Jonny's Worst Nightmare

Mushroom centerpieces [tutorial found here, via Martha Stewart Living].


My husband hates mushrooms.

For the most part, Jonathan does not have strong feelings about food, one way or the other. When we first got married and I delved into cooking for him (which I really enjoy), it took some adjustment to his "it's fine" attitude about most food. Because I love food. Now, I do understand that this is really a good thing; he never "hates" anything and rarely "looooooooves" anything, so I kind of always win. Like [most?] girls, I have an emotional attachment to some foods and can be quite dramatic about it [shocker].

It's because of this trait that when Jonny says "I really like ______" (my raspberry oatmeal bars, par example) or "I really don't care for ______" (disastrous salmon burgers I made one time), I know he actually means it.

But the man hates mushrooms.

On our first date, we went to Memphis Pizza Cafe and ordered [one of my faves from there] the Cajun Chicken Supreme pizza. Trying to "go with the flow" poor J did not say anything about the mushrooms residing on this pizza pie, nor did he remove them. He didn't want to draw attention to his single food phobia. [Had there been bananas (I hate bananas) on that pizza, I would have taken them off kicking and screeching.] What a sweetheart.


So I'll avoid making this centerpiece--which is marginally cute, no?

[I won't really go into the time we had the Farises over and I made this black-eyed pea/spinach/mushroom stuff that wasn't good and featured waaaaay more mushrooms than originally thought. Poor man--I told him beforehand "you can pick them out"--but there was no picking out. The mushrooms comprised a good one-third of the food on his plate.]

Patience of a saint, that one.