LOW CARB CHEESEBURGER MUSHROOM CASSEROLE

Ingredients:

• 1 pkg. baby bella mushrooms
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• Paula Deen’s House Seasoning, or seasoned salt, to taste
• ¼ cup onion, diced
• 4 tbsp cream cheese
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2-3 T. low carb ketchup
• 2-3 T. mustard
• ½ cup cubed dill pickles (a rough guess)
• sliced cheddar or American cheese for the top

For serving:

• 4-5 cherry tomatoes, sliced (or equivalent)
•  lettuce, thinly shredded

Instructions:

1.   Preheat oven to 350F.

2.   Clean mushrooms and remove stems. Dice the stems. Slice the caps thinly.

3.   In a skillet, brown the beef and stir in onions and mushrooms until they soften. Then mix in the cream cheese and pickle pieces. Season with Worcestershire sauce, low carb ketchup, mustard, and seasoned salt. Taste and adjust. You want to be able to taste the ketchup and mustard in the mix without it being overpowering. We like plenty of pickle in there.

4.   Place the hamburger mix into a baking dish and top with sliced cheese. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.

5.   Serve with shredded lettuce and sliced tomato on top.

We really enjoyed this tonight. My inspiration was a stuffed mushroom appetizer recipe, but I ended up making a lot of changes, so this one's mine. 

For Liverwurst Lovers Only!

My devious mother kept serving me liverwurst until I learned to like it. It was many years later that she admitted to me that she, herself, didn't care for the stuff! Well, I learned to love it so much that in junior high, I invented the liverwurst and dill pickle sandwich, a combination I still adore to this day. I remember taking it for lunch for about three weeks straight, and getting my mom to buy me kosher baby dills. Or was it Polish baby dills? Whichever it was, they were nice and crunchy.

I recently tried this and another spread recipe in an attempt to find more low carb ways to enjoy liverwurst. This one was by far the winner in my opinion. I thought we had sugar free pickle relish in the pantry, but apparently I was mistaken. So what could I do but turn to my old friends, the crunchy little baby dills. My intent was to stuff it into celery ribs, but I ended up eating it straight up with a spoon over a number of days.

Here is the original recipe. Just substitute the dill for the (sugar free) sweet pickles or relish to try it my way. When I get the sweet relish, I'll make a batch and let you know what I think.

POOR MAN'S LIVER PATE, low carb version

1/2 lb. liverwurst (chunk) (you might want to leave it out to soften or nuke it briefly) 3 tbsp. chopped (sugar free) sweet pickles or relish (or dill baby gherkins, finely diced) 1/4 c. chopped onions 1/4 c. salad dressing or mayonnaise (I used Duke's mayo, which is made w/o sugar) 2 tsp. prepared mustard 3/4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce 1/2 tsp. Tabasco sauce Season to taste with salt. Mix into ball and chill thoroughly. Take out 1/2 hour before serving. Serves 6 to 8.

 adapted from http://www.cooks.com/recipe/kt0fc9cs/poor-mans-liver-pate.html

Addendum:
Okay, I made this recipe as written, using sweet onion and sugar free relish. Admittedly, I didn't measure, just assembled it by eye, but my eye is pretty good after 50 years of cooking! I find it too sweet for my taste.

It's still surprisingly good, and many people may prefer it with the sweet relish, but next time I make it, I'll start with about a tablespoon of the relish, see how I like it, and go from there.

I will say that after all this time eating low carb, my taste buds are extremely sensitive to sweetness. I can taste it in certain brands of mayonnaise, and most recently, I tasted it the first time I made this (with the dill pickles). Why? It was in the Worcestershire sauce! I checked the label, and there it was.

Once I get the sweet relish ratio right and satisfy myself about that, I suspect I'll go for the dill pickle version most of the time. Either way, though, it's good stuff.