Saturday we went to the Mushroom Fair in McCloud, or as we like to call it, the Unmushroom Fair. My niece calculated that there were about three mushrooms total at the fair, and I think she may be right. It was a rained out event, perfect weather for our Mushroom Dance (in which we sit in a moist, shady spot—the street worked out okay—and stand up really slowly), but alas, it meant freezing and getting soaked while waiting for some of the vendors to set up. We hid in a booth where they were making a wonderful-smelling mushroom and lamb stew, and then ran across the street to the old fashioned candy store and soda shoppe.

While we huddled in the corridor, we ran into a vendor who had decided to take it over with her sparkly body paint and aromatherapy products. She told my niece to taste something, and after my niece did so without thinking, the vendor informed her, “You can get really high off that.” My niece giggled anxiously and then we hurried into the candy store. What the heck?! I think she meant a “spiritual high” or something. I hope. After the candy store we went to a bookstore with a lot of neat books on architecture, design, local history, field guides and the like. I picked up a mushroom field guide, All That the Rain Promises, and More . . . by David Arora, who, merely guessing by his picture, is clearly insane.

Then we went to look for food. The flyer for the fair listed mushroom dishes at various local restaurants. Lobster-stuffed mushrooms looked good, so we headed to the River Bar & Grill. Unfortunately, they weren’t serving their mushrooms until after four, and it was about noon. I gave them back my soda, and we took off, looking for mushroom-laced provisions. We went back to main street and settled in a café, White Mountain Fountain, where they were supposedly serving mushroom risotto; after all the cold and rain this sounded fantastic. . . . Unfortunately the cook had gone grocery shopping and not told the person who made the risotto what it was (!), and so no risotto.

“Okay,” I said, pointing to the Railroad Roast Beef, a roast beef sandwich with plain sauteed button mushrooms, arugula, brie and aioli. “What’s ‘aioli’?”
“It’s like a garlic and mayonnaise spread.”
“Okay. And arugula, that’s a vegetable, like lettuce, right?”
“Right, but we don’t have that. It’ll probably be some other greens, like spinach or romaine . . . And we don’t have brie. It’ll be fontina.”
“Er, okay, well I’ll get the Railroad Roast Beef then, without aioli.”
*panicked look* “But we don’t have arugula, and it’ll be fontina instead of brie!”
“Uh . . . yeah. I’ll take that, and fries with a side of ranch.”
“Ranch?” *more panic* “Okay!”

I think there were about two mushrooms on my sandwich. The waitress ignored us the rest of the meal, and we left, feeling disgruntled and not having eaten a single exotic mushroom of any kind. Finally, we went back out to the booth with the mushroom and lamb stew, the only booth that was apparently serving anything other than button mushrooms (gimme a break!) and had some porcini ravioli which were excellent! We also learned about candy cap mushrooms which apparently are sweet enough to use in desserts and make into syrup.

After that, we went to the rained-out car show in Dunsmuir, looked at ten classic British cars (I think they were all MGs and Austin Healeys), and went to get Frosties in Mount Shasta, the only real success of the day. I had a chocolate and vanilla swirl.

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