A Tale of Two Bean Burgers

Tuesday:

Breakfast - Whole wheat bagel with cream cheese

Lunch - Left over southwest black bean burger

Dinner - Home made bean burger (Get recipe here)

Beans in a can and dry beans in a bag are two very different creatures.

Last night we decided that bean burgers would be dinner tonight. Nate had a late day so he said he'd prep things in the morning and then I could warm them up and add my fixin's come dinner time. Well, I read the back of the bag of beans and made sure we got them soaking in the evening and told Nate it might take 2 hours to cook the beans in the morning.

It did take him 2 hours to cook the beans. And what he ended up with was WAY more cooked beans than either of us anticipated. We're smart people. How did we manage not to realize that when you add water to something dry that it expands? *sigh* Sometimes I'm just not thinking. Nate did get the burgers made up and left them for L and I to eat when we got home that evening. More on them later.

I was going to have peanut butter on my bagel again today, but I didn't dress my bagel. I popped it in the toaster and then went to do something else for a minute and when I got back Nate was smearing it with cream cheese for me. How sweet! I didn't have the heart to mention I was going to do peanut butter because he thought to do it for me - I'm not knocking that. (Of course, now he'll read this and know the truth. - Love you sweetie!)

The black bean burger from Saturday's trip to Iron Hill was oddly easier to eat the second time. Of course, I reheated it whole - bun and all - and then ate it with a fork and knife. Given how it fell apart as I tried to eat it on Saturday, I figured that was my best bet, and it turned out to be true. It still had great flavor though. That pepperjack cheese and the vegetables really made it.

Come dinner time L had no interest in a bean burger and declared that he wanted pasta. I wanted him to try the burger, but figured he wouldn't like it so I went ahead and cooked elbow noodles and sauce for him. Meanwhile I pulled out a bean burger for myself and the grill pan to heat it up. I took one look at it and knew that this was going to be a dry burger. I toasted my whole wheat kaiser roll, rinsed some lettuce and cut some tomato. I put a layer of mayo on the one side of the bun. I put some swiss cheese on the burger as it warmed (note - swiss cheese does not melt quickly). I went looking for some salsa.

No salsa.

It turns out that no salsa (and too many beans) was the ultimate problem with the burgers. With so many beans Nate used more than he'd intended. And we had less salsa than we thought - so it didn't even go as far as it was supposed to with a normal amount of beans. Most of the other flavors in the burgers didn't come through either. It needed some veggies to round it out. Not as many as the southwest burger - the homemade burger held up really well and didn't fall apart on me as I tried to eat it; a big plus.

In the final estimation I think this recipe still has potential. I think we'll buy some salsa to put on the remaining burgers. And next time we'll cook up beans before we weigh them out for the recipe.

If we keep up days like this, on our next grocery trip we need to pick up some Beano.

Egg Pie

Monday's meals:

Breakfast - Whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and a banana

Lunch - Leftover chili (we'll get to that)

Dinner - Quiche!

In addition to our chosen Lenten discipline of vegetarianism, Nate and I are also "working out". We didn't intend this as a Lenten discipline. It just happened that the start of it coincided with Lent also. Nate is in training for two events he wants to do - a 5K in town in April, and then a Spartan run in July. He's even blogging about it here - he's my inspiration for blogging. So, he's getting up three mornings a week to run. I'm getting up those same mornings and using the Wii Fit to tone I guess. I don't feel a need for weight loss, but better posture, balance, strength, and stamina are useful with a toddler. And I felt a bit lazy staying in bed while Nate got up.

All that to say, I got up to do a half hour workout this morning. Because of that, and because of my new vegetarianism, I figured I ought to smother my morning bagel with peanut butter instead of the usual cream cheese. Not sure it is a ton healthier, but at least there's the protein content.

Lunch was a guilt trip. I had brought with me the leftovers of the mammoth bean burger from Saturday. But when I got to work I realized that the chili I'd brought in to eat on Friday was still there (since we'd gone to Thai Kuu). I had kind of hoped that maybe someone else would just eat that for me over the weekend. But since it was still there, I felt as though I had to get rid of it. I didn't want it going to waste. So, I ate it. That will be my last meat item now. I told Nate to make sure he gets rid of the last of the chicken noodle soup tomorrow.

For dinner this evening Nate and I decided to make a quiche. This is our first homemade quiche! We used this recipe from Emeril - and adjusted it slightly. For instance, we had looked at a few different recipes and accidentally got heavy cream instead of half and half. And we changed some of the veggies - grape tomatoes instead of sundried. We added peppers. We also used cheddar instead of feta. But overall, we followed the technique. Except I did not make my own crust - prepackaged generic brand. This whole thing took longer than we'd anticipated to make. We forgot to check the times on the recipe before we got started. So, we had to blind bake the crust, and chop and cook the veggies, and then bake the quiche and then let it set. So...that whole process was a good hour and a half. And starting it at about 6:30 (because we didn't head straight home after work) meant that dinner wasn't ready until about 8.

This meant that we would not be sitting down to a full meal as a family this evening. We couldn't keep Liam up that late waiting for the "egg pie" to be finished. Which I felt bad about, but it couldn't be helped. I know the best thing for a family is to all sit down and eat dinner together. And that it isn't best to eat standing up. But, because dinner wouldn't be done in time Liam ran around munching on peppers and tomatoes and cheese and other raw ingredients (not the eggs) enough to fill himself. And he watched and helped us cook. So, I figure this was good quality family time. Shortly before we put him to bed he asked if it was "pie time" so we told him not yet and that we'd save him a special piece of pie to eat for lunch tomorrow. He seemed cool with that.

So, results: It was delicious. We were hungry, so we didn't give it a full half hour to cool and set before digging in. The first piece came out sloppy, so I took a photo of the second piece. The only adjustments I'd make would be to add a touch more fresh thyme and to blind bake the crust a bit longer (or use fewer beans to weigh it down so the heat gets through). The bottom was still a bit soft when we put the veggies and custard into the shell. But, small adjustments only.

Yum.

Well, That Didn't Work

Sunday's meals -

Breakfast: Waffles with bananas and yogurt
Lunch: Leftover pork with mashed potatoes - almost gone, the meat leftovers are almost gone.
Dinner: Carrot Ginger soup (from Trader Joe's) and Cheddar Cheese perogies (from a freezer box). This was not a good combination. Fine as individual items. Did not make a meal. Oh well.

Today Nate's cousin shared an interesting article about food and eating in America on Facebook. I thought it was interesting though perhaps perpendicularly related. It was worth sharing again here anyway: 9 Things You've Never Heard About America's Food In actuality, I had heard some of these things and I could've guessed others. Seriously, who is going around saying they think poor people don't want to eat healthy? That's just absurd. But I'm a food person, so I'm looking for things like this. And hunger, malnutrition, and access to healthy food amongst those in the lower income brackets is one of the issues that has always come up at my church - whether as part of collecting food for Chester Eastside Ministries and CityTeam, when working with the Chester Coop, or as part of Stop Hunger Now.

Well, clearly it is a complicated issue. But since the government wants to be all up in other areas of our lives right now (see what's going on in VA and PA), I think maybe we should start with taking a look at how the government subsidies food and how they go about setting minimum wage requirements... I'll leave my politics there for now. As to my religion: Jesus said, "feed the poor" and "just as you have done to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done unto me". I think he was pretty clear on the issue.

Now, how does this apply to my temporary vegetarianism? Well, I don't think it does directly. But I took this on as one way to think about food concerns, so I figure it makes sense for other types of food concerns to come up. Otherwise, this would be an entirely selfish endeavor.

Thoughts?

PS: I'm all caught up now! Hooray!

Meal Planning and Dinner with Friends

Saturday. This is a big day. We're going grocery shopping for the week - big shopping as we call it - for our vegetarian meals. But first, Nate had to work so I took care of removing most of the last of the meat from the house. Actually, I ended up putting some of it in the freezer.

I carefully wrapped up the chicken breasts from the fridge in plastic wrap and freezer paper. I scoured the rest of the fridge for any other meat products. I found a partial package of pepperoni. Okay, that should freeze too. And leftover pork, chicken, and chicken noodle soup. Okay, that we'd just have to finish.

I went into the freezer. Hey, we have veggie burgers from when we had our friends K & D over! We may have to give them a try soon. I took a frozen beef tenderloin (a gift from our friends R & B), a partial bag of shrimp, a boneless skinless chicken breast, some Anytizers chicken wings or something like that and the chicken and pepperoni from the fridge and put them all in a paper bag and stuffed them into the ice bucket at the bottom of the freezer. Now, temptation is hidden away but we won't waste that food. We can eat it in April.

When Nate got home we ate lunch (I had some of that leftover soup) and put Liam down for a nap. We began our meal planning. We checked out some websites friends had sent us and took stock of what we already had in the house. We came up with the following set of meals for the week:

Asparagus and sweet pea risotto

3 Bean Chili

Carrot Ginger soup and perogies

Bean Burgers

Quiche

Bean and Veggie Braid

Cheesy Veggie Bake

The last two items on the list are vegetar-izations of meals we normally make: A Taco braid (with ground beef) and Cheesy chicken bake. It sounded a bit silly to me to make the cheesy bake without the chicken, especially since it is already chock full of veggies, but we figure we'll just add more veggies and see how it goes. We couldn't come up with a good substitute protein.

We did our shopping - lots of veggies, lots of beans. When we were out shopping we heard from our friends K & D who wanted to get together for dinner out. We thought that would be fun. But where to go? They wanted us to pick. We decided that despite our meatlessness we would head to one of our favorite places, Iron Hill Brewery in Media. We've gone there with them before plenty of times and D is a semi-vegetarian (she eats chicken) so we figured we'd be all set. As we got there Nate said "Well at least beer is vegetarian".

I didn't realize how not easy this would be. First we explained to K & D that we meant meatless for all of Lent, not just on Fridays. It has been easy for Liam to be meatless - he wanted Mac & Cheese anyway. He's two, what are you going to do? But looking at the menu I realized for the first time ever how NOT vegetarian friendly that restaurant is. Wow! Why does D always say it's cool to go there? I know that she's a big fan of the nachos. And if you don't get them loaded they are vegetarian. Though, that doesn't make them healthy :-)

I was looking at this menu with new eyes. I can list nearly everything on the menu that would fit our Lenten diet without going to the website to double check. There were two soups: French onion and Kennett Square mushroom (both of which probably contain beef broth or milk so you'd have to just go meatless and not vegan) and a third soup was on special: Broccoli cheese. There were a handful of salads in the appetizers section. The ones under "big salads" all came with a meat protein. There were the nachos, and fried asparagus, and sweet potato or regular fries, and bruchetta, all appetizers. For a full meal you could get a pizza (they had a couple meatless options there), or a black bean burger, or a hummus wrap. That's it. And it is a HUGE menu. Shocked. Really. D said to me, "That's why I still eat chicken sometimes."

Apologies to Iron Hill if I missed a handful of things, but I'm pretty sure not. Point being - menu is a good 90% meat based. But they don't advertise as a vegetarian restaurant so I can't really hold it against them. They do make really good beer. (Try the Pumpkin Bourbon Ale if it's on tap at your location - it was the special on nitro this evening)

I ordered the Southwest black bean burger which came with fries, coleslaw, and a pickle. Nate ordered a cup of the broccoli cheese soup and a pizza that was essentially a mushroom pizza. And the table ordered nachos. I found the bean burger to be tasty, though poorly constructed. It had so many chunks of beans and sweet potatoes and corn and peppers that it didn't stay together, it kept falling apart all over my plate. I ended up taking a bunch of it home. Leftovers!

So, only a few days in and I'm starting to see things a little differently. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Thai Lunch

So, Thursday was pretty bland. My little guy seemed sick in the morning so I didn't go in to work. I worked from home. This did give me the opportunity, however, to pull apart the rest of that roasted chicken and prepare it to become soup. Which is what we ate for dinner. Yup. Day 2 and we're still not quite there yet. I am seriously considering freezing the other chicken in the meat drawer though. I feel silly.

By mid-day Thursday Liam was fine, so Friday we all went back to the regular routine of work and daycare. We still had leftover chili, so I brought that in for lunch. However, around mid-morning my one coworker (we'll call her C) suggested that, due to a couple of us having rough weeks for various reasons, that lunch out might be just the right food for our souls. I agreed, as did my other coworker (H) who was in that day (Friday is a light day in the office). C came down a bit later, having spoken to H about a lunch location and said they thought that Thai Kuu was a good idea. I agreed. I don't eat much Thai food, but I was up for something different and they both have more experience so I'd be in good hands anyway.

So, off we went around 12:30. The only Thai dish I'm really familiar with is Pad Thai; but most people who only know one Thai dish know that one. Luckily C immediately offered that she'd just been there earlier in the week and that while she'd gotten something else, a bunch of the people she was with had the Massaman curry and really liked it. After looking at a few other items on the menu I decided to order that. I also got a cup of the Tom Kha soup. H ordered Tom Yum soup with tofu and Pad Thai, also with tofu I believe. C ordered Tom Kha soup with tofu and Lettuce Wraps with just tofu, no chicken. I got both my curry and my soup with vegetables.

This is probably the time to note that I don't like tofu. Okay, I tried it once made at C's house (for her daughter's 1st birthday) and liked it marinated in hot sauce and seared. But I have never liked it any other way. We had some brief conversation about this at the lunch table. I noted there was miso soup on the menu. I attended a conference in LA a few years ago and went out one evening with friends to a Japanese restaurant. I ordered the miso soup there in an effort to expand my culinary horizons. I hated it. C and H said both tofu and miso are fermented soy products. Which explains I guess why I like soy sauce and edamame, but not tofu or miso. Well, good to know. We'll see if I can get through this meatless experiment without having any tofu. Though, I guess to be fair I should try it once if I'm really going to play this game...Anybody know any vegetarians that don't eat tofu?

Ultimately my meal was a huge success. I ate every bite of both. The floral notes of the lemongrass balanced the sweetness of the coconut milk in the soup. The heat of the curry and the chilis paired nicely with the peanuts and was fantastic on my vegetables and rice. I really need to bring Nate out for some Thai food or learn to cook some for myself. Yummy.

For dinner that evening we decided not to eat the chicken breasts or have leftovers. We figured we'd make a vegetarian dish - pizza. Topped with plenty of cheese, onions, and green peppers. Liam helped to make it too. It was adorable. I took video. If you follow me on Facebook you can see it there.

Well, we're really getting ready to get into this. Tomorrow (Saturday) we plan to make our vegetarian meal list and then go shopping for ingredients!

Telling Facebook

So, Day One of our "Lenten Discipline". Well, considering we had only just started, and as I mentioned we hadn't planned for this, Day One wasn't really a full Day One.

But I did post to Facebook about it.

I posted what we had decided and admitted that we'd still have to finish a few things (the pork we planned to eat for dinner that night, the rest of a chicken we'd roasted earlier in the week, and some other chicken breasts that were still in the meat drawer intended for a cheesy chicken bake). Then I asked for suggestions. I know plenty of vegetarians, a small group of vegans, and lots of semi-vegetarians (those folks who identify with vegetarianism, but still eat things like chicken and fish on occasion).

The responses were varied. A few people said that "we should talk" because they have tons of recipes - near-lifers in veggie world. A few people directed me to other people. A couple people directed me to fish dishes (which I found really interesting...they immediately thought we'd be eating fish during our meat-free Lent. Isn't fish a meat? Well, if you read the Wikipedia article I included in my first post you'll see why not everyone thinks so. But Nate and I do think so, therefore no fish.) We did get a couple of good links to websites with vegetarian food ideas. The one site had a "top 20" sort of thing going on.

Ultimately though, I ate leftover chili for lunch and then pork chops with mashed potatoes for dinner. I felt a little guilty. But I chose to do this and allowed leftovers and already purchased meat in the parameters to avoid waste, so I really had no reason to feel that way. I also attended two Ash Wednesday services (one at the church I work for, and another at the church we belong to) where the message was basically that Lent isn't about feeling guilty, but finding a way to be closer to God and to others. There were a few reasons we chose to do this, but two of them were to understand vegetarians better and to pay more attention to our meat consumption and what impact that has on God's creation. (Yeah, all the reasons behind the local, organic, free range, grass fed, antibiotic free, etc. stuff)

If nothing else, I'm hoping this proves to be good lunch conversation with my two co-workers who identify vegetarian.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

It was Shrove Tuesday. Also known as Mardi Gras. My husband Nate, my son Liam, and I were seated to dinner. We were eating the chili Nate had cooked up earlier in the day. It was delicious. "Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday - the beginning of Lent," I said to Nate, "Do you have any thoughts about a Lenten discipline this year?" "Not really," he replied, "Do you?" "Actually, I was thinking we might give up meat for Lent."

We refer to ourselves as "pretty devoted carnivores" but in reality, we are solid omnivores. I do my best to keep our family's food consumption balanced and we are big fans of food. We cook for ourselves most of the time. We'd like to get our garden going again. We like to try different styles of food and recipes. But at the end of the day, probably 6 out of 7 meals a week start off based around meat and expanding from there.

"You want to give up meat for Lent?" Nate replied warily. "Yeah. I think it would be a real challenge for us. And it would be healthy. And we'd save on food expenses - meat isn't cheap. Will you try it with me?" I asked hopefully. After some thought Nate agreed. Though he did admit this is likely to be harder on him than on me.

We decided on an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet, meaning no animal flesh, but eggs and dairy are okay. We are okay with stuff made from animals in some way too - gelatin, fish sauce, and re... whatever that stuff is that they use to make some cheeses. Turns out there are lots of different types of vegetarianism - just check out this article on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, I hadn't really thought ahead on this. We had just gone grocery shopping over the weekend and planned out our meals for the week with plenty of meat in them. So, we agreed that in order not to be wasteful, we'd have to delay the start until we'd consumed or appropriately frozen a few things. So, we won't really start in full for a few days. But we can at least clear out and get planning.

So, 40ish days (plus Sundays) with no meat. I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with for meals. I'm looking forward to looking at food a little differently. I'm looking forward to Easter and bacon for breakfast and maybe we'll splurge on some lamb for dinner ;-).

PS: I also didn't plan ahead regarding blogging about this experience. So, if you are checking the dates you'll notice I'm playing catch-up here.