a Thanksgiving menu on the fly and with facility.

Do you believe in utilizing bird innards?

What's a better complement to turkey: cranberry sauce or gravy?

Skip the fowl, make penne with mushrooms.

Kim Kardashian makes Carl's Jr. sexy.

Diddy offers party-hosting tips, because, you know, you'll definitely want to throw a post-turkey-day shindig.

Throwing mushrooms into a sauté pan usually requires a good dose of oil. But good news: There are ways to cut the fat without leaving half your dinner stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Can you identify spring vegetables? Take this spring vegetable identification quiz on Slashfood to find out.

Dried mushrooms are a handy ingredient to keep in the pantry, but did you know that the water you use to fluff them up is just as handy?

"Hey, hon, let's go see a film about mushrooms tonight."

The words could stop even the most ardent foodie dead in her tracks. Mushrooms -- whether parsed in dry botanical terms in dusty old textbooks or discussed manically by hippies in their "magical" incarnation (click above) -- hold little intrigue for many of us. (Not to mention that whole "Alice in Wonderland thing.")

After an event held by the NYC Food Film Festival on Sunday where we were feted with 'shroom dishes of every stripe (shrimp-stuffed morels; shiitake ice cream ... anyone?) and watched a hilarious film titled "Know Your Mushrooms" (find local screenings here), we consider ourselves schooled. Mycologists, evidently, are ready for their closeups.

Photos, the Flaming Lips and magic mushrooms after the jump.