When the weather is cold, or I’m working particularly hard for a week straight, I tend to crave warm, comforting foods, or I will crave animal products like chicken or fish. For me, I personally don’t eat meat because my digestion is optimized with a plant based diet. Yet, every once in a while when I experience a craving, I won’t deprive myself. We are all human, and should allow ourselves to stray from personal wellness goals every so often, or else our overall “diet” goal will fail as an end result.
Hence all this, sometimes I crave something “meaty” but my body is really telling me I need to load up on a certain vitamin or mineral. I found a great article (here) that discusses what your cravings really mean and what foods you can have to healthily subside that craving. My recipe today is a meaty substitute made of mushrooms (it is also vegan and vegetarian), but the end result is savory and satisfying just as a beef meatball!
- 2 packages of crimini mushrooms
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 white onion
- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 1/4 cup almond meal
- 1 cup lentils
- 1 1/2 cup quinoa
- 1 1/2 tsp Worcester sauce
- 1/4 cup flaxseed
- pinch of: sage, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, mince, cayenne
- Pre-cook the quinoa and lentils
- pre-heat the oven to 350
- chop the mushrooms, onions, and garlic
- place the mushrooms, onion, garlic, quinoa, and lentils in a high speed food processor (or blender etc)
- sprinkle in all of the seasonings, almond meal, flax-seed, nutritional yeast, Worcester sauce, and some red wine (optional) in the processor, and continue blending.
- *You do not need to blend until everything is smooth, the mixture can be slightly choppy, so that it will have a nice texture when consume.
- Take a handful of the mixture (wash your hands!) and roll it into a ball. continue with the rest of the mixture.
- Place the balls on a coated cooking sheet, and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes.
- After 15 minutes, the outside of the ball should be darkened and slightly crispy, while the inside should still be moist.
- If you want it to be a tad bit more “crispy”, you can bake for an extra 10 minutes.
- Serve on a platter, and enjoy!
These mushroom meatballs pair nicely with sauteed broccoli rabe (as pictured), or seared greens! You are also getting great beauty benefits from the ingredients! Cold fighting properties from the mushrooms, omega 3 and fiber from the flax-seed, and protein and lowered cholesterol from the lentils and quinoa. Now there is no reason not to make these meat-less meatballs.
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