This meeting will constitute our October monthly membership meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, we will cover YVMS business. Following that will be a presentation with renowned chef Zachary Mazi.

Chef Zachary Mazi has been immersed in a self-guided Northern Thailand culinary study recently, and part of his passion is wild edible mushrooms and their specific uses in kitchens around the world. This presentation will go over:

• the mushrooms commonly picked and eaten in Northern Thailand (even chanterelles!)
• a few recipes incorporating wild edible mushrooms
• some very basic Thai language and culture of foraging and cooking
• stories about hunting mushrooms in Thailand

A little more about our speaker

Zachary grew up in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by farms & food, where he cut his culinary teeth under the auspices of Portland's unparalleled food scene. The better part of the last decade he been worked as budding restaurateur & wild-crafted chef (a true mycophagist) in Santa Cruz, CA, where he was recognized as Santa Cruz's Best Personal Chef in 2014, and his restaurant Ulterior received Best New Restaurant in 2017 in the Santa Cruz GoodTimes Best Of Awards. and in late 2019, decided to finally take up his new phase in life and kitchen as an author, lecturer and teacher.

Igniting others with his contagious zest for life, he creates lasting inspiration with delicious recipes and lectures, all centered in the unified and grounded art of being an imaginative human on Earth today. He currently lives and forages with his fiancé Kimbery Hunter in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He is the owner-chef-imaginator of The Food Bender, a cookbook author, and mycophagy researcher. See his self-published work on patreon.com/mycophagybook.

You can read more about Chef Zachary at his website, The Food Bender, or find him on Instagram & Facebook: @chefmazi @Thefoodbender @mycophagybook