When I was ten and eleven, I spent every night and weekend that I possibly could at my best friend Stacey?s house. During those same two years, I also spent a whole month living with her family at their beach house each summer.

Stacey?s mom did food set-ups for photo shoots. Photos of the glistening hamburgers and perfectly crispy fries you?d see up on the board at Burger King, the fluffy stack of pancakes dripping maple syrup that you?d see in a commercial, Carvel ice cream cakes?her mom did lots of them. She told us about all the tricks they used to make the food look like that. Most of it was pretty gross and a lot of it was fake. To this day I can?t look at food commercials without seeing the artifice.

I don?t know a lot about Stacey?s mom because I was ten when I knew her and not prone to asking lots of probing personal questions. Her name was Joan and she once told me that she had gone to college at Purdue and that she had studied home economics.

When I think of her now, there is just no connection to my idea of a Midwestern girl who studied home-ec and the woman I knew.

Stacey?s dad was a filmmaker and a mean alcoholic (but that?s a tale for another day) and some of the wildest parties I?ve ever attended in my life were at their house. Her mom loved living large, loved unconventional people and had created a home that nurtured both.

Looking back, I think I was rather enthralled with Stacey?s mom. She cooked amazing meals from scratch, made beautiful hors-d?oeuvres and never minded having a full house of people. Every Autumn, she would hand-dip candles in the basement and make her own pickle relish. She was incredibly permissive and really didn?t pay much attention to what kind of trouble we were getting into.

One afternoon while I was sitting in the kitchen watching her cook she asked me if I liked mushrooms and without a moment?s hesitation I said yes.

She handed me a fat, white, freshly washed mushroom and watched me as I ate it. Although I was pretending it was no big deal, in my mouth I was grinding the rubbery bits on the very back teeth and trying desperately not to let it touch my tongue.

But I ate the whole thing. And, long story short, that day began my love affair with the mushroom.

Some years later, I was in Paris for my cousin?s wedding and stayed on another three weeks, which allowed me to both explore Paris and fail trigonometry simultaneously. (I had brought all math homework with me and promised my parents that I would study, but please, were they insane?)

Seeing me have a fabulous time cruising around the city by metro and moped, Isabelle, my bitch cousine, decided what I really needed to do was go camping with her and some of her friends in the Bois de Lyon. Did I mention this was in November? Camping in the cold and rain was less than appealing but, seeing as I spoke no French, I literally had no say in the matter.

The weekend was every bit as miserable as you can imagine if you knew the insufferable Isabelle and her dullsville boyfriend, Hubert. (Who had sex in the same tent that I was in while I was in the tent they had sex when I was right there! What in god?s name were they thinking? Because I couldn?t speak French I was DEAF?)

However?however! There was a most wonderful afternoon in the midst of the bad-bad-no-good-very-terrible weekend. We went hunting for mushrooms in the woods. And we got all kinds, none of which I could possibly recall since my mind was working overtime to expel all memories, delete all files, of what it was like to share a tent with Isabelle and Hubert.

What I can tell you is that we cooked the assorted fungi for dinner, stewed in butter and wine, and they were gorgeous. It stands as one of the best food experiences of my life.

Until today, that was the only time I had ever gone hunting for mushrooms. But, this afternoon, I joined a bunch of mushroom fanatics and we walked through the woods for a couple of hours and the ten of us collected over 50 different species of mushrooms!

Of course, all the ones I thought were safe to eat were poisonous so I have a long way to go before I?ll be whipping up any mushroom fricassee on my own. But I am inspired.

Some of the mushrooms I found were so tiny, a third the size of my pinky finger. Others were larger than the span of both hands put together.

It was just dazzling. That might sound a bit off since the weather here is blustery, damp and raw, but I was truly oblivious to the cold.

The more I looked, the more colors I saw in the thick layers of fallen leaves, mosses, ferns, scrolls of birch bark?I even found a tiny bird?s nest! I loved picking my way across the forest floor, finding the mushrooms tucked in unlikely places, nearly stepping on them when they were right in front of me, delighting in their uniqueness.

I certainly know* of magic mushrooms, but this, this was the real thing. Pure magic. I got in the car to drive home and felt wildly alive.

*not in the biblical sense bien entendu, what I?m referring to is an anecdotal knowing.

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