Behind The Scenes Of The Mighty Mushroom Burger

As palates grow increasingly green, the demand for recipes that are richly flavored and healthier on mental, emotional and physical levels is growing. Titan-darlings of media like Oprah Winfrey have piqued the interest of thousands who hadn’t considered it possible for green foods to be as, or more, tasty than traditional Western counterparts. As a result, the no longer begrudging acknowledgment that healthy-eating has caught a bad rap is rising above a whisper.

Some of you may snicker at this thought; at the seeming ridiculousness of it, but you are indeed reading – you will observe – already into the second paragraph of an article that announced an expose’ of mighty mushroom burger making lay ahead.

Could it be the green is infecting even your pristine consciousness unawares? All indications suggest this may be so. Scoffing would best be saved for the post-experience where you’ll find it can finally be laid to rest after having tasted one of these tongue-scintillating, ubiquitous gifts of Mama Terra.

The Portabella burger is among the most flavorful and pleasingly textured options available on the green menu, after all. Sleek, savory and versatile. Ethical. Prepared conventionally, it is a certain joy to consume, but there’s another way to deliver this
comfort food to the palate that is worth the few extra steps it takes to produce.

Gather These Materials

A blender or food processor
2 to 3 cups Portabella mushroom bits
1½ cup Flour (Rice flour can be used for a healthier, gluten-free approach)
½ cup Earth Balance or a Margarine that doesn’t contain lactic acid, milk or mono-diglycerides (Lactic acid=dairy Mono-diglycerides = meat bi-products)
Onion powder to taste
Garlic powder to taste

Step 1

Sauté your cut up mushroom bits in the earth balance or green margarine you’ve opted to use. You can sprinkle a bit of onion powder and garlic powder into the butter to meld with the green margarine at this point, if you like. The flavor is amazing either way. Adding seasonings is a matter of preference.

Step 2

When the mushrooms are properly drizzled, take the pan off of the fire, and let the mushrooms cool. When they’re cool enough to pour into your blender, empty the bowl into your processor. Pour the flour in on top of that. Blend until you have a dough with
enough consistency to form a patty. If you need to, you can add a bit more flour if the dough is thin. Melt additional butter, if the dough is too dry.

Step 3

When you feel your dough is at the right consistency to form a patty, unplug the blender and remove the dough onto a cutting board or flat surface. Form patties in any shape that tickles your heart. Resist the urge to eat all of the dough. You’re creating a masterpiece here . Willpower will get you through.

Step 4

When all of your patties are formed, decide whether you will fry them, bake them or dehydrate them. When you’ve decided on a course, see step 5 for approximate directions compatible with most stoves and dehydrators.

Step 5

Frying: Fry in a slightly oiled or buttered pan on a medium-low. Flip when you see a slight change in color along the edge of the patties. Upon completion, you can place the patties on reusable cloth napkins to absorb any excess butter.

Baking: Place the patties on a cookie sheet in an oven preheated to 350. Bake for at least 20 – 30 minutes. Oven temperatures may vary. Keep an eye on your first batch to be sure of the exact timing for yours.

Dehydrating:
Place the patties in your dehydrator on 120 degrees for the first hour. Lower the temp to 100 and flip. Dehydrate for 6 hours, or until it reaches your desired consistency.

Step 6

Enjoy the bliss with friends. Mushroom pattties, like most good things, are complemented by warm intimate settings imbued with laughter and one’s favorite people.

A few closing words:

Mushroom patties are delicious either way you prepare them. Some sauté portabellas and slice them up in subs drizzled with Daiya cheese and onion oil. Others may prefer the whole portabella as a patty with the conventional fixins of the tomato, lettuce, and
onion that have won so many hearts.

Preferences will naturally vary, but at the heart of the cooking experience is the play of the creative process. The end result, while important, is merely a product of the road traveled getting there. Have fun. Enjoy making these and other creations. Strictly avoid overly criticizing yourself. True perfection is discovered afterall, never forced.

Play.

Are you ignoring relaxation impulses to worship at the altar of yet another deadline?
Eventually that kind of approach will cost you. Those impulses, like pain response, clue you into the scales of balance tipping you, slowly but surely, onto your head. Symptoms of Overdo-Syndrome include: loss of interest and forced enthusiasm for the very things you love most. If you’ve been treating your body and spirit like a junker with a busted radiator that’s going to the junkyard anyway, you’re gonna need to stop that.
At the core of your depths, beyond exhaustion and indifference, you want to function
like a well-oiled physiological machine complete with someone at the wheel. Because, getting yourself back has to start there. It requires penciling in regular sessions with your inner child: your adventure function. Your life stopped being fun when you ceased seeing it as an adventure. Mundaneity will do that to you. The stability of steady paychecks in exchange for identical but different strings of days filled with doing the same of the same has a higher price than the latte that helps you get through it.

Rather than strategize your way through daily hours of navigating the near endless
labyrinth of questions, goals, doubts, familial demands and other stressors crowding
your thoughts, allow yourself to open up. Whether you meant to shut down or not, it
happened. Get to know yourself again before you talk yourself into permanently
apathetic stasis (otherwise known as “nod-yes-if-you-can-hear-me-syndrome”).

Dig deep.

When did you stop having time for play? Why did you stop having time for it? The
world was an exciting place full of new shining possibilities at every turn when the only thing you had in mind exiting the house was adventuring in the day. You need that again. Use the resources at your disposal to coax yourself into an activated state.

Get your blood flowing.

Find a local set of hoops. Swing a racket with a friend. Learn to Salsa.
Find a sparring partner or settle for the ping-pong tables at the local arcade. Oxygenated blood flows through the body and feeds you at a cellular level. Regular movement is integral to vitality.

Take a day off and revel in the minor adventure of secret menu items

Coffeehouses are icecream stands for adults. Few admit it, but they surreptitiously serve your inner adolescent. The veiled naught-rating allows the hearts of customers to bring a piece of joy with them to a potentially joyless prospect of a morning. If you’re a regular, break your usual schedule; order from the secret menu of the most ubiquitous of coffee purveyors on your day off . If tea is your thing, try the London Fog (Earl Grey with Vanilla Syrup), or a Vanilla Oolong. Go for a Strawberry Lemonade, or ask for a blend of your favorite flavors thrown together. Most cafés will honor special requests.

Play in clay.

Get your hands on the program guide of your area’s community center. Arts and crafts
sessions usually don’t beg a hefty fee. Whether your approach to daydreaming is writing fan fiction, painting delirious happy faces over generic postcard images, or sculpting mournful merpeople for Save The Ocean campaigns, dream you must. It’s the only thing that will sustain you. Capture the suggestions of your dreaming self in a scrapbook or collage journal when it peeks its glittered crown from around the corner.

Stay in.

Play with flavor syrups.

Make a Cake batter frappuccino with cupboard ingredients: Mix a capful of vanilla
extract, a smidge of almond extract, and a few teaspoons of oil infused with vanilla bean (the beans should infuse in the oil container for at least a week for optimum flavor). Combine with two cups vanilla soy milk or rice milk, maple syrup to taste and a teaspoon of pre-soaked flax seed (soaking for an hour is sufficient).

Simulate a Crunchberry frapp at home: Simmer a cup of strawberries in a cup of water
(or equal parts of each) until the water evaporates into a syrup. Scoop the strawberries
and drizzle the strawberry syrup with a capful of vanilla extract and hazelnut extract,
and two to three teaspoons vanilla oil in two cups of a vanilla soymilk or vanilla
ricemilk base. Add organic sugar to taste and a teaspoon of pre-soaked flaxseed to
thicken.

Engineer a Creamsicle Smoothie and rest your feet in a kiddie pool: Blend one-part
sliced orange with a half-part of sliced mango in two cups vanilla soymilk or vanilla rice milk base. Add maple syrup to taste (organic sugar works as a substitute). Include a teaspoon of vanilla extract for a more extreme version. Thicken with a teaspoon of pre-soaked flax seed.
Eventually – usually 21 days or so in – play-habits will kick in on their own. It may
happen sooner if your “on” switch hasn’t been dormant for too long. The urges will grow stronger the more you engage the practice of taken time to, well, flow.
Life is good when you live it.

Smuggling Chi Past The Tastebuds

It’s difficult conveying the importance of maintaining energy if the audience doesn’t
remember what having it feels like. Energy is about feeling, after all. The entire point of  any health regimen is to encourage a strong flow throughout the system. When we have energy flowing; we want to move. Our brains work for us, and our desire to live is dramatically enhanced. It’s the exact opposite of the vague, lulling, thought-plucked haze a frightening number of people have grown complacently accustomed to.

But, how does one communicate that movement and the excitement come of flowing energy actually feel better to a generation of people who were babysat by their televisions whilst dining on ruffles potato chips and sipping orange drink?
One shows them.

As tempting as it is to nag the shuffling masses, it won’t foster progress. A mass of
sense-indulged people will divert attention to more gratifying stimuli as a matter of
conditioning. Introducing holistic options to the public has become a matter of putting out a bowl of candies but making sure they’re sweetened instead with raw agave or sweetleaf. Health has to be ‘discovered’ now. It must first be the idea of the person that is inevitably transformed by it.

Take for instance the seductive approach to health that’s actually grown in popularity
through the celebration of the smoothie. Prepared with supergreen powders and fruits or with non-gmo fresh fruits and vegetables, a smoothie will ‘sneak’ nutrients into the system because it’s ‘nice’ to the palate of its consumer – the same consumer who will
notice they have more energy after a few days of drinking them and discover – alas! -
they like it. Energy. How could something so precious have gotten past them these long years, and what other ways might this state of being be come by?

Enter ‘Interest’.
Where there is interest, there is action. Some purists may frown upon the candy-coated methods parents and schools are utilizing to reintroduce health into the bodies and awareness of their children, but it gets the job done. The end goal is to see the mass of people who have been robbed of their energy by gmo agriculture, an over-processing of foods and the ads that celebrated them as pseudo-tradition, awaken. The goal is to aid the populace in seeing through direct experience what their energy is worth and how to get it back.

Inspired writ: 7/15

Travelogues for: Strawberry Zeppelins and Rose citadels.

Eighthlings with prism stix

A Serialized phantastick

Dig

 

Find the seed of purpose. Then plant.