Cannellini Bean and Sage Burgers

Tags

bean burger, beans, cooking, food, recipes, vegetarian, wedding, white beans

My diligent every-other-day posting has gone down a little lately.

My current obsession after work hours is to go to StumbleUpon and select the “Weddings” category and click “Stumble” over and over and over again. I’ve come across pictures of cute carnival weddings, backyard weddings, huge southern weddings, big ball gowns, hand-me-down gowns, vintage gowns, stunning photography, blue shoes, red shoes, 10 bridesmaids, zero bridesmaids, big ballrooms, flowers, paper bouquets, and bbq wedding dinners.

It’s all very interesting to look at.

But none of it is us. We don’t really have a clear picture of what our wedding will be like, except for the fact that we’re going to be in it, we’re going to exchange our vows, and we’re going to smile and continue our lives that we love sharing together–this time as a happily married couple.

Wherever we get married, it’s going to be beautiful. And we’re going to have our family and friends there to celebrate. It will be one hell of a good time. I know that much

As for the food I’m eating now, I still eat plenty.

Maybe too much in fact. For some reason, summer means ice cream, and ice cream cakes, and lots of beer, and cookouts, and milkshakes, and french fries….and shorts….and bathing suits….

These don’t go well together. Summer should be about fresh veggies and juicy fruit and healthy food. The problem with me lately is I’ve been eating more sweets than I ever did in the hibernation of winter (ie today I ate 2 chocolate chocolate chunk cookies and some ice cream). And this is bad. Because now I crave sweets. Craving is bad. I often give into craving.

And though I still am working out every day, I’m afraid it’s going to catch up to me. So here is a good healthy option for me (and you!) to fall back on when the summer sluggers hit you in the gut & thigh area. Bean burgers!

Cannellini Bean and Sage Burgers (From Cooking Light)

Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/3 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 1/2 tsp chopped fresh sage
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 (15 oz) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
• 2 tbsp bottled minced onion
• 2 tbsp feta cheese
• lettuce and sliced tomato for topping (if desired)
• 6 burger buns

Directions:

1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add 1/2 tbsp olive oil to pan and swirl to coat. Add 1/2 cup chopped onion and garlic; cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Place mixture in food processor. Add oats and next 8 ingredients (through the egg); process until smooth.

2. Return pan to medium heat. Add the rest of the olive oil to pan. Scoop the bean mixture into a 1/2 cup dry measuring cup and spoon onto the pan (to make 6 patties). The mixture will be very sticky, so use the back of a spoon or a spatula to shape each dollop into round patty. Cook for 8 minutes, turning once.

3. Combine the sour cream, minced onion, and feta cheese into a small bowl. Spread the sour cream mixture onto the burgers and top with lettuce and tomato.

My Two Cents: Don’t ever put the thought in your mind that bean burgers are skimpy or boring. They are neither. They are both filling and extremely flavorful if you put the right ingredients in them.

I loved the addition of sage in this burger. It’s the only herb used, and though I love parsley in bean burgers, it added a different depth that I really enjoyed. Also, cooking the garlic and onion before they get processed into the burger mellows their strong punches, but gives the burger more flavor.

I think Greek yogurt would be a great topping to this burger–actually maybe better than the sour cream and feta. But that’s just because I have mild obsession with Greek yogurt, and it’s good for you.

So give this burger a try when you need to step away from the fattening foods of summer. It has much less fat than a beef burger, but so much flavor

 

Chicken Drumsticks with Red Beans and Rice

Tags

beans, broiler, chicken, chicken drumsticks, cooking, food, recipe, recipes, rice

Fun facts for today:

• I used the broiler for the first time when I made this dish. The broiler is a wonderful thing. Don’t be scared of it.
• I used basmati rice because I didn’t have long-grain rice. This is not such a wonderful thing. Don’t do that. Unlike me, who has problems following directions, follow them.
• This was the first time I made chicken drumsticks.
• They are way better than chicken breasts.
• I love kidney beans.
• Celery is just okay.
• Cooking rice in vegetable broth makes it taste 8 zillion times better.
• I’ve been thinking a lot about the wedding lately (hence the infrequency of my updates).
• I’m thinking of the color blue for the wedding.
• I don’t have a favorite color, so this decision might change.
• I saw two vendors with Chris today. They were very nice.
• It also put into perspective just how much weddings actually cost.
• But despite cost–I’m 100% doing a cupcake tier for the cake–if a baker doesn’t have an option for a cupcake tier, they are not making the “cake”.

I got a lot done in that list just now!

Back to the dish—

Chicken is the main meat that goes along in this apartment, so sometimes the fattier pick of the lot is the better pick for me and Chris.

Chicken Drumsticks with Red Beans and Rice (Adapted from Reader’s Digest Fast Healthy Food)

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Drumsticks:

• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp bottled minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 8 chicken drumsticks (about 1 1/2 lbs) skin on

Red Beans and Rice:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 3/4 cup long-grain rice
• 2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 can (15 oz) red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

Directions:

1. Preheat broiler.

2. Put flour, paprika, pepper, garlic, red pepper flakes, thyme, and a pinch of salt in a plastic bag and shake to mix. Place drumsticks in bag, one at a time, and shake to coat. Place on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Then broil for 20-25 minutes or until  done, turning often.

3. Meanwhile, make the beans and rice. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion, pepper, and celery and saute until soft, about 2 minutes. Stir in the rice, then add the stock and kidney beans. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until all the stock is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 15-20 minutes.

4. Season the rice with salt and pepper. Spoon evenly onto 4 plates and top with 2 drumsticks.

My Two Cents: See above list.

Also, the original recipe suggested to take the skins off of the drumsticks. I left them on for two reasons.

a.) Apparently it’s really hard to skin drumsticks.

b.) It’s tastier.

And this  makes great leftovers. Chris brought the leftovers to work two days in a row. A hit!

Pasta Shells with Garlic Chickpea Sauce and Grape Tomatoes

Tags

beans, chickpeas, cooking, easy, easy dinners, food, food processor, gift, pasta, recipe, recipes, vegetarian

First of all…

HELLO GORGEOUS.

This beautifully crafted piece of plastic and metal was given to me for my birthday by my dear boyfriend Chris.

I have wanted a food processor ever since I saw the phrase “pulse in a food processor until smooth” written in a cookbook last year. They are a wonderous thing. And now I assure you I will be making sauces, dips, hummus, and everything else that calls for a food processor left and right. Never again will I have an excuse not to make a recipe that calls for a food processor because now I’ve got one

And this isn’t just any old food processor–it comes with a cheese grater attachment. (What!) And it comes with a small bowl that fits inside of this large 15 cup food processor for mini processing jobs. It’s like a 2 in 1! Heck, it’s like a 3 in 1! It’s like magic!

I opened this yesterday at around 9 PM, and wouldn’t you know–I didn’t waste any time finding a recipe that called for using a food processor

I made a wonderful pasta dish (I am certainly eating way too much pasta lately…) that calls you to make your own garlic chickpea sauce. And it took no time to whip it up. Such a simple recipe, and wonderful way to break in the new food processor. (Can I come up with a name for her? Glinda sounds fitting–I’m going to refer to my food processor as “Glinda” from now on.)

Pasta Shells with Garlic Chickpea Sauce and Grape Tomatoes (Adapted from Cooking Light)

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
• dash of salt
• few shakes of crushed red pepper
• 1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1 (14 oz) can low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 cups uncooked small or medium shells
• 1 1/2 cups grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• Parmesan cheese for serving
• Fresh parsley for serving (optional)

Directions:

1. Put a large pot of water on to boil.

2. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over  medium heat. Add crushed garlic; saute 1 minute. Add salt, pepper, chickpeas, and broth; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes.

3. While chickpea mixture simmers, cook pasta for 9-10 minutes until al dente.

4. Place chickpea mixture in a food processor and process until  smooth. Combine chickpea mixture, pasta, tomatoes, 2 cloves of minced garlic, and lemon juice. Sprinkle with cheese and parsley if desired. Serve with a vegetable, such as wilted spinach or steamed broccoli.

My Two Cents: First of all, I hadn’t seen a picture of this dish before I made it, but I must say, it’s almost spot on with Cooking Light’s. That means a few things:

a.) Their instructions are very clear and easy to follow.

b.) I’m getting better at cooking.

c.) I’m getting better at food photography.

Bravo!

As for the dish itself, I loved it. The chickpea sauce mimicked hummus. It wasn’t nearly as thick as hummus, but the garlic and lemon mixed in with the chickpeas basically made my tastebuds say, “This is hummus’ creative little grandkid, just saucey-ing up pasta dishes left and right. Oh, he’ll be famous someday!” Aka, now. This sauce should be famous now.

However, if you do not like chickpeas or hummus, you probably won’t like this dish. So don’t go trying it and come back with a sour face saying you didn’t like it when you knew chickpeas weren’t “your favorite” in the first place

Please pile on the grape tomatoes. I can’t get enough of those sweet vegetables (or are they fruits? Someone please help me get this right. They definitely are sweet enough to be a fruit!) Regardless, the more tomatoes the better. The original recipe called for 1/2 a cup. And that is just not right.

The lemon juice is a key ingredient, as is all of this garlic. But I promise you won’t get garlic breath–the lemon juice mellows it out. But if you leave out either of those ingredients this sauce will turn out sad and unloved.

More good news: This is good for you! Chickpeas are a great source of fiber. And tomatoes are a good source of vitamin A and C.

Plus, this is so easy to whip up on a weeknight. Most of these ingredients are in your pantry already. All you have to do is buy a lemon, one head of garlic, and a pint of grape tomatoes. Cheap, healthy, delicious dinner on the table in minutes.

And a big thanks to Glinda for making this dinner possible

Kidney Bean and Mushroom Burgers

Tags

bean burger, beans, burgers, cooking, food, recipe, sandwich, vegetarian

I’m obsessed with new burger recipes. To the untrained ear, the word “burger” simply means a hunk of meat thrown on a grill, cooked to your desired doneness. But burger recipes are so versatile. Make it with all veggies, all beans, beans and veggies, turkey and cheese, turkey and hummus, oh man, the list goes on.

I also really enjoy finding good vegetarian recipes. I often go through phases where I’m determined to become a vegetarian. It’s a healthy lifestyle, and a humane one too. And although I never actually go through with it, I still love eating vegetarian meals. They’re often much cheaper than the meals I make with chicken, turkey, or beef. (It drives me absolutely nuts that a pound of ground turkey can cost $4.50, or a pound and a half of chicken can sometimes cost $7.) So I embrace a good veggie recipe when I find one.

And find one I did!

I bought a cookbook a while back called Vegetarian Feast. It’s cute. It’s from England. And it has a ton of good looking recipes. I also happened to snag it at a yard sale for about 2 dollars.

If this isn’t feasting for cheap, I’m not sure what is.

Kidney Bean and Mushroom Burgers

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 8 oz finely chopped mushrooms
• 1 (15 oz) can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 2-3 tbsp flour
• salt and pepper to taste
• pita bread, Greek yogurt, and baby spinach for assembling the burger

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and garlic and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally for about 4 minutes, until soft. Add the cumin and turmeric and cook for 1 minute more, stirring constantly.

2. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring, until softened and dry.

3. While the mushrooms cook, mash the beans. When the mushroom mixture is done cooking add them to the beans. Mix thoroughly and season well with salt and pepper.

4. Flour your hands and form the mixture into four patties (adding more flour if you need more body–it can be mushy).

5. Heat a little olive oil in the frying pan on medium-high heat. When it’s hot, cook the burgers for 8-10 minutes in total, turning once.

6. Serve immediately on warm pita pockets. Garnish with a dollop of Greek yogurt and a handful of baby spinach.

My Two Cents: I must say, I like this veggie burger better than other homemade veggie patty I’ve made to date. The reason? The onion and garlic are cooked prior to cooking the actual burger. The cooked flavor of onions and garlic are much better than their raw state, and it only takes an extra 10 minutes to cook the onions and mushrooms down into a burger-molding form. It’s worth it.

I suggest adding a few tablespoons of flour (or even some plain breadcrumbs) to the mix. The beans and mushroom mix by itself was a bit too mushy to form a solid burger, but the flour helps to firm it up. Just don’t go overboard–you don’t want them to be dry either.

Beans are extremely filling, which is another reason why I like this meal. After eating one serving of this I was completely satisfied. It’s a great weeknight meal that you can throw together on a whim.

Overall, highly recommended. I hope you enjoy!

And don’t forget about the Bloggers Bake for Hope sale! Bid on your favorite baked goods here from May 4th-6th. All proceeds go to Susan G. Komen for the cure! I’m baking some decadent chocolate chocolate chip cookies. (Would love it if you bid on them!) Check out the site, there are so many other drool-worthy items that you are going to want to gobble up

Black Bean Dip

Tags

appetizers, beans, black beans, cooking, dip, food, recipes, vegetarian

I promise from the bottom of my palpitating little heart that this is not, for lack of a better word, poo.

This is an extremely flavorful and addicting black bean dip that I whipped up the other night. It’s cheap. It’s easy. You can share it with a crowd or hide it in the back of the fridge for yourself. And best of all, it’s not bad for you either.

But the making of this black bean dip has a little story behind it. A mildly frustrating one. But one that makes me enjoy cooking and learning from cooking even more than when this day started.

It began when I saw a recipe for black bean hummus in an issue of Cooking Light. I’ve been wanting to make homemade hummus for a long time, and this looked like it had a nice spin on it. So I jotted down the ingredients and skipped off to the market to get them. Now, for those of you who love homemade hummus, you also know that it requires tahini, which is basically sesame seed paste. And it gives hummus that distinct hummus flavor. So if you don’t use it in the recipe, what you have isn’t really genuine hummus.

Well, go figure I couldn’t find tahini in the store (what store say you? Shaw’s, of course). I examined every single jar and bottle that I could see in the store, and couldn’t come up with one single jar of tahini. So I sighed and gave up the hunt, but I wasn’t going to give up on that recipe just yet.

I turned to the big wide world of search engines and typed in “substitute for tahini” when I got home. Nada. Zero. Zip. Everyone said, “nope. sorry. you just have to buy the real thing.” But then I thought, Hmmmmm. If tahini is sesame paste, what if I used a tiny bit of sesame oil instead…? Maybe? Oh heck it’s worth a shot. And hey, I won’t even call it hummus.

So I didn’t. And it tasted great.

And here’s my dip.

Black Bean Dip (Inspired from Cooking Light)

Ingredients:

• 1 15 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/4 cup chopped  parsley
• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 3/4 tsp cumin
• 1 garlic clove, peeled (or roasted for more mild flavor)
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper, chopped (and seeded if you can’t handle the spice)
• dash of salt

Directions

1. Place all the ingredients in a food processor or blender. Process or blend until smooth. Spoon into a bowl. Dig your favorite chips into it. Grin at your success.

 

My Two Cents: You heard most of my story above, but I’m also going to let you in on a little secret–the original recipe called for cilantro, but when I got home I discovered I bought parsley instead. Go figure. The recipe was already altered, so why not throw in the parsley and see what happens. It was delicious anyway! In fact, I think cilantro is rather strong, so this had a nice mellower flavor to it.

Also, I still don’t have a food processor. (Don’t worry, it’s on my birthday wish list!) But I have a pretty powerful blender. And it worked perfectly fine at blending all of these ingredients together. All you have to do is take a spatula and stir things around after the first initial blend, turn on the mix button again, and then you’re good to go.

And that sesame oil? So good!

Mistakes in the kitchen can often turn into wonderful surprises

Black Bean and Corn Soup

Tags

beans, food, healthy food, recipes, soup, vegetarian

This is the perfect soup for detoxing after a Thanksgiving weekend full of piling on the food and eating leftover pie for days after the big dinner.

I’m in love with easy pleasing soups and chilis, especially during the cold winter months. I’m especially fond of food that’s easy on the wallet during the Christmas shopping season. Most of these ingredients were already in my pantry, so when I went food shopping this week, I only bought the fresh produce that this recipe calls for.

Ingredients: (Adapted from the Everything Healthy College Cookbook)

• 2 (15 oz) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 cups frozen corn kernels
• 1/2 a red bell pepper, finely diced
• 2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
• 1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup scallions, chopped
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• splash or two (or five) of Tabasco sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

2. Cook on medium heat for 15 minutes.

3. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 more minutes

My observations: Do you see how healthy this soup is? It’s full of good nutrients, and it’s also filling. To make it extra healthy, be sure to get the no salt added tomatoes and low sodium chicken broth. Also, I found that this soup was a bit watery for my liking, so I added a tbsp of cornstarch into the mix to thicken it up.  And be sure to garnish with some avocado and/or shredded cheese. Other than that, I don’t think I would change this soup. It’s yummy