Mushrooms (for Jesse)

"If there was one thing I could change about you, it would be that you'd like mushrooms."

That rather odd statement was made to me many years ago by Jesse, my older stepdaughter, when we were first getting to know each other as a family. She was in her late teens, I was in my early 30s.

I could probably use the word "hate" when it comes to me and mushrooms for most of my life. My mother was always simultaneously frustrated and fascinated at how I would pick out even the tiniest shreds of mushroom from casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup (which were a mainstay of our 1960s-'70s household). I, on the other hand, was mystified by why anyone would willingly put something in their mouth that had the look and texture of a booger.

In my 20s I developed a Candida overgrowth problem that took decades to overcome through diet and supplements, etc.  One of the tenets of chronic candidiasis detox programs used to be (and still is in some cases) that eating other yeasts and fungi encourages the growth of the already overgrown candida yeast, so I had another reason to not eat mushrooms.  And after years of believing they were dangerous, just the idea of eating a mushroom fills me with foreboding: as soon as a mushroom passes my lips, I'll get a migraine!

Mushrooms as naturally growing fungi, on the other hand, are a mysteriously beautiful freak of nature, and even though I've hated and feared eating them, I've always wanted to grow them and/or forage for them.  And I love to look at all the wild shapes and colors they come in.  I have lots of photos of wild mushrooms!  With my candida problems healed, and new research showing that mushrooms and other yeasts might actually help fight candida overgrowth rather than aggravate it, I've been finding myself increasingly curious about whether I could learn to like eating them.  After all, I can actually eat brussels sprouts and asparagus now, in select preparations, without gagging!  Maybe I can grow up about the mushroom thing, too.

So I'm going to start experimenting with mushroom recipes.  I think it will be my Lenten discipline this year—to give up not liking mushrooms.  Then there won't be anything about me that Jesse will want to change.