J.R. Johnson

So, you were right yesterday when you read my piece and thought to yourself, “No way is she getting all that done in an hour.”

My response:

1: You were right. I’m saying it again to give you the opportunity to revel in it. Who doesn’t like being right?

2: I roasted the mushrooms and minced the stems, but did not make stock. We watched an episode of Star Trek: Discovery instead (Michelle Yeoh forever!) and then I made a gallon of mushroom soup.

3: The extra time gave me a chance to switch gears. Today I decided to switch from making stock to duxelles, because the mushrooms were so fresh that even the typically-woody shiitake stems were soft and delicious. I’m sautéing that now and will (predictably) freeze them in cubes for later.

4: Even though the whole process took longer than expected, I’m glad I did it because yay, ready-to-eat mushrooms are great, but also because the optimistic time frame helped me get started in the first place. Yesterday was the kind of day where I woke up and wished I had another couple of hours to sleep in. Thinking about several hours of mushroom-related kitchen work might have meant me saying, “Hmm, thanks, but no thanks.” This way, I got started, made good progress, and finished several things I might not have thought I had the energy for yesterday.

It reminds me that getting started is often my biggest hurdle. That’s helpful for both the kitchen and writing.

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So I didn’t get everything done as fast as I’d hoped. I still managed to tackle those three huge boxes of mushrooms before they went bad and also made soup, which we’ll have tonight for dinner with the bread I made this morning. So yay.

And really, that was a lot of mushrooms.

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