It's Shroom Time Baby
I promise this post is not about drugs. it's about mushrooms, mushrooms that are magic, but not like in a I'm seeing the center of the universe type magic
The lowly mushroom, a simple fungus, spat upon by most, revered by an enlightened few. Its time is now! Mushroom season, a couple-week period at the end of October and the beginning of November finally has arrived. This time of year provides people all over the world with the chance to enjoy these musty, earthy, umami-filled little spores of goodness. Similar to tomatoes, only a fool compares in-season mushrooms to their year-round brethren. The shrink-wrapped slightly slimy mycelium that stores stock year-round, taste nothing like ripe mushrooms. Not to mention the myriad of mushroom varieties and flavors that become available during the about four weeks of peak mushroom season. A typical grocery store probably stocks your classic button and portabella mushrooms – portabellas are just adult button mushrooms FYI – and if it’s a slightly nicer store maybe, MAYBE, shitake or oyster shrooms. But during mushroom season the number of different mushroom varieties available multiplies by a thousand! Especially if you have access to a decent farmer’s market. You can still get the classics, portabella, oyster, shitake but also wood ear mushrooms, straw mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, and porcini mushrooms, just to name just a couple! The best part? They all have distinct different flavors. Some have licorice tones, some have spice notes, some nutty tastes. You can do anything with them. ANYTHING. Drying them out and adding them to your soups/stocks will take you to the beloved place known as “umami heaven.” Cooking them up in olive oil with garlic and adding them to pasta? Game over! Roasting them up in the oven and eating them over toast? That’s the shit.
I could go on and on and on in this vein but I won’t. I have already written this article but about tomatoes – click the link if you want to read that article – just sub out the word “mushrooms” for “tomatoes” and you will get the gist. And trust me, nothing better than some dank mushrooms! But what I really just want to talk about choice. I wanted to do the thing where writers sort of trick you into thinking a piece is about one thing but it’s really about another but my talents as a stylist are not quite up to par. Yet! So I will just say it. Choice, this newsletter is about choice. The modern left has much to say about choice. The general argument from he capitalist side goes like this: People can go to the grocery store and buy whatever kind of cereal they want, there are tons of choices! You are free to eat whatever kind you, and no one can say anything. That’s real freedom. But many socialists will say: those are false choices, the freedom to choose your breakfast cereal is not a real choice. Why? First, many people can not afford cereal. They do not get that choice. Clearly, in the capitalist schema set up they are not free. Secondly, who gives a shit what kind of cereal you eat. It is an inconsequential choice. Capitalism and consuming are great at giving you inconsequential choices, but horrible at giving you the choices that matter. Many people are stuck in jobs they hate and that are actively injuring them because they need insurance, or need to take care of their kids, or a myriad of other reasons. Being stuck in a job like that takes away their choice to tell an abusive boss to sit on it, or take the time to get job training in another field. People everywhere have many, too many, stories of their friends or family staying in abusive relationships because they need that person’s insurance, or home, or whatever. Capitalism does not allow for choices in these situations, it takes them away.
So what does this have to do with food? A lot actually. Capitalists often use food as an example of the beneficial nature of capitalism. You can pick between 25 types of breakfast cereal! From 36 different types of frozen pizza. But people of do not discuss how capitalism takes away choice from us. Mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, lettuces, potatoes, etc., etc., exist in so many different varieties that people do not know about. Knowledge of these varieties has disappeared because capitalism has wiped them out. In the U.S, Americans basically are aware of one type of mushroom, two types of potatoes, one type of tomato, one type of corn, and one type of green bean. The logic of capitalism has erased all the rest from memory. These, “heirloom,” varieties of vegetables and fruits exist only in farmer’s markets, a privileged space for sure, and small rural communities. As Ronni Lundy in her excellent history/cookbook Victuals notes, people in Appalachia used to grow what amounted to family-specific types of pole beans. The Johnson’s, for example, had one kind that had bigger seeds and a thicker skin, the Crowells another kind with smaller seeds but maybe a sweeter taste, and the Peters a third kind that was purple and tasted kind of like garlic, and so on and so forth. But the development of industrial agriculture and the loss of small farms, meant that the need for profit got rid of all but the cheapest bean to produce. And for this we are supposed to be thankful! Capitalism literally makes our food blander. This is not a choice, it’s an ultimatum. We lose so much history when we lose our foodways. Grandma’s recipe doesn’t taste the same because you can’t get the same kind of tomatoes she used.
So how do we get these back? One, community gardens. Learn to grow your own food. You’ll have to start with seeds that are your normal tomatoes or whatever, but things change. Seeds are a technology, and they change rapidly. Cultivars and hybrids happen both naturally and on purpose. It’s your garden, do what you want with it. And shit, with the way the environment is going we’re all gonna need to know how to grow our own food. Second, support efforts by local farmers, to bring back heirlooms. These people know what’s up. They’ve got enough local knowledge to last decades. Thirdly, fight for an end to capitalism! It’s the capitalists who are making you eat these shitty mushrooms. Do something about it!