A new quest…

I think it’s fair that I rewind to last Thursday, when I made a delicious Tempeh Tostada – and learned essential life lessons involving broilers, knowing where fire extinguishers reside, and the flammability of tortillas.

Friday further amplified Thursday evening’s lessons, and so I turned to my dear friend the larger than life-sized Happy Hour Margarita to ease my stresses.

The weekend was a happy mixture of relaxation and family time (think: super pet adoption day and a graduation party). Monday mornings always come way too quickly, and a gray Monday is just like hell on earth.  I responded with another version of a soy-yogurt parfait, a straight up traditional parfait including:

• sliced strawberries
• sliced bananas
• vanilla Whole-Soy yogurt
• a combo of Kashi Go Lean & Heart to Heart cereals

This combination kept me full all morning, and was 110% the summer breakfast of champions I was feeling like I was missing out on!  *Super secret: if you let the sliced strawberries chill in the yogurt for about an hour or so their juices combine with the yogurt to make a fantastic strawberries and cream!

So tonight after tackling 3.0 miles without pain (holla!) I tackled this recipe for a black-bean veggie burger which was created by Emily at the Front Burner blog.  This is officially my first attempt at a homemade veggie burger, and I convinced D he had to try without any substitutions – to which he surprisingly agreed. I followed the recipe aside from excluing  cumin (I learned during the Tempeh Tostada event that cumin makes D want to vomit) and chili powder – which we are just out of.

These came together wonderfully! I totally enjoyed the cinnamon meets cayenne pepper combo – it works. I managed to gobble down  1-1/2 of these, with some cheddar daiya melted on a toasted bun.  What would have taken these over the top? A pickle.  It’s the simple things.  I froze the 3 leftovers and am crossing my fingers that they defrost well.  As for D, he ate 3/4 of his bean burger but almost immediately started getting all antsy about how these spices do not belong in a burger. I made sure to remind  him that these were not trying to be a beef burger by any stretch of the imagination – they were just a bean veggie patty straight up!

Verdict? Delicious and not too beany, for once!  I think this may have officially kicked off my quest for the best summer veggie burger, so look out for future attempts in the near future.

I’ve got one more special post up & coming and need to do a whole lot of blog reading catch up!  Here’s for a quick and yummy week!