What's That? The Ingredient Of 2022!

February 2, 2022 7:27 AM

"The other day I was at the grocery store and the checker was unable to identify a portabello [sic] mushroom. And no, she wasn't new.."

The NY Times 2022 Food Predictions give me hope for the education of the youth.

Check out the info at the Mushroom Council for a little botany refresher.

Maybe you already know all there is to know about mushrooms but the really important thing is just to squish them.

Happy Doubles Jubilee! Original post was posted on the blue November 2005

posted by RobinofFrocksley (75 comments total)

Classic. And Chef's Kiss that's there's no "more inside" after all in the 2005 post. There's no there, there.
posted by chavenet at 7:39 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

context: this here post is a classic (A CLASSIC!) moment in my online life and I am here for all the nostalgia FEELS cause it's GROUNDHOG DAY and time is a cube


bring back the img tag you cowards (I am kidding)
posted by zenon at 7:42 AM on February 2, 2022 [15 favorites]

I recently got into a detailed discussion with a checker who both didn't know that a yellow thing could be a beet and also didn't share any language with me that included knowledge of the word beet. (Looking it up later, the translation is just "biteu," so I'm guessing we were actually arguing about category rather than language, but I didn't know it at the time.) I enjoyed it. I think they enjoyed it. I certainly learned a hell of a lot about new foods when I was their age, and I hadn't even crossed an ocean and gotten a job in a foreign language. The people in line behind me were really helpful. The people behind them didn't object to waiting an extra three minutes. It was nice.

Cheers for Doubles Joubilee!
posted by eotvos at 7:45 AM on February 2, 2022 [8 favorites]

Hey, I commented in that thread.....



I'm old.
posted by Pendragon at 7:47 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: Did you think this was plastic.com?
posted by kaibutsu at 7:52 AM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

And also know that the slightest infration precieved will bring down the wrath of commenters who just wait and get off on posting clever remarks as put downs...
posted by Postroad at 12:44 on November 12, 2005 [3 favorites +] [!]

In which good old Postroad speaks an enternal truth about MetaFilter.
posted by briank at 7:52 AM on February 2, 2022 [8 favorites]

Yea - some of the feels I am having is shame that I was, so many of us were, just big callous jerkos and in full disclosure threads like that are why I am glad for the brand new day*. I certainly don't want to encourage the culture of pile ons.

MiHail I am very sorry that I was ass, and I deeply regret the person I was.


*getting a fresh start, sometimes officially, sometimes just deciding that it's time to try and be a better member of the community and just burying the old account under a mountain.
posted by zenon at 7:56 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]

Everyone should be following Alexis Nikole on TikTok aka @blackforager on Instagram and Twitter.
posted by gwint at 8:07 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]

I mean, I only just learned a year or so ago that portobello, button, and cremini mushrooms are all exactly the same species. Just harvested at different times in their lifecycles. Crazy!
posted by Grither at 8:09 AM on February 2, 2022 [29 favorites]

I posted an image in that thread which is now lost to time. Whither Mushroom%20_Cloud.jpg?
posted by swift at 8:25 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

That original thread was a shit show of people being absolutely nasty to each other. Not that MiHail didn't deserve some of it for their absolutely dripping disdain for the cashier, but man, it was ugly and mean.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:26 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

A stark contrast in moderation standards today, thankfully.

I love the "squish the mushroom" trick! Totally trying that, today, maybe.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:32 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

I agree with jacquilynne-- kind of hoping this month doesn't turn into a review of The Worst of MetaFilter.
posted by JanetLand at 8:32 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

A colleague from my time in produce now does PR for The Mushroom Council. They've been doing a blended mushroom burger contest for I think four years? Some of the winners are here.
posted by jocelmeow at 8:36 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm old.

No, you are not, Pendragon. Get in line: you have no idea what old is -- there are beau coup guys in their 50s with Dylan for a first name running around right now. You have no idea how old that makes me feel. And you won't until there is a cohort of Cobains among your grandkids' generation.
posted by y2karl at 8:38 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

Yeah some of it was pretty brutal. I deeply appreciate that people are mostly a lot kinder to one another around here these days.

One thing I noticed and would like to mention is that some comments were actually pretty nice. Several people defended the OP and apologized for snarking. Many cheers to those people! Most of it was just absurdity IMO.

I personally love that the OP handled the whole thing with some grace and humor. I just added the "snobbery" tag as a nod to that.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 8:44 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

And Chef's Kiss that's there's no "more inside" after all in the 2005 post. There's no there, there.

There was, though! I think back then there wasn't a built-in space after the fold (right?), so you had to manually add it in a comment, and in the 10 minutes it took MiHail, the OP, to do that a lot of comments had already been made...

As a postscript, here is MiHail's obituary post from around half a year later. I've never read the original mushroom thread all the way through (over 1000 comments, in 2005!), but according to commenters in the obit post it ended up working out pretty nicely, with MiHail showing a lot of humor and grace and people making peace with each other. She died waiting for an organ transplant; I guess this is as good a place as any to remind anyone who's been thinking about it to register as an organ donor.

I think there's something rather wonderful about the fact that MiHail will be remembered fondly by a huge number of strangers every time they see a portobello mushroom.
posted by trig at 8:49 AM on February 2, 2022 [26 favorites]

It looks like Santa Cruz's Fungus Fair was partially virtual because of COVID, which means that some of the presentations can be found on YouTube.

There's also a Mini Fungus Fair coming up in person on Feb. 19 for folks who are around those parts.

The rest of us will have to make our own mushroom cookies and ice cream.

(Disclaimer: I haven't tried either of those recipes. Your mycological mileage may vary.)
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:15 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Here in the Bay Area, there are a couple similar stores in Berkeley, called Berkeley Bowl. They have the hugest, most insane produce section I have ever seen. There are things there that look like they came out of a science fiction movie. Mushrooms? There looks to be maybe 30 or 40 different kinds. The first time we went there, my friend got a bunch of crazy produce and mushrooms. This was before every individual item had a sticker on it. The checker whipped through the produce entering in numbers and I watched the screen and he was nailing everything. As my friend was paying, I asked him if he knew all the produce by sight. He nodded yes and said it was just part of the job. Now a days, checkers just read stickers, no specific produce identity skills required. And the register tells them how much the change is. Machine intelligence, indeed…
posted by njohnson23 at 9:17 AM on February 2, 2022

So many mushroomy images gone, like tears in the rain.
posted by snofoam at 9:36 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

That's a pretty condescending comment, njohnson.

There are cashiers who are a lot smarter than the people who look down on them because they have a job with low social status.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:39 AM on February 2, 2022 [11 favorites]

I don't mean this in a fighty way but you know it is interesting to revisit that original thread because it was the reason that (among others I guess), though I was a member of Metafilter for about a year by that point and lurked since near the beginning, I decided I didn't want to engage much with this site. I agreed with Postroad's comment. But I weirdly stuck with it, lurked for a few years but only re-engaged in 2012 when the community had moved on enough (I know a lot of people disagree but I think the site is better than it was). I still am pretty judicious how I interact with this site because of that thread though.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:43 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

Grither, I was today years old when I learned that!
posted by scratch at 9:46 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

If ever a thread needed the <img> tag, it's this one.

You have the power, cortex.
posted by Mayor West at 9:58 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

it's amazing - generic mac and cheese at 33, maybe 25 cents a box?

i don't feel old, i feel broke
posted by pyramid termite at 10:01 AM on February 2, 2022

when I was a cashier in a super market (not at all on Berkeley Bowl level) I not only could identify all the produce on site but had the 4 digit code for the most popular items memorized (I still remember some 30+ years later. 1192=bananas 1215=red bell pepper) yes, many people who work at super markets are just as smart as you and also, they are scanning those items over and over again, day after day.

when I first started shopping at Berkeley Bowl in the early 00s, every time was an adventure. Buddha's Hand? hey what's that smell? oh Durian...it was fascinating. but now they are all pretty familiar (I do not personally eat Durian but if you like it that's cool). shopping there is one of the absolute best things about living in the East Bay and exhibit A of the incredible privilege we experience here. I wouldn't have known a portabello [sic] from my butt growing up...

thanks for the tip, Gwint, I am now following Alexis Nikole on IG. she is adorable and so passionately into her food thing. I love it!
posted by supermedusa at 10:18 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hello mushroom, my old friend! Truly a skip down memory lane.

Delighted this is back. Let me know if this somehow derails into a discussion about how truffle oil is ruining junk food. Because I will take your truffle oil potato chips/popcorn/ whatever and snark all over it.

Speaking of: remember when truffle fries were seen as the very peak of elitist hedonistic excess?

Ah the times. . . .
posted by thivaia at 10:23 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was almost the cashier being complained about, many years ago. I hadn't worked in the shop's food department before -- I was drafted to the food tills that afternoon from the menswear section, to cover some absence -- and had to ask a customer what I was looking at in the bag she'd just handed me. She gave me a look of such pity and condescension, and explained that they were peas still in their shells, and did I know that's how they grew in nature?

I had thought that they looked like peas, but immediately dismissed the idea because walking into a supermarket which I knew sold shelled fresh peas, only to pick up a kilo of the same peas that you have to spend time shelling yourself and then throw away about half of the weight you'd paid for, is not a thing that I'd expect a sane person to do. So I thought they must be a weird green bean variant, and they get to tell a story of the teenager so ignorant of where food comes from that he didn't know what peas look like.

(I really, really hated retail work. Plenty of the customers were fine, but M&S is at the posher end of British supermarkets and the constant stream of entitlement and affable condescension made my teenage blood boil.)
posted by metaBugs at 10:32 AM on February 2, 2022 [18 favorites]

Oh man - That thread is from before my time and I remember someone linking to it once, and I got some of the way in, and couldn't keep going - people are being so mean, and the OP is being so patient + sort of asking for it + knowing her history afterwards.... So I just tried again and I made it to 2:55pm and nope. Still can't. Does it get better enough to try again?

I did find myself wanting to favorite some ancient comments though. It's an odd feeling.
posted by Mchelly at 10:45 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

time is a cube

I'm afraid not; the clock on my wall clearly proves that time is a flat circle!
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:47 AM on February 2, 2022 [6 favorites]

aren't all circles flat?
posted by thelonius at 10:51 AM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

I am astounded that the portobello image from the original post has not linkrotted away after all these years.

Actually the entire foodsubs.com home page looks identical to the 2005 version. A beacon of stability.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 11:02 AM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

aren't all circles flat?

In rebuttal, please allow me to state: Oh, hush.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:07 AM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

I agreed with Postroad's comment.

Your comment, Ashwaganda, reminded me to check to see if Postroad was still with us. And, boy, is he ever. And still sharp with his heart very much in the right place and, from the evidence, keeping track of things MetaFilter. If only he were still present here as well. Man, I wish I could be as lucid when I am his age but, alas, I fear that that train already may have left the station.
posted by y2karl at 11:17 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]

It's awesome that I'm getting likes for a joke I made 16 years ago.
posted by goatdog at 11:45 AM on February 2, 2022 [5 favorites]

That's what They want you to think.
posted by tigrrrlily at 11:58 AM on February 2, 2022

You are allowed to self link in the comments - goatdog. Here's it is.
posted by zenon at 11:59 AM on February 2, 2022

When I worked at Trader Joes I memorized some of the PLU codes, which are those four and five digit codes. There is no intelligence built into the code, it's totally random. And everything is unique - a large Braeburn is 4103, the small is 4101. 4102 is a completely different apple, the Fireside. And they don't even share a starting set - 3283 is Honeycrisp.
posted by zenon at 12:09 PM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

supermedusa: the banana's suggested PLU is 4011, which weirdly is also the only one I could remember off the top of my head. I do remember specifically memorizing broccoli and cabbage as the stickers were never on them. Note: Trader joes doesn't use scales so everything is sold packaged or individually. Thankfully their produce section is limited.
posted by zenon at 12:14 PM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

That thread was before my time, but it came out later that MiHail died waiting for her third liver transplant, and since Portobello mushrooms are one of the mushroom species that contain hydrazine in the raw state, and hydrazine and hydrazine derived drugs cause liver failure, in the case of hydrazine sometimes by inhalation alone, I always found that thread very peculiar and nowhere near as funny as people seemed to think.
posted by jamjam at 12:44 PM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

zenon I worked at a grocery store (not TJs) in New Jersey in 198....7 or 8?? so millions of years ago, on a planet far far away...The TJs system sounds pretty insane.
posted by supermedusa at 1:04 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

goatdog: It's awesome that I'm getting likes for a joke I made 16 years ago.

And that's the difference between income (Twitter, where your posts disappear), and wealth.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:23 PM on February 2, 2022 [7 favorites]

If only I had had my Tik Tok knowledge of mushrooms at that time, or could have understood US mushroom names. I could have wowed people with the knowledge that white (button) mushrooms, chestnut (Cremini) mushrooms and Portobello mushrooms are all the same mushroom at different stages of it's maturity.
posted by asok at 1:31 PM on February 2, 2022

Our fancy grocery store has computer/printers that allow you to tag your vegetables yourself based on the prominently displayed PLU codes, so you don't have to remember what they are and the cashier just scans the code you put on there. Also since some are insanely expensive by the pound (including some mushrooms-wow!), you never get any surprises.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:35 PM on February 2, 2022

Unlike many ITT the thing linked in OP was long before I first looked at MeFi. I found myself scrolling endlessly, before popping back to the top to find that it had over 1K comments. I am struck by the fact that MiHail, OP in that thread, apparently never posted anything to MeFi later than about two weeks after that post.

Every so often MeFi throws up a bit of its history like this, and I marvel some at how it has changed.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 3:06 PM on February 2, 2022

aren't all circles flat?

my tires are circles and they're not flat
posted by pyramid termite at 3:14 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Wow, people were mean back in the stone age.
posted by signal at 3:22 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Oh, how well I know.
posted by y2karl at 3:29 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

white (button) mushrooms, chestnut (Cremini) mushrooms and Portobello mushrooms are all the same mushroom at different stages of it's maturity

That's not quite precise; both cremini and white button are immature forms of Agaricus bisporus, but different variants. So not quite the same mushroom, it doesn't go white > cremini > portobello.
posted by tavella at 3:32 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

trig: "And Chef's Kiss that's there's no "more inside" after all in the 2005 post. There's no there, there.

There was, though! I think back then there wasn't a built-in space after the fold (right?), so you had to manually add it in a comment, and in the 10 minutes it took MiHail, the OP, to do that a lot of comments had already been made...

I see that now! thanks...
posted by chavenet at 3:34 PM on February 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’ve gotten a lot of rhubarb for the price of celery over the years. But I never judge the cashier for not knowing what it is.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:53 PM on February 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

tavella - 'it doesn't go white > cremini > portobello'

Tik Tok lied to me? Interesting, thanks.
posted by asok at 4:10 PM on February 2, 2022

Commander Buzzkill here just to point out that Portabello, Cremini and the white button mushroom are all the same thing, namely Agaricus bisporus. The only difference is price. Portabello was a made up name for an overgrown button mushroom and a way to sell them, Crimini was a brown mutation and made up name and another way to charge more money for the same mushroom.

Don’t believe the hype!
posted by misterpatrick at 4:25 PM on February 2, 2022

Well it only took 16.5 years but TwelveTwo finally got their wish. Something I bet they never thought would actually happen.
posted by Mitheral at 4:31 PM on February 2, 2022 [6 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that the white and cremini mushrooms at my local supermarkets are the same price. Portabello mushrooms cost more I think but you're only buying the portabello instead of the cremini because its larger so I can get paying more for that size.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:33 PM on February 2, 2022

If you're all shocked at how people are charging extra for variants of Agaricus bisporus, I can't wait till you guys here about the racket that involves people selling different parts of Brassica oleracea for all kinds of different prices, and they don't even try to call them by the same name.
posted by ambrosen at 4:55 PM on February 2, 2022 [15 favorites]

I’ve gotten a lot of rhubarb for the price of celery over the years

It took me a while to parse this properly, at first I thought you were saying people often argued with you because the celery in your store was too expensive...
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:49 PM on February 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

This isn’t my first Agaricus bisporus, and let me tell you something: I wouldn’t be here if I thought calling them Portabellos took advantage of anyone mycologically less informed. Or worse, that it was some way to take more of their money...
posted by y2karl at 6:16 PM on February 2, 2022

I am not quoting our fearless leader.
posted by Oyéah at 7:29 PM on February 2, 2022

Man, I wish I could be as lucid when I am his age
I wish I was now or had ever been as lucid.
posted by dg at 8:44 PM on February 2, 2022

I had worked at a food co-op as the signmaker for over 20 years when I saw this thread the first time in 2005. I never could determine whether these were spelled Portabella or Portabello. Even the produce suppliers didn't spell it consistently one way or the other. I saw that someone in the thread stated that it was spelled Portabello. Even though I had not yet signed up for MetaFilter, I had been lurking for years, and decided to take a random MeFite's assertion as TRUTH. That's how much I trusted y'all. From that time on, Portabello was on the signs.

However, even 15 years later, I never could decide whether mangoes or mangos is the correct spelling. I retired at the end of 2019 so I don't really care any more, but if one of y'all want to decide for me, I'd still take your word for it.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:52 PM on February 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Haagen Daz used to make a wonderful mango sherbet but I haven't seen it for years -- yet another of these more of less post pandemic grocery store selections.

Also, I read The Marriage of Sun and Moon by Andrew Weil, which was a book enumerating various transcendent experiences both drug induced and otherwise.

One of the drug free experiences was seeing a solar eclipse -- hence the title -- while another was eating fresh mangos straight from the tree. A stoner friend of mine who traveled through Central America in the 60s strongly testified to the truth of the latter.

He and a friend sat unstoned on a beach in Nicaragua one day and ate mango after mango from picked from nearby trees by little boys from the village where they stayed for awhile. They just couldn't stop.

He said their flavor was truly awesome and that the difference between them and store bought was like the difference between store bought and home grown tomatoes -- only by a factor of ten in comparison.
posted by y2karl at 1:06 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is one of those old threads where I’m palpably relieved that ctrl-F “by ook” comes up empty
posted by ook at 6:09 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Old as in yesterday? Whoa, Startrek:Voyager:Blink of an Eye comes to mind.
posted by y2karl at 8:04 AM on February 3, 2022

The nostalgia is crushing me. Seeing some of the usernames in that thread literally makes me feel something in my heart, like a squeezing sensation.

On looking down on cashiers and people with similar jobs... For a few months I worked at a bar with an amazing crew. The manager tried to hire interesting people with a sense of humor. The cashier was an industrial designer who had won a couple of international awards, the chief bartender had a PhD in Physics and had developed mathematical models for oil exploration, another bartender was a martial arts competitor who had lived all over the world studying under the best instructors and he spoke many languages, you get the idea. It was a fun job with flexible hours, a fun and supporting crew, less stress than an office job, and it allowed us all to have side hustles that were more personally significant. We had so much fun talking about customers trying to educate us when they learned about our past jobs/experience, the best were the well intentioned customers lecturing on wasted potential and suggesting we apply at their company.

I learned the lesson, and some of the most interesting encounters I have had have been with cashiers, waiters, cooks, janitors, you get the idea. It is just a question of showing the minimum of human decency.

Just this week I went to the local Petco to buy a big enclosure for a reptile and about 50 pounds of sand. The cashier helped me carry it to the car, and on the 5 minute walk I learned that he is a biologist specialized in genetics, has been working on selecting and hybridizing food mushrooms for the local climate, and is into ants. We will be swapping spores and I'll throw some ant queens his way if I manage to catch any interesting ones this year.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:41 AM on February 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: We will be swapping spores

(I think this is my first time...)
posted by trig at 9:09 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Crimini was a brown mutation and made up name

White button is actually the mutation (discovered in 1925), the base form is brown.
posted by tavella at 9:46 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Old as in yesterday? Whoa...

D'oh! My apologies, ook -- I now get you mean the thread of the original post by Mihail. And I am still such a technopeasant I couldn't Control-F if I tried. Plus I'm only on a phone these days. I tried to see if I left a comment there but have not found one so far. And life is so short I don't want to spend another second to find out. I will just pray that I did not.
posted by y2karl at 10:38 AM on February 3, 2022

Ha! I should've been clearer about which link I was talking about, y2karl :)

I've.... mellowed quite a bit in the, um, oh my god 21 years since I joined MeFI; every time we dip into the ancient history I'm worried I'm gonna rediscover another past moment where I was y'know being a raging dick or etc
posted by ook at 10:46 AM on February 3, 2022

Whoa, I was still going by PinkStainlessTail in that thread. Longer ago than I thought.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:09 AM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Oh, ook, you have no idea how bad I feel sometimes. I have gone on a MeMail apology tour of late saying I am so sorry to people I mixed it up with in the past. Because I truly am.

One of my projects of late is to look at the profile pages of people who have irked me past and present. Almost uniformly, I find myself thinking the world of them after studying what they have written and, too, seeing what they have suffered in life. It has brought me to tears sometimes.

Which I recommend to anyone. Someone rub you the wrong way? Check out their profile page and see who they are before you unload on them. Oft times it will soften you. But sometimes not. In that case, well... life is so short and you usually have better things to do.
posted by y2karl at 11:22 AM on February 3, 2022 [5 favorites]

You're giving me the feels, man. Seriously that's beautiful.

Part of why I never changed my username -- besides the sweet sweet four-digit user number -- is because I feel like I should stay accountable for all that past stuff, somehow? All those opinions and arguments that seemed so important at the time for some reason? I don't know if that even makes sense but, well, here we are
posted by ook at 12:11 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

YMMV of course but I think it is important to be accountable for our actions, to accept & recognise our failings and be able to show empathy to ourselves and each other. That's not always easy but it is important, I think, to be always working towards that.
posted by Ashwagandha at 1:46 PM on February 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Exactly.

...But why am I hearing that in the voice
of C. Montgomery Burns?
posted by y2karl at 4:08 PM on February 3, 2022

Exactly.

Exacaticaly?

Exacatacaly.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:55 PM on February 3, 2022 [1 favorite]