When I was a broke grad student living in England, the price of everything there freaked me out for the first few months. This is because the pound kicks the dollars butt… and it was kicking it pretty good in 2010-11.

I seriously lived like a weird little hermit, but I still had to eat.

It began the first time I walked past the mushrooms. They were clearly the cheapest thing in the store that could be turned into a hearty meal. But I hated mushrooms.

Want to know why?

I was scared of their lungs. Also, I don’t think what I just called their lungs is what it actually is. Yup, Google tells me it’s their gills. Ugh. I don’t feel much better about that word.

On top of that, I had a very vague memory of my dad making me eat one once and it tasted like dirt.

So I kept walking.

This went on for weeks until one day the already wonderfully priced mushrooms were even on sale. I thought, even if I wind up throwing out £.85, this is not the end of the world. If I can figure out how to like these, I can swap £6 chicken with £.85 mushrooms most of the time.

And it turned out I could.

It took me a long time to stop being scared of their lungs. So I diced the heck out of them initially so I couldn’t really see them. And threw them in with some bean sprouts and broccoli. Ta-da. Dinner had gone from £4 to £2.20. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but I ate that 90% of the nights for the year I lived there.

By the time I left, I actually liked mushrooms. And they’ve continued to be a favorite, cheap go-to for meals and snacks, especially when I’m on a tight budget.

Funny story, there are also a ton of health benefits* from eating mushrooms (granted, sometimes exactly which kind of mushroom it is matters).

• If you’re trying to lose weight, a study was done that showed replacing meat for 1 meal a day with 1 cup of white button mushrooms resulted in most participants in the study losing nearly 4% of their body fat with no additional effort.
• They’re full of Vitamin D. The sunshine vitamin. Happiness in a little white ball… with lungs.
• Shiitake mushrooms are shown to improve your immune system.

Recipes

Tangy Mushroom Snacks

1 serving of White Button Mushrooms

Bottle of Hot Sauce

Garlic Powder (or real Garlic, if you’re an overachiever like that)

 

Wash mushrooms. Put in a bowl with a lid.

Add hot sauce to taste.

Coat in garlic powder.

Cover bowl.

Shake up.

Let marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Throw them on the grill until cooked (this is about 5 minutes of my Foreman Grill).

I suspect they’d taste good with a side of ranch or blue cheese too.

 

Mushroom Pasta

Pasta

3 Tablespoons Butter

4 Garlic Cloves, minced

Baby Portobello Mushrooms

 

Start the pasta in a pot.

Melt the butter in a skillet.

Add the garlic. Sauté about 1 minute.

Toss in the mushrooms. Sauté until tender (4-5 minutes).

Mix it in with the pasta.

Add your favorite cheese as a topping or a little extra butter. The butter could also be replaced with olive or coconut oil.

And then, there are just entirely different sort of mushrooms that make life kind of interesting.

Any readers out there have a favorite item to stretch their food budgets? Or a great mushroom recipe?

 

*Source: The Health Benefits of Mushroom Consumption