Archive for family meals

As the week winds down: Chick Peas Romesco with Garlic Saffron Rice and Chick Pea Cutlets with Mustard Sauce, plus Pound Cake

October 10, 2009 · Filed under cookbooks, dessert, easy, family meals, yum!

The Veganomicon cook book is such a score. Thank you Mom and Dad! It was my Christmas gift year before last and we have eaten so many good meals from it.

I made the soy yogurt pound cake last night, the lemon variation… the recipe is a little temperamental but it turned out YUM, YUM. I am heartbroken that in this land of Good Karma Rice Ice Cream and Mushrooms that Actually Taste Good, I cannot find agar flakes… I am dying, DYING to make up the coconut pie and put strawberries on it. I just know my husband will LOVE IT. Phoo. But I digress.

Supper tonight was Chick Pea Cutlets with Mustard Sauce, and Vidya’s South Indian sauteed Cabbage.

I will sing Vidya’s praises in another post. I want her to write a cook book. Problem is, she does not measure! She just knows. I will follow her around the kitchen one visit, and write it all down. Her cooking is fresh, flavorful, bright veggie heaven, often wrapped in beautiful light rice crepe thingies. But that is another post for another time.

The cabbage and cutlets weren’t particularly suited to each other but I wanted to use up the cabbage before it went bad. I HATE to see produce goes bad, and it happens far too much at my house. And I digressed again! But I hate to give you an incomplete picture of the vegan doins at our house.

Anyhoo… Chick peas Romesco is a brilliant, sassy, tangy little dinner, chick peas simmered in a slightly hot (as in spicy) sauce of tomatoes and roasted  red peppers. Deee Lish, especially served with the Veganomicon Saffron Garlic Rice. Son ate two bowls, husband gave it a thumbs up and ate thirds, little girl ate the chick peas but not the rice or the sauce. She will get there.  At least she got some protein.

I LOVED the Chick Pea Cutlets. In my opinion it was fine dining good but chicken fried steak satisfying.  You could really get your teeth into them, you know? And so flavorful with the Mustard Sauce– dijon mustard, cooking sherry, garlic, thyme, veggie broth, capers, soy sauce MMM!– also from Veganomicon. It was a real delight. And the little ‘un just slopped ketchup on ‘em and ate ‘em up.

This is another recipe that needs doubled if you are cooking for more than a couple of hungry people. I recommend that you fry, not bake. I baked and it made them dry and crunchy. A good soaking with plenty of olive oil before baking might have helped… also my delightful husband helped me make them and did not realize there was vital wheat gluten in them and so helpfully kneaded them even more than I already had… next time I think I will also cheat and food process the chick peas before I start. Forget mashing, too difficult.  So don’t handle these too much.

I wish you food even close to as good as what I have enjoyed cooking and consuming these these past couple of days. I just bought a sewing machine… it is about to be my husband’s turn as I shift domestic gears. Glad he is a good cook.

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Early week: Cauliflower and Cremini Mushroom Pot Pie with Olive Biscuit Crust

October 10, 2009 · Filed under I don't actually like vegetables, cookbooks, family meals, meat eater pleasers, yum!

Veganomicon’s cauliflower pot pie– heavenly! My meat eater husband said this is lovely. It tastes like meat! My son ate seconds. The only one not pleased was my six year old but she is crazy cause it was gooo ood.

Cremini mushrooms are a whole different experience from their pale, tasteless, icky counterpart the usual supermarket mushroom. But the white supermarket mushroom was all I could get in Alabama. I have never even laid eyes on a Cremini before.

I hate cauliflower AND mushrooms, but this was soooo good. The herbed white sauce is the best I have ever tasted and the biscuit topping is lovely too.  Just don’t handle the dough much, makes it tough.

Isa says to cut the biscuit topping into diamonds. Nothin’ doin’. In an expression of my feelings for the family I cook to feed each day and my sublime joy when I cook– hearts, duh!

If you make this for a family of more than two or three hungry people… I suggest you double it.

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This week: Salad, Stuffed Shells, Sweet Potato Pie

September 25, 2009 · Filed under cookbooks, dessert, family meals, keep up your b12, keep up your omegas, kid pleaser, meat eater pleasers, salad, sweet potatoes, what you *don't* have to give up, yum!

My Dad and Dr. Mercola are on a tear about how dangerous it is to eat large amounts of unfermented soy products such as tofu. I agree and tend to cook from whole food and use rice milks and ice creams instead of soy, but sometimes tofu or other soy products are just such a fantastic shortcut you just can’t do without it.

This week, per my meat-eater husband’s request, I made homemade tomato pasta sauce with fresh herbs and poured it over shells filled with Vegan with a Vengeance Tofu-Basil Ricotta. Even my picky kids had seconds. Delish.

The good thing about Tofu-Basil Ricotta (besides being soooo tasty smothered in homemade tomato sauce) is the nutritional yeast. Let’s be honest– the vegan diet can be dangerously short on B12. Long term effects of B12 deficiency can be very scary. Nutritional yeast helps right that imbalance. And it is tasty, tasty, tasty, too.

To go with, I served a salad based on a Nicola Graimes recipe– slivered blanched almonds, golden raisins, oranges. I added a few perfect mint leaves, citrus champagne vinegar, a little sugar, a pinch of sea salt. I sneaked in a huge nutrition punch with Udo’s 3-6-9 Flax, Sesame and Sunflower oil. You couldn’t even taste it, or its odd flavor simply complimented the mixture, one or the other. I served it on spinach leaves– c in the oranges makes the iron in the spinach available to your body– and it was so delicious, like a dessert. The kids even ate it, always the hallmark of vegan food success.

Finally… my stepson loves Pie. Any Pie. He is too big for me to pick up and throw on the bed or throw myself on him and tickle him like I could do when he was small, so I do a lot of communicating through food.

He requested sweet potato pie. I once claimed to make the best sweet potato pie in Alabama and perhaps throughout the southland. It involved eggs, butter, sweetened condensed milk, and resembled butterscotch pie rather than sweet potato. So good!  What to do now that I am vegan? I hadn’t as yet found a good enough substitude.

But Albertson’s had organic yams, and I resolved to be brave and try.

I was dismayed to find that any recipe called for egg replacer or tofu. How could I thicken without those? Egg replacer often has a ‘taste’ and I honestly am trying to get away from the tofu.

So I decided to experiment. I mashed together 1 stick Earth Balance nonhydrogenated vegan margarine, 1 HUGE sweet potato baked in the microwave, a cup of organic sugar more or less, a half teaspoon of allspice, a half teaspoon of salt (go easy on the salt, it is WAY too easy to oversalt!) and a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice. I heated this to melt the margarine, and then mixed 1/2 cup of flour with water to make 1 cup to thicken, and continued adding rice milk  (1/2 cup or a bit more, maybe?) and cooking til it was pudding consistency.

You have to cook flour puddings to a boil, stirring constantly to avoid scorching, to get rid of the floury taste. Once it boiled and cooled a bit  I added a full big dessert spoon of bourbon vanilla from Trader Joe’s and poured it into a storebought shortbread crust and chilled. Nutrition + pie – tofu or egg replacer = …

My son had two slices for breakfast. Ahh… he knows the way to my heart.

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back in the saddle with Fronch Toast

September 19, 2009 · Filed under breakfast, cookbooks, easy, family meals, kid pleaser, waste not want not

I’ve been travelling. Today is the first day  I have cooked breakfast for my family in a long, long time.

I had not tried Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ Fronch Toast from my beloved, beat up, stained copy of Vegan with a Vengeance.  My kids and husband pronounced it a success. Well, my six year old just ate it, after swearing she did not want it. That is a success, right?

You can use baguette as called for but I just used some stale bread. I don’t think the bread was vegan but waste not, want not, right? My husband bought it before I got here (details on here in another post, gotta run to the pirate festival in Ojai). I love using up things instead of throwing them away. I put it in a 300 degree oven while I was putting together the other ingredients to make it nice and dry. I doubled her recipe.

Weird ingredients needed are soy creamer and chick pea flour. Silk makes soy creamer but my dad says to boycott them because they are a subsidiary of a dairy company with cruel confinement practices. I bought it anyway, til I find a better resource.   Trader Joe’s makes it too. I found chick pea flour at Henry’s farm market, but it is available lots of places. So is maple syrup but I got it cheap at Trader Joe’s.

Yummy yum!

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rich, delicious comfort food soup

March 24, 2009 · Filed under I don't actually like vegetables, cookbooks, family meals, kid pleaser, yum!

Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s Veganomicon is so full of amazing recipes. I tried out the simple, delicious chick pea noodle soup last night.

It helped me use up produce– a yellow onion, what was left of a bag of carrots, and a couple handfuls of whole mushrooms– that would have gone bad otherwise.

It was fast and easy and my baby tore it up, and liked it enough to take a thermos of it to school for lunch today.

Nobody in my town has ever heard of Soba noodles, so I just used a combo of spinach linguine and mini farfalle– added some visual interest.

I had soy miso, not brown rice– still delicious, though I did start out with 1/4 cup and taste as I added, as advised, to keep the soup from being too salty. 

I use vegan veggie boullion cubes– cheap and tasty.  I have no idea what the hell mirin is, so I used cheap pinot grigio (in an environmentally friendly cardboard bottle, natch) to deglaze the pan.

I hate mushrooms, and nobody in my town has heard of cremini mushrooms, so I just used up some I had in the house from a marinara I made. My baby loves them, I gave her all of mine, everyone’s happy.

And between the wrong deglazer, the wrong  mushrooms and the wrong miso the flavor of this soup is as rich as any made with meat stock.

You gotta try it! And doesn’t every kid like noodle anything?

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It’s too bad I can’t cook (or, black bean enchiladas)

December 2, 2008 · Filed under I don't actually like vegetables, family meals, kid pleaser, mexican, sweet potatoes, yum! · Tagged , ,

I really, really need to find another tagline.

I first encountered black bean enchiladas/burritos with the extra flavor and nutrition kick of sweet potatoes in Leanne Ely’s awesome Saving Dinner cookbook. It sounded gross to me but we had enjoyed nearly every recipe from that book so I decided to trust her and try it.

They can be enchiladas or burritos… I think I make them up as burritos, with no sauce and no baking, just cause I’m too lazy to take those later steps. Green chile and soy sour cream sauce and other additions for these that I find as I surf the internet for recipes sound appetizing… but I get so darn hungry.

My husband doesn’t like ‘em so much, but I adore them, and I adore the nutrition.

I love to serve them with a big bowl of Leanne Ely’s depression fighting, attitude adjusting, no winter weight gaining, cancer stopping veggie soup done up Mexican style. For my nonvegan friends I throw some real cheese on top of or inside the burritos/enchiladas. But they are nutritionally complete on their own.

I am a recent convert, so I am not raising my child vegan, just asking her to taste what I make and adding this or that if it will get her to try new things. Vegan is weird anyway… and then, we do eat a lot of exotic food. Middle Eastern, Indian and Mexican foods are not always that kid-friendly.

So when I am feeding kids I add even more cheese and call them ‘cheesy burritos’ or ‘cheesy enchiladas’.

You can get away with a lot, with kids, just by adding the word ‘cheesy’ to the name of the food.

And then all they see is the cheese, and they don’t really even have time to say ‘ew’. It’s just so good, by the time they take the required one bite (especially if you were smart enough to let them get good and hungry before supper) it’s too late.

They’re already hooked on something that’s also good for them.

Tonight I used this recipe from chef #788844 on Recipezaar:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Sweet-Potato-Black-Bean-Enchiladas-292128

But I did NOT use corn (that just seems like a bit too much) or green chiles (didn’t have any).

I cut up and boiled a huge sweet potato skin-on in hopes of preserving some of the nutrients lost when you peel.

I used my food processor to chop up a big onion nice and fine, not into a paste, but small. I sauteed that for a bit in olive oil, added a couple teaspoons of minced garlic, a can of black beans and the amounts of cumin chili powder and coriander called for. I let it cook for a bit just to be sure, but in the end I decided it needed more salt and chili powder. So you could add those a little at a time if you wanted, til it tasted good to you.

I used small tortillas and got about 15 or 16 little enchiladas out of them. I made a small pan with no green enchilada sauce for the little one.

I thought longingly of Karina’s recipe for homemade green chile sauce for her prizewinning enchiladas here,

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/budgetrecipechallenge/recipe2.php

but just dumped green enchilada sauce sparingly on mine so they wouldn’t be too hot.

It is not necessary to use soy analogs, as my husband calls them. A lot of people are against them for various reasons. A lot of vegan cheeses are YUCKY. But I need to buy stock in Tofutti- I love so many of their products, and I love these burritos with a smear of their guacamole-flavored Better than Sour Cream.  

Cooked sweet potatoes are an awesome food for infants/toddlers– my friend’s baby eats them like crazy and my child ate them like crazy and still does at five– just mashed with a bit of butter, or cut up into cubes.  They are very nonallergenic (sorry, not sure how to say that correctly) and they are such a wonderful whole food. 

I keep them on hand and feed them to my friend’s baby every chance I get. I use every sweet potato recipe I can find that sounds even remotely good. I veganize non vegan recipes– believe me, Kim without her sweet potato pie is not a pretty thing. And the hummingbird cake– HEAVEN! 

Sweet potatoes are supposed to be a fertility booster too– that was the original reason I started forcing myself to find every possible way to actually eat them myself, as opposed to just giving them to the little one.

But now fertility isn’t so much an issue… and I just love sweet potatoes. They are awesome in so many ways.   YUM!

So give this one a try. Hop it up any way you’d like.  If you’re put off by the sweet potato thing at first, just smother it with cheese, make up that homemade chile sauce, or use my favorite Better Than Sour Cream. Green salsa mixed with Better Than Sour Cream is darn good too.

I wish you many benefits to your health, your family’s health, your karma, and a healthier environment as we step away from factory farming for meat dairy and eggs– not only insanely cruel to animals but also making us very sick.

Enjoy! Salud! Skal!

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the girlfriends talk about nutrition and such…

September 24, 2008 · Filed under Community Supported Agriculture, I don't actually like vegetables, Reality (at least my reality) and veganism, Slow Food, creating a community of like minded foodies, family meals

It’s a recycled email post and for that I apologize. We’ve been talking about Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable Miracle, Community Supported Agriculture, kids and husbands who won’t eat what we fix when we try to do something healthier for our bodies, our karma and our planet, and how you balance nutrition with reasonable convenience for a busy family with doing what’s right for our environment and local farmers and our budget.

But the email covers a lot of my thoughts about the whole vegan thing. It means a lot to me but I try not to be a Nazi… more below.

Haha, I was so happy J forwarded these emails right away, because I am so excited about Community Supported Agriculture, and I love the frontier-like challenge of eating what is actually local and in season, and so, well…

Butternut squash? I can see how to make a wonderful creamy soup or ravioli with dairy and white wheat flour (another item I try so hard to steer clear of, but it is so hard when I LOVE to bake!).
 
But I can’t imagine, you know, squash without lots of stuff to, well, take away the taste. ;-) I used to LOVE to make crookneck squash casserole– you know, with lots of butter, cheese, and ritz crackers on top? Not exactly vegan, but very country. I’m not sure how to approach squash, now. My mom breaded and fried squash and zucchini. I guess that’s an option. I sure thought it was nasty, growing up, though. It probably still is. But all those idiot grownups loved it. NASTY!
 
M, I’m sorry your husband isn’t more supportive. I know you already have to put up with a lot as a lifelong vegetarian.
 
 I am so lucky that way, not bragging, just saying very humbly that eating and enjoying together as a family means a lot to me, and it wouldn’t be much fun if my husband wasn’t so good about eating ethnic food– Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Indian, we’re even branching into Ethiopian now– all lend themselves to vegan and don’t necessarily  have to have weird tofu/soy/analog ingredients. I have a lot to be grateful for.

And… I cheat, too. We eat a considerable amount of Taco Bell, Papa John’s, and Brusters, and I can’t turn down Kim’s Macaroni and Cheese or Costco cake, whenever I can get C to get me one! I don’t believe in wasting food– especially if it was prepared or offered with love. When spending time with people I care about that’s more important to me than being strictly vegan.
 
Vegan cooking– not just vegan, but tasty and nourishing and complete vegan meals that anyone can enjoy, that are not a compromise or a step down from a ‘real’ meal– that is my passion, so for me it is easy and worthwhile, but it’s also a lot of work and our culture makes it so hard!! Even if I don’t use animal products, I am perfectly fine with y’all using them, because i know you are just as concerned about health and quality and what really constitutes nutrition and your children’s wellbeing and how our eating habits effect the earth and our karma and our local economy.

My latest thoughts on that, though, are in the book Farm Sanctuary. I do hope we can make our way toward an animal free diet eventually. But then I think of never, ever having another bite of ham, or Thanksgiving turkey again… I don’t know. I don’t want it in my daily life, but to never, ever, ever have another Big Mac?
 
I met with an old lady friend this week, a local author and old school democrat, in with all the Civil Rights heroes in town…  She has so many wonderful stories, she has hooked me up with introductions with so many neat people, and I love her so much. She’d dropped out of sight for a while, she’s sick of being hard of hearing and having to navigate that with hearing people, she moved around town several times after losing her place when they closed the Standard Club to develop the golf course into a ‘gated community’… she lost her aged mother after years of having to care for her pretty intensively… She has landed on her feet and I went to see her in her new (old) place on Saturday (where she lived from age 14 til she married)– the place looked so lovely and ladylike, just like her, and she fixed me a chicken salad sandwich and damn right I ate it. I didn’t say a damn word. I love her that much! I felt sick for a day or two, but it was worth it.  It’s the first time I ate meat since Kim’s baby shower! Those ham and cream cheese rollups were just too good. 
 
My husband wishes I would go organic/cruelty free dairy– if I would do that, he says he’d go vegetarian. I still feel a bit bad though about using animal products– not sure how I’ll resolve that– by being sure that I find a cruelty free egg farm and a cruelty free dairy farm I guess– talk about jumping through my ass!

But even those places eventually send their animals for slaughter, I think… and the toll on the environment… I still struggle with the idea that we aren’t baby cows, too. I dunno. And I do feel that agriculture on a local scale, plant or animal, is soooo much better for the environment as well as for the animals and our own bodies, that if anything will push me over the edge Community Supported Agriculture will.  
 
As far as the kid/kids, I just committed to what I wanted to serve, and went for it. I do the cooking. You eat or be hungry. It’s a challenge to me to find yummy things to eat that aren’t too weird that kids will still like.
 
I wish I could find where I read this statistic, but kids have to taste something like 100 or 1000 times before they begin to like it. And I remember– I hated EVERY SINGLE THING my mom cooked when I was growing up, except tacos, spaghetti, my granny’s quail pot pies made while my grandpa was still raising hunting dogs and bird hunting (mmm, mmm! just don’t break your tooth on a stray piece of buckshot!) and empanadas. Oh, Gawd, she used to actually put spaghetti sauce on spaghetti squash. Disgusting!  

She had to hide a lot of stuff in jell-o to get me to eat it. Now when I think of how jell-o is made–eeeyech!  
I hated onions. I hated mustard. I hated anything salty. I hated legumes of any sort, or anything that actually required chewing, like raw apples or carrot, or anything sour like vinegary dressings. My mom got so mad!!  I hated veggies.

I tell my kids that all the time– I still hate them but at some point you have to make the decision to eat what is right for your body and your brain / emotional /spiritual development. I mostly still hate veggies but you can hide them in flavorful, stickto-your-ribs vegan cooking and still get the nutrition– I LOVE MY FOOD PROCESSOR!. And now I love mustard, love vinegary dressings, olive oil on pasta with veggies and white wine… I don’t see me headed for a raw food diet any time soon though.
 
I read several pediatrician’s opinions that kids eat when they’re hungry, and they’ll be okay if they don’t want to eat what you serve, and aside from some truly healthy alternatives you can feel good about — I tell my stepkids they can have unlimited fruit, for example, all day long– if they don’t like it too bad, kitchen’s closed!  
 
So I tell my five year old, you don’t have to like it, but you do have to taste it. If I know something is truly gross for a little kid, I only require tasting… if I know it’s not gross– I make some perfectly acceptable pastas and sauces and veggie burgers on some darn good homemade rolls– I set a goal, like, five bites if you want your ice cream, or whatever. Someday… she’ll be more comfortable with those choices, and if not– well when she’s paying the bills she can eat all the spaghettios with franks she wants, but maybe I will have postponed leukemia or cancer for a little longer, anyway. 
 
I’m trying to find ways to communicate that, yes, okay, it’s a bit of extra work but it doesn’t have to be a total miserable impossibility for normal people and it doesn’t require perfectionism to be a success or to be enjoyable and worthwhile.
 
I can’t wait for our Animal Vegetable Miracle discussion! Or CSA/Slow Food supper, or whatever!

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The Best (I mean it) Lentil Tacos

September 15, 2008 · Filed under family meals, kid pleaser, meat eater pleasers, party possibilities

These are so good. They’re not my recipe, they’re from vegweb.com, submitted by sheenarose, 7/10/06.

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=12306.0

I pretty much dispense with the vegan version of cheese cause my husband has a prejudice (as I once had, myself)– if you want to eat cheese, why eat fake cheese, why not just eat cheese? Yep, back when I ate lotsa Big Macs it used to tick me off to think there might be soy in my animal products. How funny is that? Now it ticks me off that there might be animal products in my vegetarian food!

So I love these with, if I can get it, even if it is an imitation of an animal product, Tofutti’s Sour Supreme Guacamole flavor. They should pay me for telling everyone how good that stuff is. MMM, MMM. Then lettuce, tomato, and green salsa. If I can’t get Sour Supreme Guacamole flavor, these are still darn tasty with just the green salsa.

I use the Sam’s Choice Garlic and Lime tomato salsa, if I remember right, in the lentils themselves, and some other Wal Mart brand green salsa, and they are still darn good.

Yes, I do shop at Wal Mart. I shop there a lot.

Bad hysterical activist.

I hope I get points for the fact that I spend almost as much money at our locally owned health food stores buying weirdo vegan ingredients.

From vegweb.com

submitted by sheenarose

The Best Lentil TacosIngredients (use vegan versions):

1 cup finely chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 cup dry lentils, rinsed
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup salsa
12 taco shells or small tortillas (for soft tacos)
1 1/2 cups shredded lettuce
1 cup chopped fresh tomato
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) shredded soy cheddar cheese

Directions:

In a large nonstick skillet, sauté the onion and garlic in oil until tender. Add the lentils, chili powder, cumin and oregano; cook and stir for 1 minute. Add broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

Uncover, cook for 6-8 minutes or until mixture is thickened. Mash lentils slightly. Stir in salsa. Spoon about 1/4 cup into each taco shell (or tortilla).

Top with lettuce, tomato, and cheese. Enjoy!

*I got this recipe from a friend and it is one of my favorites!! These tacos are SO good!! =)

Serves: 6

Preparation time: 40 minutes (total)

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Reason #27 to Buy Vegan with a Vengeance

September 15, 2008 · Filed under cookbooks, family meals, meat eater pleasers, party possibilities

Isa Chandra Moskowitz made it all possible for me with Vegan with a Vengeance.

Okay, thinking my dad went vegan and panicking over what to cook for him when he came to visit (he really only went vegetarian, but the end justifies the means, right?) made it all possible.

And Skinny Bitch pushed me over the edge. Of course the word ’skinny’ grabbed me, but the book is not just about bullshit ridiculous body image issues in this nation– it is about nutrition, and animal cruelty- if all you care about is what you look like this may not be the book for you. But if you care about your health, the environment, animal cruelty, your emotional wellbeing, and last and least looking hot (or at least hot-er), it’s a must.

But back to Isa. Her book helped me realize that you can eat really, really yummy vegan food– you don’t have to starve to death, and you don’t always have to work your ass off. Thank you, I love you.

Some of the recipes do require some work and odd ingredients, okay, but those are sooooo worth it. And many are cheap easy, and simply rock.

I don’t have permission to post her recipes, but many of them are available on the internet for free at Post Punk Kitchen. 

How do I love this cook book, let me count the ways. One of the recipes I come back to over, and over, and over again, is Veggie Burgers, page 96. I’m making them today.

In order of importance, here are the reasons you should try this recipe.

1. They are approved by some of my favorite meat-eating taste testers. 

2. They are easy if you have even the smallest, cheapest food processor.

3. With the exception of a small amount of Textured Vegetable Protein, they are completely whole food and don’t require weird ingredients.

4. You can make them mostly ahead, which takes 20-30 minutes, and refrigerate the cooked mix 24 hours or so until time to make up patties, fry and serve.

5. They’re damn good for you, but if you want to add even more nutriton– hard to imagine, when they’re already so good for you– or if you have some hard to please kids in the audience, chop up and bake some sweet potato fries, page 114.  The seasoning on them is kinda like that orange stuff they put on Arby’s curly fries– do they make those any more?– oh, but without the beef tallow sprayed all over them to make them taste so damn good.  

I make homemade sweet potato rolls to serve them on. This does take a bit of extra time, but less than you’d think. The recipe is easy. I put out spinach, mustard, ketchup, real cheese for the dairy eaters, and you know, whatever else goes on your family’s burgers. YUMMMMM!

There are a few caveats.

I don’t use liquid smoke. I’ve heard it’s nasty, and these guys are so good I don’t think it’s needed. That’s up to you.

She says they make 6 burgers– I have found that they fall apart on me if I make them too large, so I make them smaller and make my rolls smaller to serve them on.

Cook them at a pretty high temp, longer than what she says– if they brown a bit longer, they stick together better. Cause they can turn out a bit sloppy joe-ish, still patties but a bit soft, not sure what I’m doing wrong, but I don’t care because they are sooooo goooood!

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