mushrooms

I promised the people on my notify list that I would tell the story about the mushrooms, and so here I am, fulfilling my promise. It's not so much funny as it is--I don't know. Typical?

So. Mushrooms. First, let me say this.

I grew up with hobbits.

In my youth, it occurred to me once or twice that my family was something out of a particularly turgid fantasy. Back in those days (those days being the days of yore when all genetic markers pointed to my mature height being well under 4'5") we were a little more quirky, a little more erratic. Back in those days, we lived imaginary lives in an imaginary world. Back in those days, we grew hair in only one of the many places hair was customary, and were creepily hairless everywhere else. Back in those days, there was more than one suggestion that we were not entirely unrelated to small, round, hole-dwelling, food-loving, barefoot midgets featured in epic works of fantasy.

In most respects we really did resemble hobbits, albeit distant cousins from back east. Waaay back east. We were certainly small. Those of us who took after Dad's side of the family--namely, me and Dad--were decidedly geometric in shape, and that not a shape liberally endowed with angles, if you get my drift. We lived in a hole of a house that was both downhill and below sea level, well-chosen characteristics for a home based in Seattle. We loved our food, though poverty reduced us to basics. We never ever wore shoes.

Now that I really think about it, the hobbits really are the white trash of Middle Earth.

And then there was the thing with the mushrooms. Mushrooms of all types, all sizes, all shapes, all flavors. Fresh mushrooms, wild mushrooms: a luxury we could ill afford, back in those days when only gourmands knew about the glory of the fungus, and everybody else eyed them suspiciously as things only vegetarians would touch--and it was a clearly established fact that there was something seriously wrong with those vegetarians.

Specifically, it was the matsutake that inspired unapologetic greed, that delicacy worth a hundred times its weight in gold. The matsutake mushroom is something it seems only Japanese really understand, a bell to our collective Pavlovian psyche.

Once every fall, Dad would wake us up at an ungodly time of the morning, wrap us in bright red hunting flannels--just in case--before bundling us into the car. We'd drive for a couple of hours, my sister and I alternately quarreling and napping in the back, until we reached some unidentifiable stretch of wood near some unidentifiable road. And then we'd get out and hunt mushrooms.

That is, Dad would go and hunt mushrooms. My sister and I would pick up deer pellets. We would make little piles of them near trees to fool insecure deer into thinking all the other deer had hip, deer toilet hangouts to which they were uninvited. Mom would pretend to hunt mushrooms, while in reality she would be doing her best to make us stop picking up deer pellets with our bare fingers and shoving them up our noses. The fingers, that is. Not the deer pellets.

Of the two of them, Dad had the more fun. He'd disappear into the deep woods, taking huge strides with his rubber boots and flannels. Two hours later he would rematerialize with his canvas sacks bulging, like a Japanese Santa Claus. We would squeal, Mom's eyes would sparkle with the love light, and we'd inhale our lunches while admiring the outspread glory of his finds: row after row of beautiful, perfumed matsutake. Who knows if this was legal. Who knows if it would've stopped us if it wasn't.

Back home we would clean them and bestow some on our friends, whose eyes would also shine with the love light. The Hirata family was the Simpsons of our times, beloved by all. We were the only poor Japanese family in all of Washington, and yet we were rich enough to give away mushrooms worth more than the value of our house.

The best part for me was the eating. You could slice them into long strips and pan-fry them in a little butter with lemon juice sprinkled over the top. Then there was matsutake gohan, the recipe for which I've listed below. We would come home from school in the afternoons, smell that smell, and hover like enraged hummingbirds over the rice cooker until Mom emerged from teaching to unchain the lid.

We were limited in our focus, but we had dedication. There were matsutake in the forest. We would get them. We would eat them. End of story.

It was later, when I started creeping up towards puberty, that things started to change. It was harder to find them in the deep forest, for one thing; the ravages of dozens of predatorial Japanese gourmands was starting to have its impact. Dad would be gone longer and longer in order to come back with less and less. And then there were the little old women in the Dojo, who chattered happily about other mushrooms that could be found in the woods, good ones, delicious ones, not quite matsutake perhaps, but good all the same.

"You should try them," they suggested.

Mom and Dad decided that they should.

Except they didn't know what these other mushrooms looked like, or smelled like, or where to find them. They knew that there were other mushrooms because they'd seen them, while roaming around in the forests. On the other hand, it had never occurred to them to try them out, so they hadn't realized they were edible.

On the whole, they weren't. A normal person would have considered going to a bookstore and looking at--perhaps even purchasing--a field guide to mushrooms.

My parents? decided they would experiment.

We made a special excursion for the occasion, both Mom and Dad taking canvas sacks to make a sweep of the selected territory. They returned with heavy bags to the car, where we'd rimmed the wheels with rock-hard deer pellet pebbles, and spread their assorted finds out on a tarp for inspection. Funny looking things. Orange mushrooms. Frondy mushrooms. Curling mushrooms. Black things. Red things. Spotted things.

"I think I remember that one from when I was a child," Mom said hesitantly, pointing at one.

"Hm," said Dad.

Back in the safety of the home, they laid out their assorted discoveries again. They agreed they would need to determine which were poisonous and which weren't. After all, they were good parents; they couldn't very well be feeding their two little daughters lethal doses of toadstool. There were plenty of other ways to determine which mushrooms could be consumed in safety.

My parents, while lovely, wonderful, mostly intelligent people, have rarely been accused of being "sensible." In order to make sure there were no accidents, they decided they would divide the mushrooms up into two piles, one for each parent. Each would take turns eating one of the mushrooms. If a parent got sick, the other parent would take the sick parent to the hospital.

It was a remarkably silly plan.

My sister and I watched with round-eyed interest as first one, then the other, experimented with a new fungus. The first one, grilled with butter and lemon, was deemed not poisonous, but also unworthy of future consumption. The second, treated the same way, was judged unremarkable. The third one was determined to be acceptable. The fourth one--

--Mom suddenly announced that she wasn't feeling very well. Dad was halfway through the fourth mushroom. "Was it the first one or the third one?" he wanted to know. Priorities.

"Will 911 send an ambulance for stupid people?" I asked. (I was at that age.)

Mom made a hasty exit for the restroom, chased by my Dad, and the two of them eventually retired to the bedroom where Mom huddled in bed with damp towels across her forehead. She wasn't sure that she felt unwell enough to go to the hospital. I doubt it ever even occurred to Dad that eating a poisonous mushroom could kill Mom; she was beyond indestructible, a latex-sealed bottle of antibodies off which most infections and bacterium bounced with Batman-like percussions: BANG! CRASH! tinkle.

In any case, things turned out just fine. Mom didn't die. Dad didn't even get sick.

They did, however, stop eating the mushrooms. Masako and I took one out into the backyard and dribbled bits of it down a mole hole. Who the hell knows why.

MATSUTAKE GOHAN (rice)

Ingredients:
* 2 small matsutake
* 1 c. regular white rice
* 1 c. sweet (mochi) rice
* sake (Japanese rice wine)
* hon-dashi (fish stock, usually powder form)
* soy sauce
* salt
* water

Wash and clean the matsutake. Cut the top cap off of the
stem and remove the very bottom, rough root of the
mushroom stem if it is still attached. Slice thinly.

Mix regular and sweet rice together and wash it thoroughly.
Make sure the rice kernals are thoroughly mixed. Drain.

Measure enough water to cook 1.5 cups of rice in the rice
cooker. Add a quarter cup of sake. Add two dashes of
hon-dashi. Add a couple pinches of salt. Mix thoroughly.

Put rice and water mixture into rice cooker. Add enough soy
sauce so that you can just see the rice through the
water. Mix well so soy sauce is evenly distributed.
(At this point, the liquid in the rice cooker should be at about
the right level in the cooker.)

Lay the strips of matsutake over the top of the rice, making sure
to cover the entire top surface of the right. Close rice cooker and
cook. When done, mix rice thoroughly and enjoy.