$118,000 MUSHROOM

An Italian truffle – a big, white mushroom – weighing around 2 pounds sold for an eye-popping $118,000 (103,000 euros ) at the 21st World White Truffle Auction on Sunday in Alba, a town in northern Italy’s Piedmont region. The fungi — which is prized in culinary circles for its rich, earthy aroma and taste — now belongs to chef Umberto Bombana, from the Otto e Mezzo restaurant in Hong Kong. White truffles — also known as white gold — rank among the most expensive ingredients on Earth due to their extreme rarity and the fact that they are extremely difficult to cultivate.
* Fungi is just a polite way of calling a mushroom what it is, which is a fungus.
* “Can I get a large pepperoni and fungus pizza to go?”
* A rich, earthy aroma? So it’s in the same family as toe fungus?
* A mushroom that goes for $118,000. How did this not make the list of Oprah’s Favorite Things? Or the Neiman-Marcus fantasy gifts catalogue?