Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms

Right before the Calgary Farmers' Market left their Currie Barrack's location, B.'s mom hooked us up with some Missing Link sausages. Owners Mick and Deneise make massive, 8-oz chicken sausages (with the occasional lamb thrown in) in an eclectic variety of flavours (with punny names to match) out of their own home. Since the sausages could hold their own flavour-wise, the focus was more on cooking up some yummy sides to match.

When I saw some cheap Quick Sale/Vente Rapide mushrooms at the store, I remembered at the time Deb from Smitten Kitchen had just shared her recipe for escargot-inspired garlic butter roasted mushrooms. I thought they'd be perfect with the "French Connection" (Dijon mustard and Alberta honey) sausages.


I am a cheap Asian.
Usually I'm a little intimidated by recipes that involve casserole dishes and roasting because I always assume that they are going to take a long time, but this recipe came together very quickly - you literally toss everything into the casserole dish and the roasting time itself is short; just 15-20 minutes and the mushrooms have soaked in all the garlicky, buttery goodness of its surroundings (while producing some extra sauce to boot!)



    
Deb chose to make the recipe "as is" from the Gourmet website, but I didn't really want to buy a jar of capers only to have them go to waste, so I decided to add use soy sauce instead for that extra "umami" kick. We also didn't have any parsley on hand, so I chopped up a bunch of green onion instead. It turned out ok.


Deb recommends buying some crusty bread (my personal favourite is the PC Blue Menu Whole Grain Demi-Baguette) and using it to scoop up all that garlicky sauce, but instead I spooned some over the pasta I had with my meal as a sauce and poured the leftover sauce with the mushrooms and sausage over rice for B.'s lunch the next day.


Yummy.

Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen/Gourmet
Serves 4 (but I alone can eat half of this, really)

• 1 lb. (454 g) crimini or white mushrooms, halved lengthwise if large
  
• 1 tbsp (15 mL) low-sodium soy sauce
  
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 2 tbsp (30 mL) vegetable oil
  
• 3 tbsp (45 mL) butter, cut into pieces
  
• 2 tsp (10 mL) lemon juice
  
• ¼ cup (60 mL) flat-leaf parsley or green onion, chopped
  
• Salt & freshly ground pepper, to taste

1. Preheat oven to 450˚F (230˚C) with rack in middle.
   
2. Toss mushrooms with soy sauce, garlic, oil, salt and pepper in a 1.5-2 qt (1.5-2 L) shallow baking dish. Top with butter and roast, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms are tender and golden, and bubbly garlic sauce forms below, 15 to 20 minutes.
   
3. Stir in lemon juice and parsley. Serve immediately, with crusty bread on the side for swiping up the juices.

Nutrition Info (per serving, about ¼ lb mushrooms): 169 calories, 15 g fat (6 g saturated), 22 mg cholesterol, 6 g carbohydrate (1 g fibre), 3 g protein, 218 mg sodium. An excellent source of riboflavin (vitamin B₂), pantothenic acid (vitamin B₅), vitamin K, potassium, copper and selenium. A good source of niacin (vitamin B₃), folate (vitamin B₄) and vitamin E.

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2011 Goals Check-Up: January

I've been swamped this month! What was supposed to be a month with only two weeks working at the hospital turned into nearly full-time there, (save for three days off for my first-ever ski trip!) which is obviously good news for my bank account, but not so good for the blog, and possibly my sanity...

But as usual, here's a reminder of my goals, and now let's go through what I've done so far!

7.5+ hours of sleep per night and Drink as much fluid as necessary to have clear pee - Although loosening up criteria to increase success may work for some people, this has totally not worked for me, especially with my busy work schedule. My supposed "bed time" comes and goes, and I don't even blink an eye. Worse yet, this past week I managed to get to bed progressively later than the night before - the exact opposite of what I set out to do. Ditto for the fluids - I do carry a water bottle around at work, but it takes me about two days to finish one 32-oz fill. That's terrible! I'm going back to setting specific bed times (10:45 for work nights) and fluid goals (let's start with one water bottle a day...) for myself to see if it'll help me get back on track.

Continue increasing number of blog posts per year - I only managed to post five times last month, compared to 14 times in January 2011, despite a huge backlog of recipes to post. I'm ok with that though, because in an effort to find some balance in my life I am going to let my blog slide a little when I'm busy, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up during the slower months...

Read at least 12 books this year - I started reading The End of Overeatingby David Kessler after finishing up The Girl Who Played With Firetowards the end of last year, but I've only read one chapter so far... so I'm behind on this goal. I'm hoping to catch up while we're away on vacation in a week or so!

Have something nutrition-related published in/appear in mass media (i.e. nutrition/health/food magazines, newspapers, radio, TV) - I have a feeling I'm going to achieve this resolution on Tuesday...

Win a kickboxing/Muay Thai fight - I haven't been training very hard since Christmas, with work and also knowing that I'll be away for the upcoming fight on February 19 that a lot of my classmates are participating in... I just partnered with one of my friends who is fighting in class the other day and I feel *so* out of shape compared to her... and will probably be more out of shape after being away for 3½ weeks... so worried.

Cook at least one recipe from every cookbook I own - I made Chicken Lettuce Cups from Martin Yan Quick & Easyfor the newsletter I'm spearheading at my new job, and tonight I'll be making Spiced Indian Chickpeas from Mad Hungry. I'll post those recipes once I get through my backlog of recipes from... ahem... December...

Put my savings/RRSP somewhere where I can make more money - I think I will focus more on this goal when tax time rolls around when I have a better idea of what my RRSP contribution limit is this year. Even before then, I'm probably going to sift through the different options and interest rates offered by the three banks I bank with (I know, excessive) and figure out how I can get the most out of my RRSP/TFSA.

Create more/Participate in another creative/reflective project this year - While I was still deciding what sort of project I wanted to engage in, Lauren (who also started a new team blog with some great young food bloggers called the kitchen generation) pointed me toward this post by Karen Walrond (aka chookooloonks) on journaling! I've only done her suggestions for two days, but I have a few ideas on how I want to make it more of an arts journal (have the materials, just need to paste it in...) and hope that I'll have more time to work on it while I'm travelling. (I was also sent a February prompt from #Reverb10! Thanks!) My hope is to have enough material by June so that I can scan some pages and have them on display for the Dietitians as Artists exhibit that they have at the Dietitians of Canada conference. Last year I brought up some of my photos, but this year I think it'd be cool to have something a little different...

Set aside one weekend every month with no commitments - B. couldn't get as much time off for Big White as the rest of the group, so he didn't get there until Friday night. Since it was my first time skiing, I'd spent the few days prior to that taking a few beginner ski lessons and also enjoying the other activities on the hill, like snowshoeing, drinking beer in our hot tub on the patio of our gorgeous condo and of course, the food (Carvers does a fantastically spicy vindaloo!) B. is a beginner skier too, so we spent the Saturday together practicing on the bunny hill and also doing some green runs. I got a little frustrated that I was letting myself get out of control and that B. was clearly better than me (he'd made it sound like he'd never skied before - not true) and so I turned into a sobbing mess on the hill, and B. was just like, "Hey, it doesn't matter how good you are, because this weekend's just about us spending time together, right?" So I got over myself and it ended up being great :)

Rewards
I suppose today could be considered my reward for making some progress on my goals despite being so busy, as I've told myself to not look at any of the work I have to do and just concentrate on blogging (and if time, journaling and/or reading). I'm feeling massive guilt for abandoning all the work that I have to squeeze in before I leave on my trip on the 16th (!!!) but at the same time it'll be nice to come back to a blog on March 12th with some scheduled updates (Yes, that is how I roll) as opposed to having it sit stagnant for 25+ days... Also, I've been treating myself to the occasional ice cream and Bailey's, a combination I learned about in Big White ;)

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