Grilling Up Shroom Burgers (vegetarian cooking)

Veggie Burgers Gone Simple... super super simple.
The easiest veggie burgers I've ever made. Just a few ingredients and no mixing or precooking beans(after presoaking) etc etc in different pans required first!!

All though I still love my black bean burger recipe best, and lentil loaf or the meatball based one that's also just a few ingredients. I still need to make and post those ones sometime too. Those will always be a staple "alternative meat" meal, even my carnivorous extended family asks for and devours them. Maybe I can leave a link to those recipes in comments for this one later on.

But these will be great for when I don't want to make up a big batch of burgers, just grab something quick and easy. I can't believe it took me so many years to finally try it.
I wouldn't even call this a recipe, really. All you need are some portabella mushrooms(I usually won't splurge that much on just myself to eat. This time I compared it to how much the frozen over processed veggie patties would cost. Or you know, maybe even real hamburg meat. It seemed like a much better deal that way.)
Just clean them up, toss them on a hot grill(I was too lazy to flip my griddle to the grill side this time, the pretty grill lines marking it weren't worth the extra step when I was already STARVING) in whatever butter/ghee/coconut oil type fat you would like to use.
Bacon grease if you're a true meathead(I say that with utmost affection, I swear! <3 I'm a Texan, please don't kill me for being veg.) you can have this along with a patty for a double layer cheeseburger if you want to go all hardcore about it. Whatever floats your boat, man.

For my bread I had some amazing jalapeno toast, buttered up and melted some cheesiness of heaven upon it's divine golden slices. I refrained from drizzling a little of our chili infused oil onto it too, but now I want to try that way next time.
This was all about simple, fast, and filling. At this point it felt like my stummy was eating itself, I may have not had a proper meal for two days.

The shrooms made the whole house smell so dayam intoxicating, standing on the front porch with it wafting out the screen door was drool inducing. If I had bothered actually grilling the onion along with it? OMG that would have been the best smell ever.
It really just takes a few minutes(3-6 give or take, depending on size) on each side for the shrooms you want them to soften up a bit and not be totally firm. Not really sure how to tell you when to know they're done.
If they start out brown, you can't say cook them until their browned, now can you? :P

I kept the toppings here really short and sweet.
Cheese, check. Onions and mustard, check and check.
Now chow down and enter into another land until your belly is stuffed and content like a purring kitten instead of a growling pit of doom threatening to devour the whole world and every soul in sight.

This also reminds me of how I've gone out to eat with people and I'll just get sides or a drink because they don't have a veggie burger. When asked and hearing me say that as my answer, they're like "OF COURSE they have a veggie burger!"
"Really?? I've never seen one here..."
But what they mean is, you can always just get the bun with the toppings alone on it.
Erm... I don't even call that salad on bread. Hahah.
At least the mushroom gives you something big and chewy on there, and makes it an actual complete sammich!

I've mentioned before how I used to hate salad and had to teach myself to totally love it, to the point of eating a huge bowl daily with no dressing at all.
Sometimes my "dressing" if you could count it was just chopping the garlic/onions/herbs and tomatoes up, letting the juice sit awhile to mingle with all those flavors. Make sure to toss it all into the salad leaves to coat them up right before eating. Yum, so fresh!

Mushrooms were even worse, until my late teen years I always had a serious aversion to fungi and they just grossed me out. Finally I challenged myself to give them a go, a serious try and the difference was like night and day. I became obsessed with them instead, now I can't resist and even just looking at them grow in nature is too amazing for me to miss.

I swear I would run away if I saw them nearby, or GASP the HORROR slipped and touched one on accident before.

They were like my form of scary movies. Eeeeek!

But I'm a huge believer in getting kids to at least try one bite of something before accepting that they don't like it, and you need to try things again now and then throughout your life because tastes really do change more often than you would expect.

Even as an adult. It's the same as how you can keep having different food sensitivities and intolerance reactions to something, but be fine with no problems eating it most of the time. Every since reading this post on salicylates by kiwideb I've been cutting back on my salads and such. That's another reason why the toppings these time are so skimpy really, my first one a couple of days before actually had lettuce and tomatoes etc on a whole wheat bun, but the tomatoes started giving my mouth blisters again and romaine effected me too.

I've tried so many elimination diets throughout the years, my body always seems to react to everything at some point in time, so reading about this other one as a possibility was pretty depressing. Some times I feel like I can't trust eating anything. Every time I think some thing is safe and healthy, BAM there's some stupid reaction after wards.

So I've been in a little bit of a funk. This one was really scary to research, because looking up the lists of what's safe and not safe ... the options didn't look so hot for a veg*n. There was seriously one page for this diet with a title and article about "the human body doesn't require any plant products at all" and taking everything else out of the picture except meat.

Yeah, that's not one I want to look up again and link to. It had me stuck in mixed feelings for a few days, not sure what road to take with my diet. BTW Meat and dairy were the first foods that started making me sick as a kid, and yes the meat still does.
Here's two links to sites with lists I've been checking out for this diet.

We regularly consume salicylates and our body has to detoxify and clear away these chemicals before they accumulate. We have a threshold for symptoms. Once our salicylate load gets to around that level we start getting allergic style inflammatory reactions.

Once our load drops through avoidance and enhanced clearance the symptoms will often disappear. The symptoms will re appear if your salicylate levels creep up again. If your salicylate load is hovering around that symptom threshold than you can react every time you touch salicylate foods.
http://atpscience.com/salicylate-foods-sensitivity-intolerances-and-food-list/

And the second one is below, though they tell you to check their recipe page for ideas if you're feeling frustrated, then it's not even there. Yeah, I'm frustrated mate! LOL XD

http://salicylatesensitivity.com/about/food-guide/grains/

I had been wanting to go back to mostly raw, but this sort of through a wrench into that one. This is pretty much telling me to do the opposite of my goal on that one.
Salads are out for now, I still totally hate Iceberg lettuce and can't get over that being the only option, haha.
But really, once I saw that a lot of grains and legumes were on the "safer" list I think it could be managed and not so bad.
I'm just really not ready for a full diet over haul yet, I know how hard a complete elimination diet can be(been through it checking for gluten allergies, eliminated everything then did rotation days) so for now I'm going to just cut back on a lot of it instead, but not fully cut it all out. Just trying to listen to my body and back off for awhile. Wish it would stop sending mixed signals. Fun times.

Thanks for reading! Logo gifted by Papa Pepper