Recipe Review: Vegan Beet Burgers

In the Halloween menu plan that I posted I included a beet burger recipe from the Post Punk Kitchen. They were right, the beet does make the resulting patties look very "authentic". I made some pretty significant changes though that I thought I would share. The biggest one is that I didn't have any cooked rice so I used cooked oatmeal, which is much faster.

Here is roughly what I used:

1 cup uncooked lentils cooked and drained
1 cup uncooked oatmeal cooked in 1 1/2 cups water
3 to 4 small beets, grated
4 tbsp. finely chopped onions
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp fennel
salt and pepper to taste

I don't have a food processor so I just mixed all of these ingredients together and then used an immersion blender to puree it very slightly. I let the mixture sit in the refrigerator for about an hour. When it was time to prepare the burgers I followed Isa's advice and made very large burgers and cooked them for a full 6 minutes on each side.

Beet burgers with sweet potato fries

I was really happy with how these burgers turned out, and in fact they are making a repeat appearance on this week's menu plan. I liked using oatmeal because it is quicker, and also very sticky so I think it helped the patties hold together without any egg. The fennel taste came through quite strongly, and I realized I am not a big fan of fennel. I will probably change the spices up a bit when I make them again on Thursday.

These patties were also relatively quick to make and the ingredients are very inexpensive, especially if you are buying beets in season (and at the time of writing it is beet season). The most time consuming parts of the process are grating the beets and cooking them on the stove. If you own a food processor, the grating part is no problem at all, and even without a food processor I would estimate it took me 15 to 20 minutes to grate the necessary beets. I made these patties on the stove because I wanted the outside to be slightly charred a la a hamburger, but generally I think it is much easier to make veggie burgers in the oven. I will try the oven method on Thursday and let you know how it turns out.


All in all, I would highly recommend this recipe! Thank you Post Punk Kitchen

Sunday: Roasted Cauliflower Curry over Barley

 This meal was part of the menu plan for the week of November 11th. I like to make sure I have plenty of leftovers on Sundays so that we have something to take for lunch on Monday. Recipes that can be easily doubled or tripled are good. This recipe made 6 servings.

Cauliflower Curry
1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped into bite size pieces
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced

Cauliflower curry over barley

1 tbsp oil
1 to 2 cups cooked beans, I used soy beans (about one can if using canned, or 1 cup un-soaked if using dry)
1 can coconut milk
2 cup vegetable broth or water
1 tbsp curry powder
1/2 cup raisins
salt and pepper to taste

Barley
2 cups barley
4 cups vegetable broth or water

For curry,
Preheat oven to 375. Spread oil on a cookie sheet or in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Add vegetables, onion, and garlic in a single layer on top of the oil. Roast vegetables for about 35 minutes or until tender.

While the vegetables are roasting you should start the barley. You can use rice, or any other grain you like, but I happen to really like barley. Bring vegetable broth to a boil, add barley. Cook covered for 30 to 45 minutes, or until barley is tender and broth is absorbed.

When the vegetables are done combine them all of the other curry ingredients in a large pot and simmer on low for about 15 minutes. This is to give the flavors a chance to combine, but I think it would be delicious even if you only waited a couple of minutes for everything to heat through. Regardless, any leftovers will have plenty of chance to combine flavors. 

Menu Plan week of November 11th

Winter seems to have arrived in Minneapolis. It snowed a little a couple of weeks ago, but then it got warm again. I was actually able to where short sleeves yesterday. And then today the high is in the 30s and it is predicted to stay there. I am kind of excited. Moving from Oregon I kind of psyched myself up for a super intense winter, and last year it was very mild (by Minnesota standards). The cold weather is cozy. It is nice to sit in my apartment and thing about all of the delicious things I plan to make this week.

Despite the cold weather and impending snow, we are still receiving our CSA box. I forgot to take a picture of it last week, and will try to remember on Friday when we get our new box (winter CSA boxes come bi-monthly) . In our last CSA box we got: carrots, red onions, winter squash, collards, loose salad spinach, savor cabbage, cauliflower, cilantro, and radishes. We used up the collards and spinach last week, but you will see the other items featured prominently in this weeks menu plan.

Sunday
Cauliflower Currey over barley

Monday
Tacos
Radish salad

Tuesday
Cabbage and Barley Casserole

Wednesday
Black bean soup with roasted squash

Thursday
Beet Burgers
Roasted Potatoes

Friday
This is when we will be getting a new box of veggies!

I will try to add links to actual recipes as they are completed and tested, but sometimes I find it helpful just to look at ideas for what to serve for dinner. I am sure there are delicious versions of all of these things on the internet somewhere.  

What about those goals you mentioned?

I talked yesterday about menu planning which was part of a series of goals focused on "planning ahead" for this fall. Menu planning has been very successful, but there were five other goals I set for myself this fall. How am I doing on those? Well, let's recap, my goals were:

• Sign up for a winter CSA
• Purchase staple items in bulk
• Can tomatoes
• Make meal plans at the beginning of each week
• Give up the clothes dryer
• Ask farmers market growers about their practice

I have to admit that I have not been perfect on these. I did sign up for a winter CSA that actually starts next week. I am super excited about it. I live in Minnesota and last year found it very difficult to find local food during the winter. For some reason this resulted in my purchasing less organic food, and more processed foods. Hopefully the CSA will help keep me on track. The CSA is through Featherstone Farms.

My tiny kitchen

I have started purchasing more items in bulk. I have purchased bulk items for a long time. I love buying in bulk. For some reason it feels more natural, plus things are often a lot less expensive. In the past this has resulted in having many small bags of 1/4 cup of millet, or maybe quinoa? This fall we purchased several plastic containers, the kind usually used for shoes for about $1 each from Target. We have been purchasing" garbanzo beans, black beans, soy beans, wheat berries, barley, oats and sugar in bulk.

It has been really nice to pretty much always have these things on hand. It has also made it easier to make a big pot of beans a couple of times a week in the pressure cooker and then have them prepared different ways for the next couple of days. It is very convenient to have cooked beans on hand to throw into things. It's not the best picture, but you can see some of the bulk containers on the shelves in this picture. You can also tell how tiny my kitchen is and see the cool pot rack Shaun and I made.

I did not can tomatoes.  I did freeze about 15 tomatoes. What, freeze tomatoes? Yes! You can wash tomatoes and then freeze them in a plastic bag. You don't have to freeze them on a cookie tray first or anything. Later you can just pull out a frozen tomato and through it into soup or something. The resulting texture is pretty similar to canned stewed tomatoes. But it does take up a lot of room in the freezer, and we have already used most of the tomatoes we freeze. I have also not developed a list of questions to ask farmers at the farmers market. Part of me doesn't want to know how they can sell such a giant bushel of tomatoes for $10. Also, I have not had time to do any research on what types of growing practices I particularly want to support. If anyone has a good set of questions I would love to hear it. Though the farmers markets are all pretty much closed for the season at this point, and like I mentioned, my CSA is starting next week!

I will have to talk about line drying in a future post. I need to take some pictures. The drying racks set up in the office are kind of funny.

Halloween Menu Plan

One of my goals for this fall was to create weekly menu plans. I haven't written about it recently (technically I haven't written about anything recently), but this is a goal that I have had a lot of success with. I started trying to develop menu plans last year and found it really helpful. My partner and I ate healthier. We also saved money because less food was going to waste and we plan meals so that we have something for lunch the next day, thus saving the expense of going out to lunch. For some reason my menu planning tapered off last winter/spring and had to be re-invigorated this fall.

Minneapolis in the fall - photo by Shaun Daniel

I usually make a menu plan on Saturday morning and then got to the Farmers Market either Saturday or Sunday. This week we went to the farmers market today (Sunday) so that's when the menu plan starts. I thought my efforts at menu planning might be helpful for others. We are predominantly vegan and you may notice that a lot of the recipes come from the Post Punk Kitchen (one of my favorite sites) or Veganomicon, which I recently checked out from the library and will likely have to purchase since I have been using it so much.

Sunday:

• Tofu Enchiladas - don't have a specific recipe, but I was planning on mashing up silken tofu with some sauteed onions, garlic, cumin and oregano - wrapping this mixture in tortillas - pouring some type of tomato based sauce (I usually add Mexican spices to store bought tomato sauce and call it enchilada sauce) over it and baking it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes
• Salad 
• Mexican Millet - recipe from Veganomicon

Monday

• Butternut squash soup
• Biscuits (probably half whole wheat flour, half all purpose)
• Sunflower "cheese" sauce - the recipe for cheese sauce is also from the Post Punk Kitchen, I really like it because it is tasty, easy, fast, and does not use cashews which are expensive

Tuesday

• Beet burgers - also from PPK - this is a new recipe, but the picture looks quite "meaty" which is intriguing
• Sweet potato fries 

Wednesday (Halloween)

• Pumpkin Saag - from Veganomicon - I am particularly excited about trying this recipe as saag is one of my favorite Indian dishes.
• Barley (rice would also be good)

Thursday

• Pasta e fagioli - Veganomicon - but I know their is also a good recipe in the Vegetarian Epicure 
• Salad

Friday

• leftovers! 

I'll let you know how some of the recipes turn out.

Three things to do with beans

I mentioned that we are staying at a farm where we have been eating a lot of beans and grains. One of the things we have been eating a lot of is tacos. We started out pretty basic (beans and cheese). But I thought I would share some of the ways we've been changing it up.

All of these recipes utilize kidney beans, because that's all we have. Every couple of days we soak about two cups of dried beans before we go to bed. The next evening when we want to make dinner we bring them to a boil and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until they are tender. I season them with some salt and pepper, chili powder, and cumin. We then use the beans in various recipes, including but not limited to, tacos.

Basic Tacos

To the left is our first taco attempt. It is pretty basic. Each taco has some beans, shredded lettuce, grated carrots, and about a tablespoon of feta cheese. It's not really feta, it's a salty kind of goat cheese that they make here on the farm. But I think feta would be a good approximation. Obviously we used corn tortillas.

I didn't take a picture of it but I think my favorite is when we saute 1 or 2 mild green peppers and then add one cup of beans and two eggs. We use corn tortillas.

Post Punk Kitchen Lettuce Wraps

This next one isn't really a taco, more of a wrap. But I think the essence is the same. The recipe is from Post Punk Kitchen, one of my favorite cooking websites. The original recipe is titled Portland Porche Lettuce Wraps. It is a bean and nectarine filling wrapped in lettuce and topped with edamame pesto. I also liked it because I think there description of Portland, OR was pretty funny. It was a good mix of recognizing the really awesome things about Portland, while still recognizing that people can be kind of pretentious about it. I think the PPK recipe would be delicious, but I made some substitutions based on what I had. I used sugar snap peas instead of edamame, and I didn't shell them. I also used sugar snap peas instead of asparagus. And, of course, kidney beans. I thought it turned out really well. The dish was particularly visually appealing.

Sweet Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried Green Tomatoes

Usually you make fried green tomatoes in the fall when some of the tomatoes don't turn green before the first frost. We transplanted a bunch of tomatoes late, so they already had little baby green tomatoes on them. We had to pick the green tomatoes so that the plant would put energy into establishing its roots and putting out a full crop of tomatoes later. It seemed like a waste to just compost all of those baby tomatoes... so obviously we decided to fry them. I can't quite remember why we decided to make them sweet, maybe because we had already had dinner?

This was an experiment, and I am not sure I would actually repeat it. The tomatoes were tasty, but they were tasty in the way that all fried foods are tasty. I don't know that they really added any tomato-y-ness to the final project. But should you find yourself which a bunch of tiny green tomatoes that you simply can't throw away, this is probably as good of a use as any.

Fried Green Tomatoes - before they were fried

Sweet Fried Green Tomatoes
Lots of small green tomatoes, washed and sliced in half
1/2 cup corn meal
1/4 sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
a pinch of salt
1 egg beaten
1/4 milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
Vegetable Oil


Mix cornmeal, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. In a separate bowl mix egg, milk, and vanilla. Heat oil to medium high. Dip tomatoes in egg mixture and then corn mixture. Place tomatoes halves in oil. Flip after about 30 seconds, or when the first side is suitably brown. Cook until the second side is suitably brown. I think they would have been extra good over vanilla ice cream.