Over the years, she sought out mushrooms from across the country, but this year, there was only place to be for the true mushroom lover: the 32nd Kennett Square Mushroom Festival last weekend.

“In a sense, you could call me a mushroom aficionado,” wrote 12-year Kennett Square resident and chef Aimee Olexy in a Philadelphia Inquirer report. While following the food scene across the nation, Olexy has sampled some of the best mushrooms from California, Colorado, and across Chester County.

But the Kennett Square Mushroom Festival is the ultimate destination for fun and fungi.

Annually, it stretches a mile through town and draws almost 100,000 people. “And there are also several mushroom-centric culinary demonstrations, an amateur mushroom-cooking competition, and a battle for the best mushroom soup in the Brandywine Valley,” wrote Olexy.

If anyone knows what mushrooms are capable of, she does.

“At Talula’s Table, we made exotic mushroom grab bags and sent festival-goers home with a DIY dinner recipe. Since then, we’ve gone a little mushroom crazy: concocting mushroom cream puffs, mushroom brownies, mushroom mac and cheese, mushroom bread pudding, mushroom quiche, crepes, sausages, and more.”

Read more about the Kennett Square Mushroom Festival in the Philadelphia Inquirer here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of the yearly event here.