Portabellas are wonderful meaty and flavorful mushrooms. They’re perfect for those nights when you want something vegetarian and filling. This recipe can be grilled or broiled making it perfect year round. It’s also incredibly versatile. You can stuff them with just about anything your heart desires. Cherry tomatoes would be a fantastic addition.

For another variation it would even be delicious made into a portabella mushroom burger simply by adding a great toasted bun and garnishing with balsamic vinegar!

Portabella Mushrooms filled with Goat Cheese
What you’ll need:

• 2 portabella mushrooms – stems removed
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• pepper
• 2 cloves garlic – minced
• firm goat cheese – 2 slices or enough to cover mushroom caps
• 1/4 cup Parmigano Reggiano – grated
• flat leaf Italian parsley – roughly chopped

What to do:
1. Preheat broiler to HIGH. Place mushrooms onto a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle oil olive on both sides {using more if necessary}. Place portabellas gill side down. Broil for approximately 8-10 minutes.

2. CAREFULLY flip portabellas over onto baking sheet. Season with pepper. Add garlic and top with goat cheese slices and Parmigiano. Season with pepper. Return to oven for approximately 5 minutes OR until cheese is bubbly and golden.

3. Garnish with parsley.

Buon Appetito!

Paula
bell’alimento
www.bellalimento.com

Nature’s Hidden Source of Vitamin D Why is Vitamin D so important to our health? Is the sun the only source of Vitamin D? The Seattle PI answers these questions in their latest post and shares an alternative way to find Vitamin D when we’re limited on sun exposure. The post even includes a recipe for ginger shiitake rice adapted from Gourmet Magazine. Yum.

15 best (and worst) foods for immunity It’s officially cold and flu season—so how are you keeping yourself healthy? Have you thought about how  your diet may make you a germ magnet? MSNBC listed the 15 best and worst foods for your immune system based on their germ-killing abilities. Check them out and stay healthy everyone.

Seriously Meatless: Wild Mushroom Stuffing Thanksgiving is a week away! If you’re having food safety concerns or stressing over making a meal that’ll please a crowd of both vegetarians and omnivores, check out Serious Eats’ stuffing. It’s made outside of the turkey and serves up to 8 people.

Recipe ideas that use your Thanksgiving leftovers Some say that the best part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. If you find yourself with plates of extra food after the holiday, check out My San Antonio’s ideas for what to do with those leftovers. It’s recipes for using up turkey, potatoes, cranberries and stuffing which sound just as delicious as the original meal itself!

‘Eat on $30 Challenge’ proves it’s possible to keep grocery costs low Kristina McLean took an interesting challenge to live on a $30 per week grocery budget while still eating well balanced meals. Using up food she already had, growing items in her garden and incorporating local ingredients was eye-opening, but more importantly, she learned to change recipes to fit her budget. Calculating everything down to cost-per-ingredient, McLean put together a low-cost Mushroom Barley Soup recipe you can totally afford to try.

Family Meals Matter: Meatless meals are healthy meals The Wichita Eagle reports on economical ways to eat and provide food for the whole family. Now it’s suggesting an economical and healthy way to stay full without the meaty ingredients we know and love.  It reports “even planning one or two meatless meals per week can help families save money without sacrificing taste or nutrition.” Best of all you can swap out meat for their recipe of cheese and spinach stuffed Portabella mushrooms.

Marvelous mushrooms Have you ever tried a “steak-like” mushroom the size of a saucer? The Portabella mushroom, a meaty variety perfect for adapting to many ways of cooking, is just that. Although its exotic looking, the Courier Journal explains that its simply a white button mushroom with “big size and flavor.” It’s large size is nothing to be afraid of however, it allows for more varied uses like stuffing. The Courier Journal includes their pick for Portabella use: KT’s Portabella Pasta. Enjoy!

Just Asking… Alicia Silverstone How many of our followers were once avid watchers of “Clueless”? Alicia Silverstone has come a long way since that time making a big change in her life in order to go vegan. The Wall Street Journal interviewed Silverstone about her new vegan cookbook which definitely includes mushrooms. She says, “one of my favorite dishes to serve at a party is the leek, pesto, mushroom crostini.” If any of you pick up her book, let us know if you test out her crostinis!

In Season: Stock up on fresh mushrooms Did you know that mushrooms have a season? Well, that season is now. Whether you’re into picking up produce at the local farmers market or the supermarket it’s always best to pick up what’s in season. The Dallas Morning News is telling us to stock up now on fresh mushrooms for upcoming occasions like Thanksgiving where they become a nice addition to side dishes and dressing.

With that in mind, it’s time to dig in because there’s a lot of appetite to get through today!

First up we have Burgundy Buttons from Heather at Home Ec 101. For something that’s relatively easy to put together, this is a versatile one.  Served on steaks, in baked potatoes or even on pasta, this is four ingredients to a relative umami bomb. One of our featured contributors, Rachel,  pointed these out to us and then made them for her own family that same night!

Next up we have a new face in the crowd. I was combing through food blogs tonight (favorite pasttime, don’t you know) when I came across this beautiful site.  I thought I had my post all sealed up but when I saw this photo series, the recipe looked too good not to feature. Go say hello to Sprouted Kitchen and her Stuffed Portabellas with Herb Sauce.  Your eyes will be glad you did. Though you may need to answer to your appetite later.

Do you see the picture above? Of course you do. And you saw the one before it? This is us proving a point. When you’ve seen one stuffed portabella, you’ve not seen them all. Not even close.  Aside from being an all-around gorgeous shot, this is everything I want in my dinner tonight. It’s hard for me to believe but I already have everything in this masterpiece on hand and there’s a good chance you do too. Frozen spinach, can of artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, an onion and a portabella mushroom…the things happy kitchens are made of. This Stuffed Portabella with Balsamic Reduction from Love and Olive Oil is most certainly what a happy kitchen is made of.

Next up we have Stuffed Mushrooms with Sundried Tomatoes from That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles.  Now to be fair, this was originally posted a couple weeks ago but we’re officially past Halloween now and into the high season of party-planning and I don’t think these could be more perfect.  Elegant, appealing and can be assembled ahead of time- the ideal passed poppable. And just to keep things current (and because, when asked to choose between things I like,  I prefer “both” ), I encourage you to check out her Pumpkin Porcini Soup as well.

Last but most certainly not least, we have our favorite rancher to bring this week’s highlights home. We love The Pioneer Woman and not just because she loves us back.  Because she very simply loves food and loves to share it. Photos like this don’t hurt the cause but I can’t imagine many folks hear mushrooms, brie and garlic in a recipe without taking a look. This is another great candidate for party poppables although a completely different flavor profile. Mushrooms Stuffed with Brie from The Pioneer Woman, because it sounds like a good idea and it is.

It’s about 85 degrees here in Chicago and we’re standing at the gateway of an idyllic summer weekend. If you think at all like me,  you need to remember to buy some charcoal on my way home tonight.

Grilling is a simple summer essential. Clean-up is a cinch, it cuts out unnecessary oils and fats and it infuses food with a taste that pops out the flavor of eternal August.  If my team is going to get the fire going, we’re probably going to grill every part of the meal from corn to peaches. To mushrooms.  If you’re looking at the beauty below, you’re beginning to understand why.

It started a couple weeks ago when my partner in crime and I took a 2 hour drive from a tiny Wicker Park apartment up up up into the woods, dunes and clear waters of coastal Michigan to visit friends and particularly the Holland Farmer’s Market, a legend of locally grown goodness. We saw chickens (and a turkey).  We visited the apples I’ll be making pies with in a couple short months. We sat in deck chairs and and let our skin get fully saturated with sunlight. It was pretty great.

And then we made these mushrooms.  More specifically, then we made UP these mushrooms with two fresh portabella caps and whatever we could find in the cottage fridge. This included all of the following:

• freshly chopped asparagus
• farmer’s cheese
• olive oil
• 1  leftover piece of bacon from the morning’s pancake breakfast
• parsley
• about a handful of leftover vegetarian spicy ground “beef”
• green onions
• garlic salt
• pepper

They were the kitchen sink of stuffed mushrooms. And they were DELICIOUS. That’s my favorite thing about stuffing mushrooms of all sizes- chop it small enough and include enough stuff to hold the mixture together and you’ve got a really good meal.  I brushed the bottoms with olive oil and they went straight onto the grill only to come off about ten minutes later with that elusive, Elysian summer-in-Saugatuck taste.