Recent Stuff

I've been a really, really lazy cook lately.  As you have no doubt noticed, I'm not committed to being vegan full-time anymore and I think in a way it's contributed to the laziness factor, because I can fall back on so many of the old recipes from years past.  Here's what we've eaten for dinner this week:

This veggie burger is Morningstar Farms' Mushroom Lovers, which I highly recommend.  I don't think it's very mushroomy at all, but it IS delicious.  The chickpea pasta salad is one of my all-time favorite things, from Cooking Light.

Then we had bean burritos, which I fancied up by pouring canned enchilada sauce over the top and baking in the oven, then topping with lettuce, tomato, and green onions.

Tonight I made an old favorite again, this Vegetarian Times recipe for linguine in lemon cream sauce.  I used some weird specialty pasta that I brought home from work years ago.  It supposedly has chocolate and wine in it, but it tasted just like pasta to me.

I always add broccoli to bulk it up.

Here's a weird and exciting thing!  About a month ago, a weird plant sprouted out of our chives plant and started growing and growing - we left it there because it looked kind of nice and were interested to see what would happen.  Well!  It has turned out to be a strawberry plant!  We have no idea how that happened.  I doubt we could have grown strawberries on our shady back porch if we had actually tried.

I hope we actually get some edible strawberries out of it!  That would be pretty awesome.

BLT Burgers

It's been a long time since I've pulled out The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet, so I decided to try a new one to eat with the rest of our farmer's market corn from the weekend.  I chose the BLT Burgers, which are made primarily with equal parts all purpose flour, vital wheat gluten, and (fake) bacon bits, and some diced tomato mixed into the dough.  She said the recipe makes "four huge burgers," but history has taught me she means business when she says "huge," so I split it into six.  She also says to stuff the avocado into the patties themselves, but since I was planning on freezing half of them I just served the avocado on top.

These were good!  Look at the little bacon bits!

All-American Burgers & Banana Pudding Pie

Tonight I made another recipe from The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet, the All-American Burger. It's a pretty basic one - the main ingredients are mushrooms, TVP, and vital wheat gluten, with some nutritional yeast, liquid smoke, ground mustard, and onion powder for flavoring. I also made more of her plain white buns that we really love, and the Cool Slaw from Appetite for Reduction. The dressing is cashew-based and Ben asked me if it contained heavy (soy) cream, so I'd call that a win.

Please note sleepy cat in the background.

For dessert I made the Banana Pudding Pie from Vegan Diner. I had my doubts it would work out, as I so far haven't been too awesome at making pudding from scratch, but it did! The bottom is lined with bananas and the pudding is vanilla, but it all works together to be nice and banana-ey.

Baba Ghanoush Burgers with Tabbouleh

This was my second outing from The Best Veggie Burgers in the World, a mediterranean-inspired burger made from (farmer's market) eggplant, chickpea flour, TVP, onion, and garlic. I didn't really believe they would stick together in patties while I fried them up, but they did! I served them in half a pita with hummus and farmer's market tomatoes. I can't believe how amazing real tomatoes are! I never thought I would be the sort of person who would stand in the kitchen and eat slices of raw tomato, but somehow it's happened the last several years.

I made tabbouleh to go with, but am less than thrilled at how it turned out. I followed a recipe despite my misgivings about how much water it called for (3 cups to cook 1 cup of bulgur), and I should have trusted my gut - it was way too much and the bulgur got all gummy. But the flavors were good, so we ate it anyway.

Chipotle Lentil Burgers & Guacamame

It's so HOT and it's been hot forever and there's no end in sight. Ugh. Today was our fifth day of 100+ degrees, an all-time record for Raleigh, and tomorrow's "cold front" is only bringing the high temp down to 95. So anyway, I'm having a hard time coming up with things to eat, because it just doesn't seem appetizing to put hot food in my belly.

Tonight I played it simple and made some chipotle lentil burgers and guacamame (half avocado, half edamame) from Appetite for Reduction, along with a black bean/corn salsa thing that's one of our summer staples. Nice and summery. We also ate the last of Ben's homemade buns that had been in the freezer. Hopefully I can convince him to make some more soon!

Bacon Cheeseburgers and Kale. Lots of Kale.

I bought The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet recently but hadn't yet gotten around to trying any of the recipes. (I'm going to stop buying cookbooks now, I swear). The buns Ben made on Sunday were from this cookbook and seemed very promising, and tonight I made the "bacon cheeseburgers" to go on them. Did you know Bac-O's are vegan? IT'S TRUE.

Anyway, these things were not very bacon cheeseburgery, to be honest, but they were quite good regardless. There's peanut butter and maple syrup and BBQ sauce mixed in with TVP, wheat gluten, bacon bits, and nutritional yeast, so they have a nice sweetish flavor. This picture is crooked but you get the idea.

Naturally, we had kale on the side. I was going to make fried zucchini until I figured up the calorie count for the burgers and buns. They're not health food, that's for sure.

Last night after dinner I started getting kind of panicky about using up that huge bag of kale so I steamed some up to take for lunch and also baked two pans of kale chips.

Even after this, plus the kale we ate tonight for dinner, there's about half the bag left. Eep.

Burgers & Onion Rings

We've had a deep fryer for nearly 2 months and have only used it once! Unacceptable. So tonight we made two kinds of onion rings - one beer-battered, one with a crispy chickpea flour base. Ben was in charge of the frying, which actually isn't nearly a big hassle as I thought it would be. Aaaaaaand the whole thing was a total, awesome success.

The burgers were the extra Incrediburgers I made and froze a few weeks ago, and I also made a vegan ranch to go on both the burgers and to dip the onion rings into. Yummo!

Sunday in the Kitchen

The first thing on the agenda today was to use up some mushy bananas before they went completely bad. I found this recipe for "Banana Breakfast Bars" and thought that sounded like a good idea, because we've gotten used to having baked goods of some sort for our weekday breakfasts. Once I started mixing them up, though, it was pretty clear they are basically just dessert. That's okay, though; they're tasty and they DO contain bananas and ground flaxseed, so that's healthy enough for me.

While those were in the oven, I made Vegan Diner's Great Smoky Mountain Cheeze. I made a faux goat-style cheese once before from cashews and was underwhelmed; this stuff, however, kind of blew my mind. It tastes just like the kind of cheese spread you'd get in a Hickory Farms gift basket. I was very pleasantly surprised and will be eating this stuff all week on sandwiches for lunch.

Then this happened.

Oops! Our big 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup shattered all over the kitchen - and I do mean ALL over. It was behind the computer desk, in the fruit bowl, in the garbage disposal, etc. Disaster! And a real bummer, because we use that thing all the time. Oh, well. The cats were extremely interested in the (extensive) clean-up process.

So, after all that, here is my dinner. I made veggie burgers ("Incrediburgers", from American Vegan Kitchen), the first time I've made a non-bean-based veggie burger from scratch. The main ingredients are TVP and vital wheat gluten, plus about a dozen different spices and herbs, and then they're steamed for an hour to firm up. When you're ready to eat, you can grill or cook them stovetop or even bake them. I did these in a skillet because it's too hot to go outside. Anyway, I was VERY impressed with the burger. I've been toying around with the idea of getting The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet and now I definitely will. I'm excited to try other ingredients and flavor combinations. The good thing about veggie burgers is that they freeze well, so even if they're a pain to put together, it always makes enough for two or even three meals, since there are only 2 of us McClures.

I also made a side dish of sauteed coriander-flavored mushrooms with cherry tomatoes. I'm usually sort of lazy about vegetable sides but I'm going to start trying to mix it up a little.

I put avocado and the smoky mountain cheese on the burger, along with lettuce and ketchup. It was great! A really perfect summer dinner.

Chipotle-Lentil Burgers with Baked Onion Rings

This may not look like much but it almost led to a nervous breakdown.

I only have a tiny 3-cup food processor, so I had to puree the lentil mixture for the burgers in about four separate batches. There are also onions, garlic, chipotle peppers, zucchini, and bread crumbs in there. I'd never made veggie burgers from scratch before but they turned out great - just made a huge mess and were sort of time consuming. Having a normal sized food processor would have made my life a lot easier!

I did the onion rings again because I couldn't resist their deliciousness.

Probably I should have made green beans or something as a vegetable side, but eh. Too lazy.