Cooking with Fungus

Tonight I made stir-fry with shiitake mushrooms. This might not seem like a big deal, but for one who is typically grossed out by mushrooms, it was a huge step!

If you've never seen one, a shiitake mushroom looks like this:

It's weird. It's fuzzy. It's ginormous. And it's fungus.

It's hard to get past the fact that it's fungus. It grows on TREES. And as my roommate so thoughtfully and tactfully stated tonight, "You wouldn't want to eat fungus off of someone's foot. It IS weird."

But...thrown in with some soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, garlic, red pepper, shrimp, and snow peas? Delicious! I'd cook with fungus again in a heartbeat.