Baked Mushroom Walnut Pate

As I have mentioned before I am trying to find ways to add mushrooms to our food everyday due to their antiproliferative properties. I have been racking my brain for ways to add mushrooms. This is a mixture of the lentil mushroom walnut pate and this pate de champagne. This time I wanted something with a slightly softer texture so that I could use it in a collard wrap. However, I think this would also be good spread on cucumber rounds (in place of crackers). Here is what I made last night:

Baked Mushroom Walnut Pate
Serves 7

Ingredients:

1 cup mixed dried mushrooms
2 cup water
1 cup walnuts
4 ounces new potatoes
4 tablespoons nutritional yeast
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
½ teaspoon thyme
black pepper to taste (approximately ¼ teaspoon)

Directions:

Combine the mushrooms and water in a microwave safe bowl and heat until hot (2 to 3 minutes). Allow the mushrooms to soak for at least 30 minutes. Strain the mushrooms and liquid through a couple of layers of cheesecloth, a fine wire strainer or a layer of damp paper towel.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In your blender combine: the soaked mushrooms, strained mushroom soaking liquid, raw potato, nutritional yeast, mustard, thyme and black pepper. Process the mixture until completely smooth. Taste and adjust the flavors to your taste.

Line a baking dish with a double layer of paper towel, or a kitchen towel, to keep the ramekins off the bottom. Pour the mushroom mixture into 7 – 3 ½ ounce ramekins. Place the ramekins in the baking dish. Pour water into the baking dish so that it rises ½ way up the sides of the ramekins. I did not cover the dish with aluminum foil but I will be doing this the next time to keep a skin from forming on the top of the pate.

Bake for 45 minutes, or as long as it takes the pate to get a little firm. It will rise a little like a quiche but will fall when it cools. The pate will be more firm when it is completely chilled.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 158.04
Calories From Fat (67%) - 105.26

Total Fat - 10.99g
Saturated Fat - 1.04g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 4.1mg
Potassium - 243.51mg
Total Carbohydrates - 9.2g
Fiber - 2.03g
Sugar - 0.55g
Protein - 3.41g

Comments:

The only change I would make is to cover the pan while the pate is baking so the skin doesn’t form on the surface. Otherwise I am happy with how this turned out. It has a very intense mushroom flavor. The texture is smooth and spreadable. Walnuts give the pate an underlying richness. I added nutritional yeast for a buttery background. Thyme was added since this works so well with mushrooms. If you still cook with salt you may want to add that but otherwise I am happy with the flavor and the texture of this.

Dinner last night:

I have been craving salads for a few days, probably because we were out of lettuce. Last night we had a giant salad for dinner with romaine, red cabbage, black beans, salsa, tomatoes and avocado. It was SO good, man did I miss salad.

Almost a disaster:

After the salad I made a batch of strawberry and banana soft serve and my Vitamix started leaking out of the bottom. I was almost in a panic. What would I do if my Vitamix was out of service? I called Dan in to take a look quickly. We needed to get this problem resolved and fast. Thankfully it was a simple problem. He used the wrench that came with the machine to tighten the blade into the container and that fixed it. I felt like I dodged a bullet. The thought of not having the Vitamix was quite scary. ;-)

On a related note I am making the soft serve without oatmeal at the moment because Dan is trying to drop a few pounds. I was working so hard to keep weight on him I added a couple pounds too many. He feels best 5 pounds lighter than he was this morning.  If you would like to see the nutrition numbers without the oats let me know.

Breakfast this morning:

Since I was still craving salad I guess you know what I had. Yep, more salad. While Dan prefers a more traditional breakfast (oatmeal, with cinnamon, dried ginger, wild blueberries, ground flaxseeds and walnuts). However, I do have not breakfast restrictions. To go with my salad (romaine, red cabbage, black beans and salsa) I made two collard wraps (mushroom walnut pate posted above and marinated veggies). It was an enormous breakfast but so good and healthy.

Believe it or not I have eaten almost the entire jar of marinated veggies. Making more of those is on my to-do list today now.

I like to use collard wraps for sandwiches for a few reasons. First I don’t think bread adds any nutrition to a meal and a collard leaf does. Second collards are members of the cruciferous family of vegetables so anytime you can add them (particularly raw) go ahead; they are great for your health.

Shredded red cabbage goes into my salads because I always try to eat the rainbow and the purple family is not the easiest to consume. I use wild blueberries, blackberries and beets where I can but red cabbage always works in salad so that turns up often at our house.

I also try to eat beans as often as I can for their fiber and protein. They also help me to feel satiated. If you have high cholesterol incorporating more beans in your diet is said to help lower your LDL. It must work as both mine and Dan’s is below 100.

Finally I make sure to incorporate a little fat (in the form of nuts, seeds or avocado) into every meal so that we can efficiently absorb the fat soluble vitamins in the food we are consuming. I don’t think you need much but a sprinkle of walnut parmesan or a dollop of cashew crème fraiche adds fat, flavor and nice mouth feel to food so why not.

I hope that helps you to understand why I include some of the things you see us eat regularly. I keep these things in mind when I am cooking. When we first started eating this way I memorized details. But now I have done this for some long it tends to happen automatically. Eating for health became something we just do.

Fresh Juice:

Every morning I make Dan a one liter bottle of fresh juice to take to work. I do this to increase the vitamins and macronutrients he consumes every day. While I know our diet is better than most in terms of health I think adding more nutrition has to be a good thing. The juice I make varies a little depending on what I have on hand but is very similar to what I made this morning which was:

Dan’s fresh juice
Serves 1 husband

Ingredients:

10 carrots
3 apples
1 ½ lemons
5 collard leaves
1 inch fresh ginger
1 medium beet
3 stalks celery

Directions:

Run this through the juicier and stir to combine. Keep chilled until ready to drink. Dan usually has a mug of this first thing in the morning and then has mugs of it regularly throughout the work day with a handful of trail mix.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 737.48
Calories From Fat (5%) - 38.22

Total Fat - 4.84g
Saturated Fat - 0.75g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 813.88mg
Potassium - 4723.41mg
Total Carbohydrates - 184.51g
Fiber - 0.00g
Sugar - 89.74g
Protein - 18.72g

Comments:

Both Dan and I think this juice actually tastes good in addition to being good for you. This bottle of juice contains 161,700IU of vitamin A, 400mg of vitamin C, 680mg of calcium, 7mg of iron, 7.5mg of vitamin E, 11mg of niacin, 2mg of B6, 350mcg of folate, 1500mcg of vitamin K, 500mg of phosphorus, 230mg of magnesium, and 3.5mg of zinc. Can you imagine getting that much nutrition without adding fresh juice? That is why we added a juicer to the equipment at our house.

Today:

I finally slept well last night. It was so nice to get up and not feel foggy. The weather is not so great today. It has been cloudy and threatening to rain all day but it is humid and sticky outside. Hopefully we will get a little rain today since the farmers need it.

I need to get a few things accomplished today since I have been slacking this week. I hope everyone is having a great Thursday. Talk to you all soon.