Out in the margins of Sherlockian things where the fungus grows

 Some weeks you're totally immersed in the hobby, and other weeks . . .

Well, Sherlock Holmes and company will find their way to pop by and wave at you, in spite of all the distractions. Characters in deerstalkers, of course, as appeared in Star Trek: Lower Decks and Batman Vs. Robin at the comic shop this week. (Well the latter was just the blood-stained deerstalker of a character who normally wears it.) And then there's the really odd bits, as Mary O'Reilly tipped me off you this week.

I'm not going to promote the actual product -- as we have too many things out there that probably, in truth, have "placebo" as their active ingredient. But this particular product was claiming it would help your memory, raise your attention level, and make everything just so perfectly clear. They didn't say "make your brain work like Sherlock Holmes" specifically, but all the qualities this product claimed it would bring to you were very much Holmes's own.

And what was this magic ingredient?

Lion's mane mushrooms. Hericium erinaceus. 

Mostly found on dead trees, it is said that its flavor, when prepared correctly, is like lobster. Seems like it should be more in the jellyfish taste spectrum, but not that many of us know what that taste would be. Not as easy a metaphor.

So what else is out there? "Blanched soldier. mushrooms?" "Golden Pince-nez toadstools?" "Devil's foot roots?" Oh, wait, we had that.

Perhaps there are culinary experts and fungi-philes out there to whom a "lion's mane mushroom" doesn't evoke the greatest detective, just as there are marine biologists who see the lion's mane for strictly its jellyfish qualities, but we are not those.

Just as 2:21 comes up on the digital clocks for us once per day and once per night, such other tidbits always pop up for the Sherlockian obsessive. And that is a happy thing.