Hello fellow Mycophiles,

For twenty years my main focus as a writer has been food. My stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country, from The New York Times to The National Lampoon, in Saveur, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, The Wine Enthusiast, and Martha Stewart Living, among many others.

I have published recipes in Saveur Cooks (Chronicle Books, 1998), Saveur Cooks Italian, The Food & Wine Cookbook 1999 (and again in 2006), and my food writing has been anthologized in Food & Booze: Recipes and Ruminations for the Literary Mind (Tin House Books 2006), among other books. I also write a blog, kitchenecosystem.com. I lecture pretty often, teach sometimes, and perform demonstrations on preserving and mushroom cooking in venues like the Museum of Natural History, the Denver Botanical Gardens, and the New York Public Library.

While I’ve written 4 other books including my most current, The Kitchen Ecosystem: Integrating Recipes to Cook Delicious Meals (Clarkson Potter, 2014), it was while writing Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms that I had the most profound writing experience of my career.

Recipe writing and science writing are not totally dissimilar: both require very precise thinking and evocative language. It took me years to understand the science (I was not a biology major, not by a long shot) and to navigate the erudite and eccentric community of professional and amateur mycologists. Mushrooms turned out to be the window by which I came to understand nature in a deeper way.

I got into mycology through my culinary interest in mushrooms, but over the years I became more and more fascinated by the grace and mystery of the biology of fungi. I also found huge satisfaction in the kinship of fellow mycophiles. Indeed, I am president of the New York Mycological Society, a group founded by the composer John Cage over fifty years ago, and still going strong. It is a delight to be involved, and yes, there are lots of mushrooms growing in New York City!

I look forward to sharing my recipes, knowledge, and passion with the Fantastic Fungi community.

Eugenia Bone

To learn more about Eugenia, visit her blog, kitchenecosystem.com.

Eugenia lives in New York City and Western Colorado. Contact Eugenia through her website, mycophilia.com, or follow her on twitter @eugeniabone