Okay, I’m sure I’m not the first person to come up with something like this, but it was so darn easy and tasty that I couldn’t help but blog about it.  We don’t have any vegan bread in this house and I’ve been too lazy (and it’s been too hot) to make any.  Even just using the bread machine heats up the house.  Anyway, what I did have were some tortillas left from last night’s burrito fest, so I made a PB&J-dilla.  And it was SOOOOOOO good!!

Spread some natural (organic) PB on one side of your tortilla.  Top with J of choice (I used strawberry).  Add some fruit, if you want.  I added some sliced banana and green apple.  Fold.  Place in a hot skillet and toast about 2 minutes per side.  Remove from pan and enjoy!

a peak at the inside

I’ve made a variation of these chickpea burgers before, but thought I’d change it up a little this time.  The idea was inspired by a recipe in Super Natual Cooking, which calls for 4 eggs!  I still can’t get over that…

Anyway, my solution for this is pretty simple- use dried, soaked chickpeas in place of cooked and add a little flour.  In any bean burger recipe, I really don’t care for the texture when cooked beans are used.  It’s usually mushy and weird.  These turned out really tasty and even Emma ate some of it!  I don’t know if it was willingly, but she ate it.

Lemon Basil Burgers

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked 8-12 hours

1/2 tsp salt

Juice and zest from 1 large lemon

1/2 cup chopped red onion

1/3 cup chopped fresh basil

4 TB flour

Soak chickpeas.  Drain and rinse.  Place in a food processor with the salt and process until smooth.  Remove from food processor and put in a mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients.  Mix well and refrigerate for 30 minutes.  Form into patties and pan fry in a little bit of oil for 5-8 minutes per side, or until golden brown.  I suppose you could also bake these, but I have not tried that method.  Makes 5-6 patties.

I’ve tweaked my Nutburger recipe a little bit– not enough to change the awesome Nutburger-ness of them, just enough to give them a subtle twist.  Man oh man!!  I love these.

I followed my same basic recipe, but used a combination of tahini, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, pecans, and almonds as the “nut” part of the Nutburger.  For the “burger” part, I used lentils, chopped yellow bell pepper, one grated carrot, half of a grated onion, and a handful of dried cranberries.  Yummy!!!  I also baked them this time instead of frying and I like how both sides got really crispy.  They still fell apart a bit when I flipped them over, but I was able to squish them back together.

I’ll warn you that the grated onion provides most of the moisture for this recipe.  If you put in too much, the burger will be mushy.  I’ve made this mistake before, and I’m not sure I made a point of writing about it.  If the burger mixture seems too wet, add a little more flour.  The mixture should be pretty dry, but should stick when packed together firmly to form patties.  And, this recipe yielded 6 burgers for me last night.

On the side, we had some homemade veggie chips– parsnips, carrots, and potatoes crisped up in the oven.  They’re nothing to waste blog space about since I managed to burn them almost to the point of being inedible.  They weren’t horrible, but were certainly “extra crispy.”

This weekend was all about keeping things light and healthy.  Lots of veggies and grains– filling things that aren’t packed with tons of calories.  Actually, we ate some form of a wrap for lunch and dinner Saturday and Sunday and I have more planned for the week. For Christmas, I was the lucky recipient of several cookbooks, one of which influenced my weekend wraps.

The first is I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude from Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco. A good friend of mine, Brianne, introduced me to this place and I love it! It’s a bit on the pricey side, but you have to remember that you’re filling up on good food and good food is often more expensive than bad (don’t expect $1 cheeseburgers here!). Anyway, I was so happy to get their book because now I can make that stuff at home.

For my first attempt at Raw food preparation (I guess you can’t really call it “cooking,” can you?!) I went for the marinated vegetable recipe because it was one that didn’t involve fancy machinery like a food dehydrator. You take a combination of vegetables– I used carrots, radishes, zucchini and grated broccoli stems– and marinate them in garlic, ginger, cilantro, and lemon juice. Amazingly enough, the recipe can be found here.  Flip through the rest of the preview, this book is great even though some of the other recipes are a bit complicated.

I opted to wrap the veggies in a romaine lettuce leaf because (1) it’s a lot easier than making their spinach tortilla recipe and (2) I had them in the fridge!  One thing that I changed to the recipe is that I used about a teaspoon of cold pressed flax oil in place of the olive oil because I didn’t want to use 2 TB as the recipe suggests and I wanted to get more Omega 3 bang for my fat and calorie buck.  These were great and I will definitely make them again.  You get great flavor from the garlic, ginger, and cilantro and very few calories.  I even made the Jalapeno Mint Chutney to go with it, but thought the wraps were better without it.

For lunch on Sunday, I made a Tofurkey wrap. I’ve made these lots of times using whole wheat lavash, but thought I could save myself the 110 calories by wrapping it up in a romaine lettuce leaf. It wasn’t quite as good, but was still tasty. I could definitely get used to wrapping things up in a lettuce or cabbage leaf instead of bread. I’m sure it’s much better for my waistline too.

I’ve really resisted going grocery shopping this week.  Instead, I want to use up what we got and make more stuff homemade.  The other night, I had some kale that was about to turn to seaweed and some lentils, so I threw it all together in a soup.  It was FANTASTIC!

Lentil Kale Soup

(click here for a printer-friendly version)

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 TB olive oil

2 small carrots, pealed and chopped

4-5 kale leaves, stems removed and chopped

1 cup dry brown lentils

3 cups veg stock

3 cups water (or more veg stock)

S&P to taste

Saute the onions and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the carrots and cook a few minutes more.  Add the lentils, stock, water and kale and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes to an hour until the lentils are tender.  Taste for seasoning.

I boiled up some noodles separately to stir in just for fun.  I thought it might be more appealing to Emma that way.  She ate a couple of bites but wasn’t too wild about it.  I like to keep the noodles separate in soup because they get mushy and gross in any that is leftover.

To go with it, I used more freezer and pantry items in my Mediterranean Panini Sammies.  I didn’t have any tomatoes on hand, so these just had artichoke hearts, Vegenaise, olives, roasted red peppers and basil.  These are SOOOO good that I could probably eat 5 of them in one sitting.

I’ve blogged about Nutburgers before.  They are my favorite burgers, hands down.  I still think they would be my favorite even if I still ate beef- that’s how good they are.  I decided that it was time to revamp my recipe and the result was AWESOME!  They are a bit crumbly, so be forewarned that you must pack them together very tightly before frying.  For those of you who may be inclined, resist the urge to add an egg.  They come together fine and will hold up well after they are cooked.

Awesome Nutburgers

1 cup cooked lentils (about 1/2 cup dry)

1/4 cup raw walnuts

1/4 cup raw pecans

1 medium carrot, grated

1/4 of a large white onion, grated

1/4 cup roasted red peppers, chopped

1 TB flour

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

In a food processor, pulse together the lentils and nuts.  In a separate bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and add the lentils and nuts.  Stir together to combine well.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.  When ready to fry, use a non-stick skillet sprayed with cooking spray.  Form patties out of the nutburger mixture and pack them together tightly.  Fry over medium-high heat for about 7 minutes per side.  If they fall apart when you flip them, use your hand or a spatula to push them back together.

I found this recipe on the Veggie Boards and thought it sounded interesting.  It is supposed to be a vegan “tuna” tasting spread, but I found it tasted nothing like tuna or like anything that came from the ocean.  As a sandwich spread, though, it was really good.  Even Emma ate some.

Vegan “Tuna” Sandwich Filling

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 TB vegenaise

1 TB dijon mustard

1/2 tsp kelp granules

1 tsp soy sauce

Mash the chickpeas.  You want them mashed, but still with some texture to them.  Add in the rest of the ingredients and enjoy.  I also added some relish to mine, which gave it a little zing, but you could really add in anything here.  Chopped celery or onion would be good too.

My falafel burgers turned out so well that I decided to apply the same principles for holding them together to a non-vegan recipe from Super Natural Cooking. The original recipe calls for 4 eggs… insane! Anyway, mine held together just fine, probably even better than the original.

They were really tasty, by the way, topped with Amy’s zucchini relish. I’m sorry to say (only because I know most of you reading don’t have any) that it made this burger. Yes, it was delicious on it’s own, but with the added sweetness and zing from the relish, I was in heaven. The golden tomatoes from my dad’s garden was also a nice treat. We had ours with some frozen fries (again) and some apples.

Chickpea Burgers

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight

1 cup chopped kale (about 2 small leaves), stems removed

1/3 cup cilantro (a generous handful will do)

Juice and zest from one large lemon (about 3 TB juice, 2 tsp zest)

6 TB flour

1/2 tsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup grated red onion

Combine chickpeas, kale, cilantro, and lemon juice and zest in a food processor. Pulse until the chickpeas are pureed. Add the flour and S&P and pulse a few more times to combine. The mixture should be thick and somewhat dry. Stir in the onion. Cover and refrigerate for several hours.

When ready to cook, heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Pour in bout 1 TB canola oil. Form the chickpea mixture into 8 patties and pan fry on both sides until golden brown. Transfer to a baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes to firm up the centers.

I’ve been craving a big, messy burger lately. There are only a few brands of frozen veggie burgers that I like and I didn’t have any on hand, so I decided to make falafel burgers. They were amazing! The falafel, v. 2 recipe is so perfect for this because the combo of the dried chickpeas and flour hold the patty together so well that it doesn’t slide off the bun or fall apart like other homemade veggie patties. These were also so filling that I could only eat half. I’m almost ashamed to admit that our side of fries came from the freezer section of the grocery store. Oh well… sometimes you need a little of that.

Prepare the falafel recipe as directed using the full 6 TB of flour. Refrigerate for a few hours before cooking. Shape 6 (even) patties out of it and lightly pan fry in a teeny bit of canola oil. After pan frying, place in the oven for about 15 minutes to allow them to completely firm up. My oven was set to 450 degrees because that’s the temperature my fries needed to cook at. One note of advice: try to get your patties as thin as possible because they will poof up a bit as they cook.

The sauce was a combo of Tofutti BTSC, lemon juice, some finely diced cucumber, and fresh dill. These were super good and so much easier than making the little balls for traditional falafel.

Nothing super exciting here, but a tasty idea nonetheless.  This is pretty much a reinvention of my panini sammies, except this isn’t cooked and is rolled up in a tortilla.  They turned out really good and I think I could scale this down a bit to make a pinwheel appetizer thing.

Mediterranean Style Wraps

(makes 1)

2 TB Tofutti BTCC

2 TB chopped fresh basil

2 TB chopped olives (I used a combo of green and kalamata)

1/4 cup roasted red pepper, cut into strips

1 leaf lettuce

1/4 cup tomatoes, diced

1/4 cup cucumber, diced

Mix the Tofutti and basil together, then spread on the tortilla.  Layer in all of the other ingredients and roll up.