Lots of people in Vancouver talk about growing mushrooms in their bathroom, or occasionally their living room. Usually it's not a good thing at all. Usually it's an alarming indication of a problem, a leaky condo that will be painfully expensive to fix.

This is a different—and much happier—kind of story. Last weekend while I was canning tomatoes, my husband Phil went to the Haney Farmers' Market. He came home with a mushroom block that he got from Sequoia Lesosky. He didn't ask what kind of mushrooms they were, but I have a feeling they're shiitakes.

We put this mushroom-inoculated block in the bathroom—not my first choice really, but it is the most humid part of the house and it has a bit of natural light, which apparently these mushrooms like (who knew?).

Mushrooms began to pop up almost immediately. Yesterday morning (that's just four days later) they looked big enough to harvest, and they'd grown even more by dinner time. So I plucked a few. As I pulled them from the block they released a wonderful, woodsy raw-mushroom smell. Then I sauteed them with some butter, garlic and thyme, and oh mama! I practically dropped into a faint on the kitchen floor because the aroma was so fantastic. We ate them on pizza with some capicolla and fontina and it was an altogether exceptional experience.

And back on the block, those mushrooms are a bit like Jack's bean stalk. You can almost watch them grow. This morning we noticed they were a lot bigger than last night. By tomorrow I'm going to have to harvest a few more. And we still haven't had them for even a week. These things are profound producers. And Sequoia has been spied at other markets, like the Trout Lake market on some Saturdays, in case you'd like a block of your own.