What's that gurgling noise?

After almost a week of having no desire to eat or enjoying what food I have eaten, I actually am beginning to think about how much fun it is to eat something good.

Particularly mushrooms.

Mrs Maggott bustled in and out.... in a short while, fourteen sat down to eat. There was beer in plenty, and a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon.... 

I can envision a huge pottery bowl – a mighty dish – filled with golden brown mushrooms and bits of bacon. Ooooh.

OK, so that little bit from the Lord of the Rings is not at the top of the list of literary food scenes, but setting up yearnings nonetheless. The straw bales our son piled up in late winter to catch his arrows...

have begun to deteriorate after having been rained on repeatedly over the past few months. And they have been sprouting mushrooms.

I love mushrooms. One of my favorite things to eat when I was kid was the beef stroganoff my mother would make on very special occasions when they had dinner guests. She always added fresh mushrooms to the skillet where the onions and beef were cooking.

Yummy. Richard found a recipe that used slices of sauteed portabello mushrooms and peppers with melted Swiss cheese on a bun. It was like a Philly cheese steak sandwich only without the meat. It was very good, but the mushrooms are a bit too expensive to eat that very often

Cream of mushroom soup made from scratch, with real mushrooms.... and a grilled cheese sandwich. I do not think any of these mushrooms are edible, and I am certainly not going to find out. But one must ask oneself? If these wild mushrooms are growing in the straw, could people friendly mushrooms also be persuaded?