Gotta Love 'Em

Picture this: 10-year-old boy lying in bed at 9pm, doing some light reading in order to relax before sleeping. Mom comes in to tuck him in and say prayers only to find said boy reading his most treasured Mushroom Field Guide. Mom notices that boy seems to be drooling on the pillow. Upon questioning, boy exclaims "There are just dozens of delicious-sounding recipes in my mushroom book. Can we make some of them?" Mom slinks out to tell father of boy that it is not normal for a 10-year-old to be reading recipes for fungus that can be found growing in the woods.

Brainy Boy went to a nature preserve about a month ago for a school field trip. I went along as a chaperone. In addition to the native American stories, games and artifacts we learned about, we also took a hike. When the field trip was over, I let him take a quick peek in the gift shop, assuming he would choose a $2 polished stone or perhaps a replica of an Indian arrowhead to take home as a souvenir. Instead, he chose a $20 mushroom field guide and I insisted he use the remainder of his birthday money to buy it, figuring that the interest in mushrooms would last about a nanosecond. Contrary to popular opinion, he took it back to school, read it the entire way back on the bus, read it on the bus trip home and continued to pore over it for the next week or so.

At bedtime last night, Brainy Boy suddenly realized he had not looked at the book in a couple of weeks, and ran to find it at the place he had it last. He hopped in bed and began reading, apparently never realizing before that included in the appendix was a small cookbook that gives ideas on how to use various types of mushrooms that can be found in the wild. You can imagine his excitement when I told him our local community college offers a short course on identifying, gathering and cooking wild mushrooms. Apparently we'll be signing up as soon as the next class is advertised because he announced to his father that he and I would be going to mushroom school. It's not that I don't like mushrooms--I love them in fact. I'm the one that turned Brainy Boy on to their deliciousness. I just usually order mine with crab stuffing from Red Lobster rather than digging them up from the moss in the forest. But you know what they say, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."