Shiitake mushrooms are a natural food source of Vitamin D - when they dry in the sun like this!! You can increase your Vitamin D content if you leave out the mushrooms to dry more in the sun.... The first harvest of Shiitake was right after two days of solid rain - so the mushrooms were completely waterlogged (one CSA member said one of hers was slimy but I just explained it was due to the downpour for two days). Mushrooms are some 90% water when they first "fruit" so since those mushrooms were so waterlogged then they needed to be eaten that same day or soon after. You could cook them and freeze them - as was recommended by one CSA member. We ate ours that same night - if you did try to dry them then it was take a lot of heat to get all the water out.  These Donko shrooms dried naturally - not completely of course - but should last in the frig to finish drying in a paper bag.... I distributed these to half a dozen people - and just let people take as much as they wanted as...