Same Mushroom, Different Day

So, as there was so much leftover from our giant puffball mushroom find, we both got to try another favorite recipe. Meaning: Mr. Poppycakes chose one and so did I. His was easy, and frankly, so easy to imagine, that I skipped the photographs. Sauteed in butter, garlic, with salt and pepper and covered in melted mozzarella. Of course, it was great, but those ingredients are designed to make even cat litter delectable. So, it's cheating really. But it was, I am told, worth it. These mushrooms do not hold up well at all, and once they start to go, they do not go gentle, rather, they go to yellow powder and vanishing. I had to move quickly on these last two recipes in order to have an intact half bowl to hollow-out and dice with some peppers, onions, garlic and olive oil.  I added some spices, too, including some shawarma seasoning for little Middle Eastern kick and then tossed the whole thing into the oven for a long, slow bake in a cave of tin foil. What emerged was tender and flavorful and made me wish that we had found more of those martian mushrooms. I am already longing for more autumn.

Recipe: Modified from this.

Reading: The Mushroom Man

Mushrooms

By Charles Tomlinson

for Jon and Jill

Eyeing the grass for mushrooms, you will find

A stone or stain, a dandelion puff

Deceive your eyes—their colour is enough

To plump the image out to mushroom size

And lead you through illusion to a rind

That's true—flint, fleck or feather. With no haste

Scent-out the earthy musk, the firm moist white,

And, played-with rather than deluded, waste

None of the sleights of seeing: taste the sight

You gaze unsure of—a resemblance, too,

Is real and all its likes and links stay true

To the weft of seeing. You, to begin with,

May be taken in, taken beyond, that is,

This place of chiaroscuro that seemed clear,

For realer than a myth of clarities

Are the meanings that you read and are not there:

Soon, in the twilight coolness, you will come

To the circle that you seek and, one by one,

Stooping into their fragrance, break and gather,

Your way a winding where the rest lead on

Like stepping stones across a grass of water.