Good Eats III {Recipe}

This was quite the week! Our suppers are a great illustration of that, and because of the craziness I don't have pictures of most meals, but I tried to make up for it by including a recipe for our favorite veggie burgers!

First, the run-down of our suppers this week.

Friday: My husband got a thanks-for-all-you-do Visa gift card from his boss at work, so we decided to eat out--Chinese food! My picture is awful, but the food was great! It's not hard to eat vegetarian food at a Chinese restaurant. Usually they are happy to substitute tofu for meat, but you do have to watch out for some of the sauces. We had tofu, veggies and noodles as well as egg-drop soup.

Saturday: Typically this is a light meal because lunch is a big one, but I forgot to take a picture and can't think for the life of me what we ate this particular Saturday night! 

Sunday: I tried a new recipe and highly recommend it! It's from the blog Novel Eats and it's called Coconut Ginger Vegetable Soup. Novel Eats is a great place for all sorts of vegan recipes and she does such a great job with her instructions and pictures of the steps in her recipes. We loved this soup but it does have an odd combination of tastes--coconut, ginger, lime... Since I was doing a Thai soup, I added noodles with a Thai peanut sauce and steamed broccoli. So yummy!

Monday: We had a showing (our house is on the market) over the supper hour. I was planning to make a picnic but my husband suggested we just go to Subway. Ok! Sure made my day easier!

Tuesday: Our Bible study group met for supper at our house. We had minestrone (made by me), cornbread and green salad as well as a fruit salad with yogurt dressing (made by our guests). It was a light, delicious meal, but I forgot to get a picture.

Wednesday: The same people who looked at our house on Monday came back with their parents. That's a great thing, but they didn't call until 5 and wanted to see the house at 6! I was alone with the boys as my husband was at a meeting until late--and he had the car! The boys and I took a walk to the creek and had fun throwing rocks and wading. When we finally got back I toasted some frozen leftover pancakes which we ate with peanut butter and applesauce.

Thursday: Finally! I made something! The boys have been begging for watermelon and they were finally only $4 this week. We ate that as well as fresh corn and homemade veggie burgers!

Here's how I make veggie burgers.

2 cups cooked garbanzos + 1 cup water
OR 1 can of garbanzos, pintos or black beans with liquid
2 cups quick oats
1 cup walnuts
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup Bragg's liquid aminos (or low-sodium soy sauce)
2 T nutritional yeast
1 t salt

Add the garbanzos + liquid, oats, walnuts (whole), garlic cloves, Bragg's, yeast and salt to the bowl of a food processor with the chopping blade inside, put the grater/slicer attachment on top, turn it on and feed the onion through the top. Let the machine do the mixing and chopping for you! It needs to be well-mixed, so I let it run for about a minute.

It will look something like this:

You can tell that I've already scooped a bunch out, can't you? See:

I like to use my electric skillet for frying burgers. Use whatever works for you! If I have more time, I like to bake the burgers. It takes about 30 minutes at 350*. I scoop the mixture with an ice cream scoop which makes a nice shape and keeps the burgers the same size.

The burgers need to be flattened while you fry them (or before baking). I use a potato masher dipped in water for this. 

Fry over medium heat for about 5 minutes, then flip the burgers and let them cook for another 5 minutes.
 

The recipe above makes about 2 dozen burgers, depending on the size. The burgers store well in the fridge or freezer. I like to use leftover patties as a main dish by placing the cooked burgers in a baking dish, covering them with gravy (vegetarian, of course), and baking them in a 350* oven for about half an hour. You can also use this recipe to make veggie meatballs by using a smaller scoop, not flattening them, and baking them in the oven.

 
We enjoy our veggie burgers with mayo, barbeque sauce, onion, tomato and lettuce. They also grill well if they're pre-cooked.

I hope you like the veggie burgers! Let me know if you want more ideas for vegetarian/vegan meals, or more recipes. 

What did you eat this week? You can see our suppers from last week and the week before HERE and HERE. 


Enjoy!