Mold for Lunch

What could you live without?

Shortly after I was born, I was given the nickname “小蘑菇”, or “Xiǎo Mó Gu” by my mom. It meant “Little Mushroom”, because for some  reason, I reminded her of one. She never told me why, but if I had to guess it’d probably be because my small  frame reminded her of a red mushroom living in the forest. 

The nickname for me stuck for a few years in my family until the fateful day when I tried mushrooms for the first time: Five-year-old me was sitting down for supper, and my mom had made soup with beef, carrots, cabbage, and mushrooms. When I bit on my namesake for the first time in my life, I had never felt such a revolting sensation. The flavor of mushrooms was earthy, abnormal, and evil. And the salt in the wound was that the texture was unlike anything I’ve ever had before: Unlike the carrots and cabbages which fell apart nicely in your mouth as you bit into them, these vile creations of nature were chewy and rubbery. For a five-year-old, that meant that it was nearly impossible to ingest and I nearly choked on them multiple times.

In the coming years, my mom would often make vegetable buns that came prepackaged, which would have little bits of mushroom inside. I would painstakingly take out each individual piece with my fingers before I dared to take even a nibble, often stretching a two minute snack into nearly twenty minutes. Whenever I accidentally bit into one, I would spit it out and rinse my mouth with water. On the rare occasion I bit into it, I would feel like a slug had entered my mouth. I thought I would never understand why mushrooms were the only vegetable that had such a horrendous texture.

My question was answered when I took biology for the first time. Apparently mushrooms weren’t plants at all—they belonged to their own kingdom: Fungi. That explained everything. I remember peering into an abandoned shed as a child and watching mold grow in a dark damp corner as little sprouts of fungus peeking over the soil. You’re telling me that mushrooms, the same substance that we call “food”, is a relative of literal mold?? What are we doing?? 

This deep-rooted disgust increased when I searched up images of mushrooms on google out of curiosity. The gills horrified me—hundreds of tightly packed sharp lines in a circular pattern, making you feel like they could slice your finger if you got too close. Their misshapen bases, sprawled out parasitic-roots, and its lackluster taste in what to call home has caused me to feel immense perplexity at anyone who would willingly place such foul matter into their bodies.

Nonetheless, I have friends who I love very dearly who would eat mushrooms on nearly everything—pizza, burgers, stews, and even on their own. While I will never be able to understand how such a thing could trigger the release of dopamine in any sane person, I have slowly begun to not view the consumption of mushrooms as equivalent to chocolate-covered crickets or cheese-dusted maggots and instead have made every effort to accept it as an (unfortunate) circumstance of the society we live in today.