Mushrooms (Published Dec 6, 2021)

 

Mushrooms I love to look for mushrooms with their many magnificent colors and shapes. I enjoy taking pictures of them. Mushrooms look primeval and normally grow in lush green forests and seem to come out when it’s raining, fogging, and misty. When I see mushrooms, I think of dinosaurs roaming the forest floor. I love to eat mushrooms. They are delicious baked, grilled, and fried. I particularly love them in stroganoff sauce over brown rice or pasta noodles. I love portabella mushroom burgers. I love the Asian variety of mushrooms used in stir fry. And there’s nothing not a good mushroom pizza, particularly if the pizza crust is thin and crispy. One of my all-time favorites is the Candy cap mushroom ice cream at Cowlicks and Frankie’s. Just thinking about it makes me want to take a drive up the Coast. I’ve never tried mushrooms as a hallucinogen. Many have and love the experience. I think it can be good for many things, but I think I’m too old to try but we’ll see what life brings. I would not say I’m curious to see what it is like. Rather, if I had depression or a serious health issue, I would not be opposed to giving it a try under the right conditions. I am a bit scared of mushrooms. I hear of stories of people eating the wrong mushroom and dropping dead almost instantly. A few years back, a senior care operator in Sacramento picked some mushrooms that looked like ones he foraged and ate in his native Russian Village as a teen. He prepared a mushroom soup for everyone. Three of the senior residents died and he was made seriously ill but survived. Because I am not a mushroom expert and scared of devouring the wrong kind that might kill me, I have only foraged mushrooms for consumption one time in my life. The one time was with a mushroom expert, and it was a lot of fun to learn about the different mushrooms in the forest. At the end of the day everyone in the group had a bag of mushrooms to prepare, and they were good. That is something I would like to do again if I’m with a real expert. We just came back from Italy where we were big into truffles. Truffles are fungi like mushrooms, the difference being that mushrooms popup above the soil while truffles stay in the soil and must be dug out. We went out with a truffle hunter and his dog. I love truffles even more than mushrooms and Susan and I have become obsessed with anything truffle. Last week we had truffle goat cheese grilled cheese. Now that was over the top. We now go to stores in search of truffle seasoning. I wish we would have bought more while we were in Italy. I know that next time we go there, we’ll have to bring an extra suitcase to get all the jars home.

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