Cook This Food: Paleo Mushroom Bowls

I've been following the Paleo Diet of late (it's going well, thanks for asking). This means that most of
my meals--especially when I'm pressed for time--have been consisting of a piece of meat and a pile of veggies.

While a piece of meat and a pile of veggies is by no means an unsatisfactory meal, one of the downsides of going Paleo is that I miss eating things that feel like an actual recipe. A full meal, not just a few things (delicious as they may be) chucked onto a plate.

Bearing that in mind, I feel it's my duty to share with the rest of the world any good recipes I come up with. I've been struggling to find something that my daughter and I can both enjoy (neither Paleo Spaghetti nor Paleo Pancakes met with her approval) and this was the first major success I've had.

I feel it's worth mentioning that you don't have to be doing the Paleo thing to enjoy this. You can adjust the toppings as you see fit; I intend to do so in future iterations. I imagine some cheese would go well on it. However, I would caution you not to skip the bacon. There are plenty of good things in here (who doesn't like mushrooms?) but the bacon is what really put it over the top.

If you're vegetarian or vegan, I'm sorry. Go back to bench pressing broomsticks and crying through FernGully. This isn't for you.

Everyone else, grab some big-ass mushrooms and some animal carcasses and let's get cooking!

PALEO MUSHROOM BOWLS

Ingredients:

4 portabella caps 5" - 6" in diameter

1/2 lb. ground beef

1 can tomato sauce

1/2 tomato, diced

1/8 onion, diced or sliced

1 small yellow squash, diced

2 strips bacon

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350.

In an iron skillet, brown the ground beef. Drain and rinse grease from beef if desired. Set aside.

In same skillet, cook bacon to desired crispiness (it's not going to get any crispier while baking). Retain grease, set bacon aside.

Return beef to pan with bacon grease, season as desired. I did a sort of taco seasoning with 1/4 cup water and approximately 1/4 tsp. each cayenne pepper, chili powder, onion powder, and a pinch of garlic.

Rinse mushroom caps and place them top-down (so as to form a bowl) on a greased/sprayed baking sheet (use foil if desired; it's gonna get messy).

Place beef, bacon (crumbled), tomato, onion, and squash in mushroom caps (in that order).

Pour tomato sauce over ingredients in mushroom caps.

Bake at 350 for approximately 15 min.

Serves approximately two humans.