They grow everywhere; in the ground, off trees, in unhealthy buildings, in grow-rooms - anywhere dark basically. BUT THEY ARE NOT A PLANT.
Repeat after me: Mushrooms are not vegetables. Mushrooms are not vegetables. Mushrooms are not vegetables. They are cool to look at, and cute to imagine fairies living amongst, but to me they are not food. They are disgusting. They are in so many “plant-based” meals and yet they are not a plant. They are in so many vegetarian and vegan dishes and yet they are not a vegetable. I don’t care, please stop excluding them from your dish ingredients on the menu because “vegetables” covered them. It didn’t. I will die on this hill.
I hate them.
I fear I cannot express my detest of these pungent attrocities in any words that will adequately convey my deep loathing, but I will try.
Being a vego has its benefits and its pitfalls, and people putting mushrooms in everything we can eat, is probably my most distressing pitfall. They are on the pizza that work orders “the vegans” out of duty (and sometimes care, depending who orders it); they are in the one dish that 90% of non-veg restaurants deign to offer up as “the vegan option”; they are the very basis of the mushroom risotto that an old work ordered me after taking dietary requirements that specifically said “vegan; no mushrooms”; they are in my partner’s favourite meal and he cooks them separately but the smell still pervades the entire house and makes me feel literally sick and tired. Literally literally, not figuratively literally.
That’s right - I think I might actually be intolerant to them. Just the smell of them cooking makes my stomach feel queasy, and I get a bit sleepy - which is exactly what happens when I am around cigarette smoke. They are clearly toxic to me. When I say “they”, I suspect I have only ever really tried button mushrooms, but the smell of portobello mushrooms cooking does it too, and frankly I am terrified of trying any other kinds. Even those long white ones that are super cute - I can’t, and I won’t.
A few years ago I entertained the idea of trying to learn to like them. It’s a nice idea - learning to like something that seems so unavoidable, and I still abstractly really wish I could. Like it would just make my life so much easier! Okay so not being vegan would also make my life easier but that’s not an option. Let’s say I could learn to like mushrooms? What if they legit are toxic to me? The smell of meat cooking makes me feel a bit sick, but it doesn’t make me sleepy like cigarettes and mushrooms do. I didn’t give up meat because I didn’t like it. I just really really hate mushrooms okay? I don’t think I can do it. Could I be hypnotised into liking them? Should I start eating one every day until I am indifferent to them?
You can see I think about this far too much and waver a lot on what should be done about it. I usually land on “nothing”. Nothing can be done. I just have to keep going through life being a borderline Karen but actually just trying to be as polite and grateful as possible to anyone who might accidentally serve me mushrooms in their thankless minimum wage job. I just have to keep being vigilent and sounding really high maintenance every time I am asked my dietary requirements. That’s my lot.
I know people think “Oh ffs she’s already vegan, can’t she just eat the fucking mushrooms?” - I see it in their eyes. It reminds me of this time at an old job when I said I “couldn’t eat that” referring to something filled with dairy and eggs. My colleague replied “well, you can - you just choose not to”. She was technically correct - I choose not to, but I used the word can’t to actually mean “choose not to because if I did eat it I would feel mentally and emotionally terrible and my quality of life would suffer therefore I can’t”. With mushrooms, the “can’t” means “choose not to because I would quite possibly be sick all over this table and never live it down”, so yeah I am not lying when I say I can’t eat them. I think I’m going to start saying I’m allergic…
*looks up mushroom allergy*
That’s right, I’m ah, I’m allergic. What happens you ask? Ah, I get a rash. Yeah it’s really itchy.
I could do it right? I legit am allergic to penicillin, and they are kinda related, they are both fungal, right? So yeah, I’m allergic to mushrooms and I get a really bad rash and please don’t cook them in cos I can’t just pick them out. K thx bai.
When I was a teenager people used to ask the philosophical question 'is your red my red?', or in other words 'how do I know that a colour looks the same to other people as it looks like to me?'. I knew that my primary school best friend's blue wasn't the same as my blue, because she was colourblind and could not distinguish blue from grey. Anyway, we never asked the question about taste, but it seems clear to me that we do taste the same food differently, and that your mushrooms are not my mushrooms. After all, if tuna tasted as bad to everyone else as it does to me I don't think it would ever have been recognised as a food.