Mushroom! Mushroom!

As I implied that I was going to do in my previous post, I decided to give mushrooms another shot, after generally not eating them for over twenty years. It didn’t hurt that I’m in LA for the weekend visiting Melissa, long-time friend and long-time vegetarian.

Just as is necessary when getting into a cold swimming pool, I decided to jump right in. Friday night we went to a Thai restaurant, and the soup had thin slices of mushrooms in it. These I tentatively swallowed almost whole at first, and later tried to take some time to investigate the texture of the mushroom. They are firmer than I thought they would be, which is reassuring, and makes sense in context of the veggie burgers that I do eat now and then. I took things to the next level Saturday morning with a “Buddha Bowl” at a local cafe, which had what I suspect were button mushrooms cut into bigger pieces. These went into corn tortillas and down my gob. A third type of mushroom made it into dinner: straw mushrooms at a Chinese(ish) restaurant in a spicy fish dish.

While it’s going to be a while before they find themselves into my “favorite foods” list, I can appreciate that they are one of the most versatile and healthy foods known to man, and given my increasing trend of living well, I figured I may as well give them a chance. Having broken the proverbial seal, I suppose I will be more convenient to have around the dinner table. Yet, it’s going to take some sort of sausage-stuffedness to get me eating them whole any time in the near future, but I suspect my mom has just the recipe for that