Mushroom Love

While camping a couple weeks ago at Chemin-A-Haut State Park, I came across this lone, colorful fungi amidst a patch of sparse dry earth.  I thought it a cool photo, and wanted to use it in a post, and since it got me thinking about how much I really like mushrooms…

So many varieties, tastes, flavors, hues and uses in cooking.  Rarely is my kitchen without a basket or two of fresh mushrooms, be they white buttons, crimini, shiitake or porcino.  How about a golf-disc sized portobello, grilled perfectly with a basting of buttery garlic and worcestershire sauce?  Top mine with some provolone, please!  Of course I’ve nothing against good old canned shrooms.  How ’bout those B-in-Bs back in the day, broiled in buttery deliciousness, pop open a can or jar and really wake-up those scrambled eggs, or top-off that t-bone.  Pieces & stems or the whole button, all good to me.

Then there are the “Magic Mushrooms” those of the psychedelic psilocibin variety.  Let’s just say I’ve experimented with these particular shrooms, in my er, college days…and I’m pretty sure I didn’t inhale.  Deliberately anyway, right?  Not an overall unpleasant experience, as I remember it.  Lot of laughter, but I didn’t see the face of God.  I vaguely remember being pretty mesmerized by a dragonfly, and maybe thought I could communicate with it telepathically.  Pretty sure it suggested I listen to some Allman Brothers, and I proceeded to do just that, on my Walkman, while imaging myself lying among a field of sunflowers clad only in my undies.  At least I think I imagined that last part.