Mushrooms -- the new legume!

Mushrooms are high in protein, fiber, and several important vitamins and minerals -- plus, they taste great and have a meaty, juicy mouthfeel. Joel Fuhrman, MD, recommends eating some every day! Try a Portobello Burger by sauteing a portobello mushroom in a balsamic vinegar-soy sauce-veggie broth mixture and serve in your favorite whole wheat bun with all the fixin's. Each variety has countless nutritional benefits, even the basic white button. Have fun exploring different varieties in your local food stores and discovering new -- and old -- fungi friends!

The nature mushroom photos above show how mushrooms grow in the great outdoors.  However, many mushrooms are poisonous, even fatal, so you should only buy your mushrooms from a grocer.

3rd Class Project Cancer

Last night was my third class at Parma Hospital Community Health Education Center. Pictured is me preparing a casserole of quinoa seed and cauliflower topped with a mushroom gravy. Any grain can be substituted for the quinoa -- but I wanted to give the class a chance to taste quinoa as it's one of the hot new discoveries in the vegan cooking world because it's a compete protein, and gluten free!  It is served by the students' taking a helping of the quinoa and cauliflower, as pictured, and then separately spooning over the mushroom gravy. The gravy is made with vegetable broth and flour. No oil was used. I used vegetable broth for sauteing the onion for the casserole and the mushrooms for the gravy. This takes the fat in this course down to almost nothing.

Here I am preparing Basil Citrus Salad. There is no oil used in this recipe. The salad gets its "dressing" flavor from seasoned brown rice vinegar, fresh basil, and the juice from the oranges. This again brings the fat content down to practically nothing. (Believe it or not, there are trace amounts of fat even in oranges!) This dish also takes advantage of our Cancer Project poster where we are encouraged to use the full spectrum of colors in plant foods to best maintain and restore health in our systems.

For some students, this next dish was the big hit of the evening. This is a tofu scramble which looks and tastes similar to that old classic, scrambled eggs, and is packed with healthy protein. It is turmeric that gives it that yellow color although as one student pointed out, curry powder would also give that yellow color -- because of the turmeric in it! The same things which are scrambled into the old classic are also perfect for this dish. I kept it fairly simple rather than add even more vegetables to an already high array of vegetables we were about to eat. Soy sauce and nutritional yeast are very good for flavoring this scramble.

Art and Photography work in this entry by Carol Irvin.  All text by Rebecca Dingle.