My recent dinner at cru in LA

Here are some things I ate at a small “raw foods” restaurant in Los Angeles called cru. I thought all the food was great, though it was hard to tell how healthy it was, because some bits of it were rich in taste. Either way, if there is fat, it is good fat, and necessary fat, particularly when the portions are small and there is no protein-dense meat. Careful viewers will note that this has mushrooms on it, which are a new thing for me.

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