Fit Friday: Baked-Fried Mushrooms Recipe

January 17, 2014

Sigh. 

I'm up a pound from last week. Stinks, but doesn't surprise me. This is my week to gain. Every month. This week. Gain-hold steady-gain-hold steady.  Sigh. 

Oh well, I had some good progress in other areas.

That new skirt I bought that was a little tight and I probably wasn't going to be real comfy in it for a few more weeks..yeah....no more tightness!  I guess those workouts are doing something after all, even if the scale doesn't know about it yet. :)

This week's goals:
1.   Bed by 10pm - I did great with this! I think I was only up too late one or two nights
2.  Wake by 6am - not so great. I need that alarm!!
3.   Personal morning and evening worship - only missed one day. 
4.   Blogging - a little late today, but made it every day this week otherwise
5.   Keep up with meal prep - good
6.   Daily exercise (experimenting with that a bit this week) - got in two workouts
7.   Bread once weekly (replace with small quantities of rice, potatoes, alternate flour) - ugh. No. Sigh.
8.   Computer time limited to morning blogging and any spare time before bed - Nope on this one too. Drats.
9.   Simplify the menu - NO new recipes - Tried a couple new recipes, but the only one that was derailing I saved for Friday night, so we were good. ;)
10. Stay on budget with groceries - so far, so good.

Okay, so I'm sharing my new recipe I tried tonight. Only thing is, there is no recipe. I made it up as I went a long, so now I'm stuck with the burden of writing out some guesstimate on measurements. Be kind.  I'll do the best I can, but I'm counting on your creativity to make this happen at your house.

Baked-Fried Mushrooms

1 pound Pennsylvania or Baby Portabellas, thoroughly washed, stems pulled out

2 TBS ground flax seed
8 TBS water

Mix flax seed and water and let soak for 15-20 minutes until thick and egg-like.  When mixture is thickened to right consistency, mix in 1-2 tsp spicy Dijon mustard.

1/2 cup (or so) of wheat germ (I'm thinking you could try steel cut oats or some kind of gluten free bread crumb mixture if you need gluten free)
1-2 tsp onion powder
1-2 tsp garlic powder
generous shaking of Mrs. Dash seasoning mix
ground black pepper to taste
any other seasonings you might like. (I was thinking some kind of Italian seasoning mix, maybe some chili powder or even some crushed red pepper flakes or cayenne if you want to spice it up.  Oh! turmeric would be good idea!)

Mix wheat germ with seasonings. 

Dip mushrooms in flax-egg mixture, thoroughly coating but letting the liquid drip out from the cavity left by the stem. You don't want the excess liquid making your crumb coating mushy.

Set the mushroom in the crumb mixture and thoroughly coat.  Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, cavity side down.

I baked my 'shrooms for close to an hour. It took a while for them to crisp up.  The problem with that is that the mushrooms deflated quite a bit and the texture wasn't perfect.  My plan for the next go 'round is to cook them under the broiler. I think that will give them the crunch I want but keep the fluff of the mushroom that we like.

And, that next go 'round will be tomorrow.  These babies were a huge hit!! Three of my  non-mushroom eating kiddos (they only eat mushrooms if I chop them microscopic-like) loved them and duked it out for the last one.  (that would be the 1yo, 3yo, and nearly 12yo. That 1yo packs a punch, I'm tellin' ya'!)

I actually made a bit more than what I wrote down, leaving me with extra flax-egg and crumb mixture.  One great thing about not using real egg is that I can store and reuse everything I made without worry of making my family sick.  *Really* love that about eating plant strong. :)

Some of my family dipped their mushrooms in my barbeque sauce. (You'll have to wait for me to get that recipe written out some other day.)  One dipped hers in the Cauliflower *Cheese* Sauce I made to go with our dinner tonight. A few of us just ate them plain. The coating had a great flavor. I just wanted the mushroom to have more crunch and less mush. 

Tomorrow, I try again! :D