I’m a big fan of mushrooms.  A few years ago Michael Pollan turned me on to the fact that the mushrooms we see are actually just the furthest reaches of vast fungal organisms that can stretch for miles and miles under the ground.  We can only study them so much because to unearth them is to destroy their most delicate points of composition.  How awesome is that?  Very awesome.

Justin Laman, fearless American Education entrepreneur and unfailingly gracious host, agrees.  I presume.  He’s been a mushroom hound, an amateur mycologist, for as long as I’ve known him, and I have to think he must be at least as turned on by the forever-unknowable heart of the mushroom mystery as I am.

I did not ask him, however.  I’m simply imposing my own feelings onto his.  I did ask him about his favorite mushroom of the moment.  He told me it’s maitake.  I asked him why.  He told me, “Tasty. Real flesh that doesn’t just melt. Hearty meat. Very hard to miss-identify. Nice woodsy flavor. And they grow super huge!”

You probably know maitake.  They’re also called Hen of the Woods, and they’re awesome.  You can drizzle them with some oil, sprinkle on some spices, and roast them for a spell to end up with a hefty entre or side for dinner.  They have substance.  They also, according to the American Cancer Society, were once worth their weight in silver in ancient Japan.  “Maitake” means “dancing mushroom” in Japanese because people were so psyched to discover them.  The American Cancer Society cares because they’re sponsoring research into the tumor-reducing properties of beta glucan, a polysaccaride contained in maitakes.  Japan has been using them as medicine for centuries.

I don’t know if Laman knows any of this.  I asked him which or what kind of band maitake would be if  it were, in fact, a band.  He simply sent the link below.

My interpretation is maitakes are fun, even playful.  You can enjoy their essential components because you’re enjoyed them a million times before in different forms, but this time, your enjoyment just might lead to the shrinking of a cancerous growth.  Refraining from imposing upon the ‘shroom any larger meaning beyond the simple, nay—syllabic, joy frees it to thrive in its essential fungal’ness.  Perhaps they create dance parties or playtime butchery in the mouth as well.