Mediterranean Chickpea Burgers

Most of the time when I check my mail there's nothing exciting in there, mainly just bills or flyers. Sometimes, though, the newest issue of Everyday Food is in there, and it's a beautiful day. Their March 2011 issue has page after page of recipes that I have to try, and the first one I made is the Mediterranean Chickpea Burgers. I have had a recent obsession lately with burgers, especially bean burgers. I had to text my roommate sister the other night to see if she was sick of the Veggie Burgers with Tahini Mayonnaise yet, because I felt like making them again for the third time in two weeks. (Side note: The veggie burgers are even better when a little Sriracha sauce is stirred into the mayonnaise. Also I discovered that butter lettuce is good on them, and I hate lettuce on burgers)
The chickpea burger that I made last night, does have beef in it. The patties are roughly half ground beef and half chickpeas and bulgur wheat. NOM NOM NOM. When I was buying the ground beef I managed to give myself a heart attack and embarrass myself all at the same time. What you need to know is that I am half Dutch, which means I am half cheap. I have zero issue paying lots of money for Lululemon, but I will not spend lots of money on other things, like ground beef.
I was looking at the ground beef and for roughly a pound of it, the price was $9 or so. Usually it's about $5, so this sent me into a panic attack about food prices going up and how I would no longer be able to afford one of the cheapest meats to buy. I spotted a butcher and I said "Hey, why is the ground beef so expensive?" and he said "That's ground bison". I'm an idiot.

Smushed Banana Sandwich

This may look like I topped a bagel with baby food, but looks aside, this sandwich is delicious. The mashed banana is mixed with shredded coconut, maple syrup and cinnamon. I served it with apple slices which came in handy to scoop up the mash that fell out of the bagels.

Veggie Burgers

If you ask me, a burger without meat is not really a burger. Even though Everyday Food calls these bad boys a Veggie Burger, I call it a tasty sandwich. The patty is mainly made of bulgur and beans, with a few mix-ins to give it some flavor. The patty is pan fried to give it a crisp outside, and it remains soft in the middle. I really enjoyed them, they had great texture and taste.

Pulled Pork

I love love love cooking things in my slow cooker, or "the wife". Sometimes I can get stuck at work late, and it's nice knowing that I have supper waiting for me when I get home.

I have never made pulled pork before, I think this may be the first time I have used pork in my slow cooker. I found the recipe on Iowa Girl Eats. I used her basic recipe, but changed a couple things. (also click the "read more" for a faux ice cream recipe)

Avocado Wraps

It's been the hottest week I have seen in a while, and for two nights this week I was making soup. Call me crazy. By last night I was ready to make a meal that required little to no cooking, and wouldn't be hot when consumed.

For the past week and a half I have been craving avocado. I make a mean guacamole (thanks to C), but I was wanting something different. Original Joe's makes a turkey club wrap that inspired the wrap I made last night.

Rebekah's Avocado Chicken Wraps

1) I started out by taking a chicken breast and cutting it into bite sized cubes. I added just under a tbsp of extra virgin olive oil to a skillet, and heated it over med-high. Once the oil was hot, I added the chicken cubes to the skillet. When the chicken was starting to brown, I topped it with a Tex-Mex seasoning. When the chicken was cooked, I took it off the heat. The whole process took maybe 5 minutes.

2) I cut an avocado in half, removed the pit, and scooped the "meat" out of the shell. Then I sliced each half into thin slices, and immediately squeezed lime juice over top. From an actual lime. This was to prevent the avocado from browning, and also because I feel avocado and lime go hand in hand. I can't have avocado without it being covered in lime juice.

3) I took a Roma tomato, cut it in half and discarded the juice and seeds. Then I diced what remained.

4) I cut a red onion into thin slivers. In the picture the red onion is missing, because I forgot to put it in the wrap before eating. Idiot.

5) I used my microwave to cook 4 slices of bacon until crisp. If you make this wrap (which I strongly suggest), you can crisp up bacon any way you wish.

6) I placed a tortilla on a plate, topped it with half the chicken, 2 slices of bacon, and half of the avocado and tomato. I should have also thrown on some onion, but as stated before, I forgot that step.

DELICIOUS. I could eat these all week long.

To go with it I made a quinoa salad that I found on FoodGawker. Quinoa is a seed, often referred to as a grain. Quinoa is really high in protein, is good for your heart, and is also gluten free. The seeds are slightly bigger than couscous, but are still pretty tiny.

The salad consists of quinoa, radish, cucumber and avocado. Like I said, I have been craving avocado in a big way lately. It's dressed with a dressing made from lime juice, olive oil, cumin and seasoning.

I really liked this salad. It was really easy to make, the cooking of the quinoa only took 15 minutes. A really refreshing break from eating soups during the hot weather we have been enjoying here.

Sandwiches

A couple weeks ago I mentioned how much I love Frank's Buffalo Wing Sauce, when I made buffalo chicken wraps. I used the sauce the other night to make Buffalo Chicken Burgers. If you love buffalo wings in any way, you must buy this sauce, and make these burgers.

Rebekah's Buffalo Chicken Burgers:

1) Take a lb of ground chicken, an egg, and a 1/2 cup of panko breadcrumbs and mix together in a large bowl. You could also add a bit of diced onion, or some seasoning (I used about a tbsp of Clubhouse's Tex Mex seasoning) if you like.

2) Split the mixture evenly into four. Flatten into round patties.

3) Heat a small amount of vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium high. Add the patties, cook for roughly four minutes on each side. Before removing them from the skillet, cut into the middle of the patty to make sure the chicken is cooked through. (The meat should be white, and the juices should be clear!)
If you notice the chicken is browning too much you can turn down the heat, or slide the skillet into the oven and finish it off by baking at 350 F. Make sure your skillet is oven proof, of course.

4) When the chicken is finished, add 1/2 cup of Frank's Buffalo Wing Sauce to the skillet, and turn the patties over so they are completely coated in deliciousness.

5) Place the patty on the bun of your choice. I used whole wheat, and I had toasted it in the oven while the burgers were cooking.

The burgers can be topped with lettuce, or blue cheese, but I chose to just spread some ranch dressing on the bun. (I used Renee's Buttermilk Ranch, the half fat version). I served the burgers with carrot and celery sticks. Delicious and healthy!

A while back I made the following sloppy joe, and I got the recipe off of sparkrecipes. Sparkrecipes is a database of healthy recipes, and they have quite the amount. I had a craving for sloppy joes and when you search their website for sloppy joes the top recipe is Diet Coke Sloppy Joes. The main ingredients are ground beef, Diet Coke, reduced sugar ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, white vinegar and mustard powder. To make the ground beef is browned in a skillet, then the rest of the ingredients are added and cooked together for 30 minutes.

I used Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke, and regular ketchup instead of the reduced sugar variety. I will make these again, because they were quite good, but I would add some chopped onion to it. And maybe some garlic. Even though it was good, it was kind of plain.

I served the sloppy joe with a spinach salad. I just piled raw spinach leaves on the plate and topped it with Everyday Food's Shallot Vinaigrette. It is one of my all time favorite homemade salad dressings.

Steak Sandwich

I was talking to an idiot the other day. How did I know he was an idiot? He said "I don't eat red meat very much, and when I do it has to be well done. Like burnt well done" This never ceases to amaze me. How can you take something as beautiful as a steak, and do something so terrible like overcook it? You might as well eat shoe leather. I feel very strongly about this, and those of you who know me, know that I have a hard time keeping my opinions to myself. Especially when someone does something terrible like order a steak well done. There is nothing "well done" about it.

The other day I made a steak sandwich. And it was beautiful. The following recipe made enough for 2 sandwiches.

Rebekah's Steak Sandwich

1) I took a New York strip (my favorite) rubbed it with olive oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper. I placed it in a skillet over medium high for 3 minutes on each side.

2) Remove the steak from the pan and place it under foil. Add half a sliced onion to the skillet with a small amount of extra virgin olive oil, lower heat to medium.

3) When the onions have been on for a minute or two add some sliced mushrooms. (I used 4)

4) When the onions and mushrooms are slightly browned (2 or 3 minutes), remove from heat and sprinkle with a bit of dried thyme.

5) Slice the steak thinly removing the fatty pieces. The steak should be medium rare. If you desire to cook it more, do not waste your money on a New York strip. Buy some cheaper steak to ruin.

6) Take the bun of your choice (I used multi grain ciabatta rolls) split it open and toast under the broiler until golden brown.

7) Mix together horseradish and Dijon mustard. I used roughly a tbsp of horseradish, and roughly 4 tbsp of Dijon mustard. Spread as much as you desire on the toasted bun.

8) Place about half of the steak meat on the bun, and top with about half of the onion and mushroom mix.

DELICIOUS! No joke, this sandwich was pretty awesome.

You must make this!

To go with it I debated a few things. I thought about sweet potato fries, but anytime I make something like fries in the oven that are crisp when they come out, they are always squishy when I heat them up the next day.

Then I remembered a dish that my aunt makes. And I love it. So here it is, and this should serve roughly 4 people.

Tante's Beans:

1) In a sauce pot (sort of large), fry up 2 slices of chopped bacon. You do not want them to be crisp, once they start to turn brown add half a cup of chopped onion to the pot.

2) After about a minute add a can of pineapple tidbits. (I drained the pineapple first, but you can do what you like)

3) Add a can of rinsed kidney beans, and a can of brown beans (I used the Heinz maple kind)

4) Add 1 tsp of mustard (I used mustard powder), 2 tbsp chili sauce (I didn't have any so I used ketchup) and a tbsp of brown sugar. Since the beans and ketchup were sweet enough I added molasses instead. Call me crazy.

Lower heat, cover and let simmer for 30 minutes.

I love love love love love these! They are sooooo good! I would recommend that you stir the pot every few minutes. I just let mine simmer and then after a half hour I went to check it, and a layer had burnt to the sides. I managed to salvage a fair bit, but if you don't stir it, you will end up with something like this:

Not good.

Buffalo Chicken Wraps

I love buffalo sauce. If I had my choice any time I had wings, I would always order the buffalo style. Usually though, I am having wings with anti-buffalo flavor people and have to settle on one that we both like.

One of my biggest pet peeves about recipes with buffalo sauce, they feel that taking any hot sauce and adding some butter results in the same flavor as buffalo wings that you would order in a pub or restaurant. It doesn't. It still tastes exactly like whatever sauce you used. Only a bit richer. This made me a bit frustrated, as I tended to avoid recipes that I would have loved to try. Then one day I was at the grocery store and saw:

There is no need to add butter, and it tastes exactly like how a buffalo wing should taste! Although in the image above, the seal looks weird to me. Like someone used Paint to make it look like there is a seal. Am I wrong? (It wasn't me, obviously, since my skills in Paint are awesome, and no one would be able to tell it was fake)

I received my new Everyday Food in the mail the other day, and they had a section of sandwiches and wraps recipes. There are no links to the actual recipe, and I tweaked some things around, but the following is an adaptation from the recipe in EF for Buffalo Chicken Wraps.

I had planned on using actual chicken breasts, like in the recipe. I order chicken breasts through work, and I just got a new box on Monday (when I was making the wraps), but I left it at work. Of course. So I bought a rotisserie chicken and shredded the meat. Since I was only making two wraps, I reserved half the meat for later this week.

The half for the wraps I placed in a sauce pan, drizzled some of Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Sauce on top, and heated it over medium just to warm the chicken and sauce.

The original recipe made a blue cheese dip by combining crumbled blue cheese and plain yogurt. I had some sour cream on hand instead. I crumbled the blue cheese, and put it on my food processor with about 4 tbsp of sour cream.

I own one of those mini food processors, and it is my favorite thing. I use it all the time, since it is small and doesn't take up a lot of room in the dishwasher. I think everyone should own one.

I spread some of the blue cheese mix on a tortilla, and then topped it with some of the chicken mix, some sliced celery, carrot ribbons and shredded iceberg lettuce. (Luckily this time I bought the inorganic and it wasn't brown)

To make carrot ribbons, use your vegetable peeler as if you are going to peel the carrot, only just keep going until there is no carrot left.

These were really good. I think what I would do next time is make sure I used chicken breasts that were cut into chunks and then cooked in a pan. Rotisserie chicken was good in a pinch, but I think it would be better the other way.

I am also not the biggest blue cheese fan, I find it to be very overpowering so next time I might use a ranch dressing instead. Overall though, I really thought this was a great summertime supper.

Bean "Burgers"

Sometimes I can hear myself talking, and in my head I am screaming "shut up already!", but the words keep pouring out. I have become the person I have always dreaded being. The person who talks about the amount of calories food has, and talks about going to the gym all the time.

Before, if I ever heard someone say "do you KNOW how many calories cheese has?", I would roll my eyes and loathe them. And now I am "that guy".

This time last year, if someone said to me "what did you do last night?" My answer would have most likely been "watched TV while sitting on my giant behind". Now my answer is "I went to the gym" or "I went to yoga". I think it's funny how things change. On my wish list at this point last year were these:

Now I would love to get my hands, uh...feet, in these:

I haven't had a complete lobotomy though. Even though there's a gym right by my house, I prefer to travel to the one that is further away because the cardio machines are set up so you can see the eye candy if you're working out on one of them. Might as well enjoy the sights while working out, right?

The other night I was flipping through a Cooking Light cookbook, and I saw a picture of a burger and it looked delicious. However, I cannot actually call it a burger. A burger, to me, contains meat. This one did not, so I will refer to it as a sandwich. When I pointed it out to C, she said that the Southwest Pinto Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayo did not look delicious. I disagreed, and made them, and frankly, they were very very good.

The patties are made with pinto beans, bread crumbs, jalapeno, onion, corn, cilantro, hot sauce, cumin, egg, salt and pepper. I used white kidney beans instead of pinto beans, and panko bread crumbs instead of regular breadcrumbs. My grocery store didn't have any jalapenos that looked healthy, so I used a habanero pepper instead. If you go that route, be careful as habaneros are very hot. I omitted the cilantro, since I am not a big fan of it. Lastly I used about a 1/2 cup of frozen corn that I thawed, instead of the canned corn.

The patties are pan fried in a small amount of oil, placed on toasted whole wheat buns, and topped with romaine lettuce and chipotle mayo. Chipotle mayo being mayo that is mixed with some chipotle in adobo sauce.

These were really good. Mine were a bit spicy, but I like it that way. I didn't even mind the corn, and ordinarily I hate having corn mixed in anything. The only problem I had with the patties is that they didn't bind together well, and fell apart easily in the pan. However, it was a small annoyance and I do plan on making these again.

For dessert I took a pineapple and cut off the peel, top and bottom, and sliced it into rounds. I placed the rounds on a baking sheet and topped each one with a small amount of brown sugar. I baked them at 350 F for about 15 minutes. I topped the rounds with sweetened coconut that I had toasted. (The coconut is toasted by placing it in a dry skillet over low heat until it is golden brown). Also very delicious!

Happy Birthday

Last night I went to my friend's house for dinner. (Which was delicious by the way). Before dinner I stopped at Blockbuster to rent a couple more movies for Bruce Willis week. My conversation with the cashier went like this:
Cashier- did you find everything ok?
Me- yes I did thanks
Cashier- I see you rented two movies last night
Me- yup
Cashier- and you're getting 3 more today?
Me- don't judge me

Ok. That really didn't happen out loud so much as I imagined that's what she was thinking.

And then after dinner we went to the gym. It's been a few months since I had last been to the gym. This became apparent when 5 minutes into my work out on the elliptical machine, I sounded like I was having an asthma attack.

Since I don't have a dinner I made to post, I figured I would post some pictures from my nephew's birthday party. He's turning 3 this week, and my sister had a party for him last weekend. And, by the way, I have the cutest niece and nephew in the whole world. I know everyone who has a niece or nephew thinks that theirs is the cutest, but mine are the actual cutest.

My nephew's favorite movie of the moment is Wall-E so my cousin and my aunt had made a Wall-E cake for him, which was absolutely adorable.

My sister had also made these tasty B.L.T. sandwhiches. You cut a loaf of bread (like a load of French bread) in half and toast it in the oven. Then you spread cream cheese on one half, and top the cream cheese with the filling. The filling is made with chopped lettuce (you could use a bagged salad), chopped tomatoes, chopped (cooked) bacon, and italian dressing. Very tasty. Shut the sandwhich closed, and cut into pieces. Voila!