Mushrooms and Maturity

When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child – 1st Corinthians 13: 11

I hated mushrooms as a child. I also hated green peppers, broccoli and tomatoes, but I especially hated mushrooms.  All I liked doing with them as a kid was throwing them at my big sister who would then threaten me with extinction. At least she was paying attention to me. My favorite mushrooms to throw were these big hollow pale-looking creepy ones with craters all over their caps. They reminded me of a German WWII hand-grenade (called potato masher). And there were plenty of them to throw, growing all around my grandma’s recently dead elm. I tear up when I tell that story to this day. I’ve often wondered why I especially hated mushrooms. Now Nancy has given me the answer. My big sister, who I idolized and was smarter about everything than I was, picked them out of her food in disgust as a kid! According to her story they created ongoing tension at the dinner table, and I’d have nothing to do with them. Here’s her story.

Nancy’s Mushroom Story

So, on the subject of mushrooms, I’m neither an authority nor an aficionado. I dislike mushrooms, which causes no real issues between my ‘shroom-loving brother, Dave, and myself. He tolerates my dislike and I tolerate his desire to spend a significant part of the time he’s with us on his California vacations hunting mushrooms. His efforts are usually mostly just good hikes in the wildlands around where we live. But sometimes he comes back with a sack of things that looks highly suspicious to my unknowledgeable mind. On those occasions, he always wants to cook up something mushroomy that makes the house smell suspicious, too. And most of the time, one taste is all I can manage, which always irritates him initially, until he understands it really is NOT an indictment of his efforts but of my personal taste. 

Where did my dislike of mushrooms begin? Easily answerable… early in my childhood. Mom never cooked with fresh mushrooms that I can recall, but used Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup to create nearly every casserole or “saucy” type of dish other than spaghetti sauce. And, those mushroom bits always looked WAY too much like the eraser ends of pencils that I mistakenly bit into as a small child for me to even consider putting into my mouth, chewing, and swallowing. I picked ‘em all out of whatever it was on my plate that contained them. 

Dad always scolded me for doing this, claiming that I was wasting food, insulting Mom’s cooking, and so on. I didn’t argue with him, but ate the rest of my food and left the bits of tiny mushrooms for the disposer to digest. My stomach just did not want them. To this day, I don’t care for mushrooms raw on salad, although I will tolerate them in small quantities, or cooked in omelets or stir fry’s, where I WILL eat them along with the rest of the food on my plate. My husband loves them and, maybe as a consequence, Dave and he are great mushroom friends when he’s with us. Me…not so much! Him I love, his ‘shrooms, not so much!

Back to me:

I went through the same childhood trauma and hated mushrooms even more than Nancy. So what changed me? Maybe it was when I quit liking sugar so much as a teen. Also my buddy Bill Bird and a cute carhop I was flirting with at Don’s Drive-in talked me into trying Don’s deep-fried mushrooms. I really liked them, though looking back; they were probably pretty greasy and unhealthy.  Sometime later I first tasted morels, and that turned me completely around. The story of how I got as nutty about fungi as I am now is far more involved. I’ll save it for a different day. For now I’ll suffice to say that as a child I looked at things in nature darkly. Mushrooms and insects were icky and scary, but a revelation led me to see them as beautiful and part of something wondrous. Eventually, I had a similar revelation about Christ. Now I see a delightful natural and spiritual world with open eyes.

A New Mushroom!

My excitement for this day was finding a new (to me) mushroom in CA. Rick cooked some of it in spaghetti and I cooked the rest in an omelet. Nancy even ate some. I suppose that was more likely to happen because it was Hypsizygus tessellatus (or shimeji) that I bought at a high-end CA supermarket. I found these shimeji tender and nutty tasting – quite delightful.  Once before I had shimeji but it was a different species, Lyophyllum shimeji.  Several mushroom species are called shemeji in Asia. The closest species to shimeji in Iowa is Lyophyllum decastes a common and tasty but hard to identify mushroom. Hypsizygus ulmarius or knothole mushroom is another related species that is very edible, common and easy to identify.

Like I said L. decastes is hard to identify in the field. It grows on the ground where soil is poor and/or had been disturbed in previous years.  It grows in clumps often but not always. It changes from a small button to a large floppy trumpet shape as it matures. It has a solid stem and white spores that are round under a microscope. Its flavor is indistinct or vaguely pungent in the field, but becomes slightly nutty when dried or cooked. Dangerous Clitocybe rivulosa (fools funnel) looks similar when young and can grow right next to it. Both have white spores but C. rivulosa spores are ovid under a microscope.

H. ulmarius, on the other hand grows primarily on box elder and sometimes elm. It has a large tan-gray to white dome and wide white gills. It is unmistakable and easy to spot in a scrub woods. It has a light vegetable-like flavor and a firm delightful texture cooked.

I especially like cooking both of these mushrooms in mixed mushroom recipes because they stay very light when cooked, and they provide a great contrast to darker more colorful and stronger flavored mushrooms. The trick is to cook them in such a way that all the mushrooms retain their individual flavors even as they all share the same sauté pan. I’ll describe how I do that in the recipe section though it’s really a method rather than an exact recipe.

Recipe: Cooking Mixed Mushrooms