I have discovered a new love. It's an imperfect love, certainly, seeing that we've just met, and I don't know when we will ever meet again, but it's a love that could have inspired Pride and Prejudice, if I were Elizabeth, and Mr. Darcy were a Shitake mushroom and there was an element of fear involved not quite to the extent that was employed in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The story elements are all there. I have never cared for mushrooms. Their texture is repellent, and they fall under the fungus category, which always makes me imagine people with mushrooms growing all over their feet. I do not know that this is actually possible, I never want to know if this is actually possible, but it makes me want to avoid touching the things. What if I inadvertently consumed a mushroom, which in turn grew another mushroom inside of me, which in turn, grew and grew and grew, until one day I just exploded revealing one giant gelatinous mushroom? I've never found them worth this risk. Mushrooms, in turn, have never cared for me. They clearly get a sadistic joy out of appearing where I will least expect them, and tend to mock me because they know that secretly I love the word "mushroom" particularly the "shroom" part, and find them very aesthetically pleasing to look at. The unfortunate truth is that I would make a house in the shape of a mushroom if I could in a second, but I would not eat one for dinner if you paid me. But this was before I met the Shitake.

The Shitake is an asian shroom, all speckled, mottled, and brown. If you were to have mushroom convention, I think they'd probably be the sagelike older mushrooms. The ones who listen to every word the speakers say when they aren't taking a nap, and tell the white mushrooms who live in the supermarket that all the chemicals they are taking will stunt their little mushroom growth. The asian Humphrey Boggarts of the mushroom race. Does this make me Lauren Bacall in this scenario? Well, it totally would, except that girl from Once already took that position.

In any case, when I first encountered the Shitake, I was positive that I was going to hate it. A woman in our ward was teaching us some Asian cuisine, and when I saw the diced mushrooms I knew that "Lettuce Wrap" was actually a cleverly disguised code for "Death by Mushroom" I was prejudiced from the start, and our story would have completely ended, if I hadn't been so fueled on by the success of the other asian experiments, that I decided to try it. "How bad could this be?" I asked myself. "The mushrooms will be masked by other things," I promised. "You've never had this kind, maybe they were different." Fortunately this turned out to be a chick lit moment, rather than a horror one. Death By Mushroom was actually code for Enlightenment by Mushroom, and the lettuce wrap was actually one of the best things offered that night, all thanks to the woodsy Shitake flavor.

The moral of this story:

1. Do not judge a mushroom by other mushrooms.
2. We're very glad it wasn't so, but if Darcy was a mushroom there could have still been literary merit.
3. The dancing Fantasia mushrooms aren't the only good ones of their kind, though they are the only dancing.
4. Mushroom is a funny word. If you truly get this moral down, there will be a lot more happiness in your life. There will also be a lot more weird looks because you'll giggle every time anyone says mushroom, but this is a small price for bliss, which is one of those things that MasterCard has gone on record saying that it can't buy.