Beet & black bean burgers

I wanted to make some beet burgers. I had an idea of mixing in some faro or wheat berries or something to make a chewy patty of grains and veggies that you could fry til crispy. Then I realized that black beans would make an excellent binder, as would chickpea flour. The trouble, of course, with making veggie burgers of any sort is that for them to taste good, you need to have a gazillion ingredients. Worth it, though! These have a really nice flavor, and excellent textures. And, they satisfy the tasty/healthy/cheap trifecta!

If you're looking for a meatless Monday option, or just want to try a beet burger, look no further.

The actual recipe is super flexible. The base components are:
- shredded root vegetable (beets, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, etc)
- a can of beans (any variety)
- egg (to bind)
- flour (of any variety)
- grain (preferably a whole grain that'll have some chew, because the point is to add texture. So, barley, wheat berries, faro, bulgur, quinoa, rice, whatever)
- flavors (think herbs, garlic, spices)
- salt (duh. everything is better with salt)

This version headed down a Mediterranean route. It was both tasty and very satisfying.

- 2 beets, shredded
- half a carrot, shredded (I had half a carrot languishing in the fridge, which was the only reason for its inclusion)
- 1 can of black beans, roughly mashed
- 1/2C chickpea flour
- 2 eggs
- a buttload of parsley, chopped
- ~1/2C wheat berries, cooked
- 1/4C sunflower seeds
- ~1/4C pickled onions, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp peppercorns, ground
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp turmeric



The only pre-mix step is to lightly toast the garlic, in some oil, because I don't really like raw garlic. Then, mix everything together in a big bowl.

Generously oil a baking sheet, and form little patties. Bake the little patties at 400F, flipping after about 20 minutes, for about 40 minutes total. The goal is that the outside is crispy, and the inside still has a little moisture. Oil your pan generously for extra crunch. The next step, which I didn't try, but will try next time, would be to coat the patties in panko or bread crumbs before baking, for extra crunchy outsides!



These guys definitely have enough structural integrity that they make pretty darn good travel food, if you're looking for things you can eat with your fingers. But, they're also pretty good drizzled with a lemon tahini sauce, or in a pita with some pickled cabbage.

Served with some roasted cauliflower and some socca (that's for a different blog post. Definitely worth making!!)

Cauliflower and cheese galettes

I don't remember where I got the idea for this, but I know that somewhere on the internet, I'd seen somebody making little single-serving galettes filled with vegetables and cheese.  It looked good, and like the perfect thing for a picnic, because you could just eat them with your hands, since since we were traveling off to Saratoga Springs for a weekend of orienteering racing, picnic-type foods are what you want.  Also, I'd so much rather refuel with real food than with random bars and gels and stuff.  Tastes better.  So, real food it is!

These are Ed-approved, because they tasted good, but he wasn't such a fan of the whole planning ahead for food at races idea.  He's not really into the whole planning ahead deal in general.  Not like that stopped him eating them after the race.


They're filled with a grated summer squash, some roasted cauliflower, ricotta cheese, and possible some parmesan? I can't remember.  And an onion, and some garlic.  And an egg.  You mix together all those things, put them in the middle of a small round of pie crust, fold up the edges, and back until the top of the crust is golden brown.  I'd guess around 20min, but this year nearly a month ago that I made these, so things are a little fuzzy.


Pretty tasty with a side of crispy kale, too.  I topped them with some grated sumac, which has a delicious lemony-flavor, so tasty!  But you could skip that part.  You could also fill these with anything at all.  Pretty flexible, as long as it's relatively uniformly textured and not too gooey.

I'll definitely make these again!

Coconut date balls

A long time ago, I made some energy bar things with dates and coconut and almonds. They were delicious, but somewhat complicated, involving eggs and baking and stuff. I wanted to make something portable and delicious and full of calories for the weekend, and figured I'd make the coconut date balls again, but this time, without bothering to bake them. I think these turned out even better (and certainly passed the Ed-rating), and they were super easy to make. Took about 10 minutes, and most of that was wandering around the kitchen trying to find various ingredients.

Coconut date balls
Made 25 balls
1C sweetened shredded coconut
1C fresh dates (with or without pits)
1C almonds
~1tbs lemon juice
1/2tsp salt
~1/4C cocoa

Equipment: food processor.

Start with the almonds - put them in the food processor and grind them up as finely as you can, but before they turn into almond butter. Dump them in a big bowl. Dump in a cup of coconut. Take the pits out of the dates, and mash those up in the food processor, too. They should make a pretty smooth paste pretty quickly.

whole date.

Mashed dates.

Put the dates in the bowl. Add the lemon juice and salt, and then use your hands to squish everything together until it's nicely mixed. Lick your fingers afterward, because the mixture is delicious.

mmmmm.

Roll the mixture into bite-sized balls. I got 25 out of this recipe. Put about a quarter cup of baking cocoa in a shallow bowl, and roll each ball in the cocoa. Really this is just to keep them from sticking too badly to each other, I think, but it has the added benefit of making them taste like chocolate. Once they're rolled, you're good to go - you can just put them in a tupperware and they'll last for a long time (weeks? months? you be the guinea pig...), or just start eating them. I prefer them on day 2, because more of the cocoa has sunk in, so it's less powdery.



And since these are basically energy bars, I figured I should calculate out the macronutrients - each ball (if you make 25) is 65 calories, with 2.9g fat, 8.7g carbs, and 1.2g protein (40%, 53%, 7%).

Eating PRO on the go - creative pork loin...

I may have mentioned that our kitchen is pretty small. We have an oven, but it is about the size of a toaster oven. I did find some sort of baking sheet equivalent thing, sort of, so I decided to cook a pork tenderloin in the oven. It worked, and actually tasted pretty good. I served it with sweet potatoes, and cauliflower and cheese and caramelized onions. And couscous. Mostly, I made a fancy meal because I was refusing to eat pasta every single night this week - Greg would have been happy, but I think Cristina would have gotten annoyed too.


Pork tenderloin stuffed with caramelized onions:
Served 3, but one of them was Greg, so probably would serve 4 normal people

1/2kg pork tenderloin
1 onion
olive oil
salt
pepper (in this case, lemon pepper, as it came with the apartment)

Preheat the oven to 200C ish. Chop the onion, and cook it down in a frying pan with some salt and oil for a while, until its golden brown and delicious. Add salt and oil as needed. Cut the pork tenderloin almost in half, lengthwise - basically, butterfly it. Stuff with onions. Rub copious amounts of salt and pepper on top. Cook for 30min, more or less, until it looks and tastes done. I'm sure there is a temperature it should have been at, but, our snow thermometer doesn't have a meat probe.

The sweet potatoes were simple - cut them into wedges, toss with olive oil and salt, and bake (at like 250C, or more like 400-450F) until they're also golden-brown and delicious. They are wonderful, because the sugar inside makes them crunchy and caramelized.

Did I mention that we're using a McDonald's tray as a cutting board? High class.

The cauliflower was also delicious. I caramelized more onions, and then sauteed the cauliflower until it was soft. Then, add cheese chunks.

That was a darn tasty dinner for only being prepared in a kitchen the size of my bed at home. I impressed myself. I think tomorrow we'll have pasta and meatballs again, though...

Eating PRO on the go - in Sweden!

I'm in Sweden for the ski-o world champs, and Greg, Cristina, and I are here training in Mora for a couple days. We're in a dorm room type situation, in a bit room with a tiny kitchen, so we've been making use of that. So far, so good!

The meal last night was spaghetti and meatballs, sort of. Swedish meatballs are delicious. The sauce was one can of little cherry tomatoes (in tomato juice), half a leek, an onion, some garlic, some carrot, and some mushrooms. It was also delicious.




Then, the pasta was covered with cheese. Win!

Eating PRO on the go, 2010: Salmon salad

As I mentioned, we had all that extra salmon. We also had a little spinach, since we hadn't cooked all of it. The beginnings of a salad were had! It was a bean-grain salad, mostly, with extra veggies and then the salmon. Pretty straight-forward to make, and it made a good lunch, although we had enough that I've now eaten this salad for three meals (in a row), while traveling... better than anything I can get in the airport, I suppose.

-Salmon (about a pound?)
-A small bunch of spinach
-Approximately 1/2C garbanzo beans
-Approximately 1C of bulgur
-1 avocado
-3 tomatoes
-1 cucumber
-1 lemon (for squeezing over the top)
-Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the bulgur and chickpeas. Chop the veggies. Break up the salmon into pieces. Combine everything. Squeeze the lemon over the top and add salt, pepper, olive oil if you want, spice if you want.

This is the last installment of eating pro on the go... 'til next year, then.

Eating PRO on the go, 2010: Salmon with couscous and spinach

We had one night left, so decided to use up some couscous that Justin had left in our room (he was using our kitchen), and figured we'd just run to the store and pick up some protein and a veggie. I wanted more salmon, and Jess was willing to put up with my desire for the pink fish, so we got another fillet of salmon. It was pretty big, so we had leftovers, but that is for the next post. We also picked up some spinach, since that cooks way down and you almost never have leftovers from that.


Its crazy, the salmon here sells for $7.99/lb. Thats wild Alaskan salmon, for ya.

Anyway, we cooked the fish in a pan - heat some oil (medium-ish heat), put in the fish, cover with a lid, and leave it that way while you prep everything else. At some point, check the fish, you might have to flip it (we put it in skin-side down) if its a thick piece. The skin was delicious when it got all crisped up, although Jess wasn't too interested in trying any. Thats ok, shes a recovering vegetarian. It was like pork cracklin's, but tasted like salmon instead of pork, and a lot less greasy. So, don't throw out the skin, if you don't want to eat it on the fish, peel it off and put it back in the pan to get all crispy.

For the spinach, we washed it, then heated some oil and threw in some coarsely-chopped garlic. In went the spinach, and about three minutes later, out it comes.

Couscous, just follow the instructions, its hard to mess that one up. We had left over pasta sauce that I put on top, that added some flavor, along with some smoked paprika that I'd brought.

Boy that dinner disappeared fast. I guess racing makes you hungry...

Eating PRO on the go, 2010: chicken stir fry

I'm actually quite hesitant to put this picture up, since it just looks disgusting. We had bought an entire chicken, because it was cheaper, and we used the breasts in the pasta dish the other day. I butchered the rest of it to use the dark meat in the stir fry, and it was quite good - I normally don't take the dark meat off the bone until after its cooked, but in this case, it worked. It also allowed us to make chicken stock for the lentil soup that we had last night.

I swear, that chicken is cooked, and tasted delicious.

I marinated the chicken (cut into pieces) for about 20 minutes in a mixture of soy sauce and honey - sort of like a terriyaki sauce. I really liked the flavor that gave to the chicken, I'll be trying that combination again some time. The vegetables were a usual mix - an onion, two heads of broccoli, a yellow pepper, a green pepper, a zucchini, a yellow squash, and a carrot. I doused the veggies in a generous glug of soy sauce, early on, and just cooked the chicken in a separate pan. We served this one over brown rice. I'll be honest, I'm a little sick of brown rice... but it seems to be the only grain that we manage to agree on this trip, so I'll put up with it.

Eating PRO on the go, 2010: Lentil soup

I actually remembered a camera, but it doesn't do much to make this meal look appetizing. Its a pretty simple one, but tasty and healthy, which is good enough for me on a race day. We brought some canned red curry paste, and my little plastic baggies of spices, which is why I have various spices and stuff listed in the ingredients - if I didn't have them, I probably wouldn't bother buying them, since its so expensive that way.

Lentil Soup
Serves 5-6 people, depending on how hungry you are.
1/2lb lentils, we used green ones
1/2 can diced tomatoes
2C chicken stock (made from leftover chicken when we bought a whole chicken instead of just chicken breasts for the pasta)
1 bay leaf
A couple carrots
A couple stalks of celery
1/2 of a ginormous onion
4 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of collard greens
curry paste
A bay leaf
soy sauce

Serve with some brown rice.

Put the lentils in a big pot with the bay leaf, tomatoes, chicken stock, a generous helping of soy sauce (we're a little short on salt), and as much curry paste as you would like - we used ~2 tablespoons of it. Add water to cover the lentils, more water for more soupy lentils, less water for less soupy lentils. Bring that to a boil, while you prep the vegetables. Once it boils, drop the heat back to a simmer.

Chop the carrot and celery into pretty little pieces, rinse and chop the collards. Slice the onion into long slices - you'll be pan-frying the onion and garlic, because that tastes better. Put the carrots and celery into the soup. Put some oil in a pan, and bring that up to a medium-high heat. Add the onion, and stir those around for 5-10 minutes, until they're just starting to brown (but not burn), then add the chopped garlic, and stir that around until its just golden brown. Add that to the soup. Simmer everything for a while, until the lentils taste cooked and the carrots and celery are cooked.

Heat some olive oil

Eating PRO on the go: Bean tacos

Tacos are just so easy to make (and eat) when you're traveling, plus they have all sorts of good stuff in them. After the fish tacos, we had some leftover stuff, namely tortillas, that had to get used up. The ingredients for the bean burritos/tacos are below. No picture, because I was hungry!

-whole wheat tortillas
-an avocado
-a tomato or two
-refried beans, heated up
-grated cheddar cheese
-lettuce
-black beans
-brown rice
-taco sauce of some sort

Build the burrito, and try not to overstuff...

Eating PRO on the go, 2010 version: Fish tacos

Back in 2008, Jess and I were cooking for ourselves with a crockpot in a hotel in Michigan during nationals. This year we've upgraded, to a real dive of a motel, but with a much bigger kitchen. We're cooking for four of us, and it works pretty well as long as you don't turn the oven on... smokes a wee bit. Anyway, the first night was a lentil soup thingy, no pictures so no recipe, sorry. Last night was fish tacos, with fresh wild Alaskan salmon - how can you pass that up? The tacos were pretty awesome, and the fish was what made it.

Fish tacos
Feeds four hungry skiers
1/2lb black beans
~2lb salmon (if you're on the east coast, its still better to pay for the wild Alaskan stuff than the farm-raised Atlantic salmon - farm-raised salmon creates a lot of waste, in a concentrated place, and they feed them corn, which vastly reduces all those good omega-3 fatty acids, which is one of the major benefits of eating salmon in the first place. And, the farmed fish just don't taste as good, which should be reason enough)
8 tortillas (in this case, whole wheat)
1 avocado
2 tomatoes
2C lettuce
2C cooked brown rice
1/2 red onion
lime juice
Taco sauce, if you want

Cook the beans, either with a quick-soak or a long soak, in simmering water with a bay leaf and some onion chunks just to add flavor. Cook the salmon however you like to cook fish - we did it in a pan, and sort of tore it into pieces as we went. Be sure to cook it through - freshwater fish (and salmon is diadromous) contains far more parasites than marine fish, which is why salmon aren't a traditional sushi fish. Add some salt and lime juice to the salmon.

Chop of the avocado and the tomato and the lettuce. Put all the various things spread out buffet-style, and build your burrito.

Chewy granola bars

A long time ago, I made some sort of granola bar thing that mimicked the Clif Nectar bars - specifically, the cranberry almond one. It was good, but I don't really remember that much from it. It had fresh apricots, dried cranberries, dates, almonds, and I think a little lemon juice. And I baked it.

I've also been making a bunch of apple leather, with the apple sauce that Ed has been making. I'll get to that in another post, at least its simple...

Anyway, I'm always searching for the ultimate homemade energy bar - something that is portable, high energy, healthy, and tastes good. Those clif bar knockoffs were pretty good, but I thought I'd look around and see what other people were doing - I noticed a lot of recipes out there trying to replicate larabars, also a date-based bar made of real food, and most of those didn't require any baking. This was intriguing, so I decided to try it. Of course, I ended up changing stuff, as always... It had started with just dates, cranberries, and almonds, but then it seemed to dry, so I added some applesauce, and then it seemed too wet, so I added some dry stuff, you see how it goes. The end result was good, though, I think I have a winner!

Chewy granola bars

1/3C dates
1/4C dried cranberries
1/4C almonds
1/2C oats
1 tbs applesauce
1 tbs flax seeds
1 tbs sunflower seeds

Heat your oven to 400F or so, and as that preheats, chop the almonds roughly in the food processor. Toast the almonds for 5 minutes, you could leave everything raw, but I like the flavor of toasted things. Once the almonds are toasted, toast the oats, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, grind the dates into a paste in the food processor, then add the craisins and try to get those ground a bit too. Add in the applesauce and grind some more.

Dump everything into a big bowl, and mix it around with your hands until its evenly mixed. Roll it into five evenly-sized balls. It'll be really sticky, so it might help to occasionally wash your hands. Once you have your little balls, roll them into logs and flatten them out. Then, wrap them in plastic, and you've got chewy granola bars ready to go!

Banana Peach Smoothie

Anna had told me about an amazing banana peach smoothie that she had had the other day, and I was intrigued. I don't really like smoothies, but banana and peach sounded like a good combination. I figured I'd give it a go. I have a blender, but we rarely use it, so this was one of my few chances to use the damn thing. In went half a banana, half a peach, half a cup of yogurt, about two tablespoons of lemon juice, a quarter cup of water, 2 tablespoons of honey. Spun it around. It turned kind of orange-y pink. It actually looked quite appealing. I tasted it. Tastes like a smoothie. Thick. I don't like thick drinks. I'd much rather have the fruit chopped up on the yogurt. Alas, I'm still not a smoothie drinker. But the flavor was wonderful! I think maybe if I had a curly straw, I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Granola, v1.0

I wasn't looking for it, but I found a recipe for granola that looked interesting. I tend to make the things that look interesting, without regard for how they'll taste... well, sometimes with regard for how they'll taste. This one was good, but would have been better if a)I hadn't forgotten to add the vanilla extract and the cinnamon, and b)if I'd added more sweetener. It didn't sound all that sweet, with just one tablespoon of honey and one banana. Maybe my banana wasn't sweet enough, but I went with two tablespoons of maple syrup and I could barely taste any sweetness. Its good, don't get me wrong, just don't expect a sweet granola from this recipe.

The reason this is v1.0 is that I definitely plan on making this again. Possibly in the form of bars, since it stuck together quite well, but definitely with some changes. I'm thinking of adding dates, or apricots, or some other sweet dried fruit to the banana mixture. I didn't like the flavor of the raw mixture - too banana-y - but cooked, I couldn't taste the banana at all. Also, I had my oven too hot (375 or so), because the granola was close to burned after 30 minutes. And I'd add a lot more coconut next time. You can barely taste it in this one! I also forgot the salt.

So while you can go get the original recipe over here, below is MY version (1.0) of this granola. The original recipe might be better. But I guarantee that my version 1.1 is going to be best!

Granola
Yields 6 cups of granola

2C rolled oats (not quick oats)
1/2C flax seeds, I tried to grind them up but my food processor wasn't up to that task
1/2C almonds
1/2C walnuts
1/4C coconut
1/2C golden raisins
1/2C craisins
1 banana
3/4C water
2 tbs maple syrup

Preheat your oven to 325F.

In a food processor or blender, blend the banana with the water and syrup. Ideally, add some extracts that sound like they'd taste good at this stage. My next version will have vanilla and almond extract. I just forgot this time.

In a large bowl, mix together the oats, flax seeds, and nuts. Pour the liquid over it, and stir it around until everything is moistened and clumpy. Spread it in a thin layer over two baking sheets, ideally on a silicon pad, but alternatively on tin foil. It sticks otherwise. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until it is toasty brown. When you think it has about 5 minutes left, sprinkle the coconut on top, and let that get crispy toasted. You could try putting the coconut in with everything else, but I worry it would burn...

Once the granola is done baking, crumble it up in a big bowl with your dried fruit. Don't cook the dried fruit, because it will burn. Mix it all together and enjoy! We'll see how long it lasts... I would imagine it can't really go that stale, though.

Calorie Bombs (AKA Date-Almond-Coconut Balls)

These things are awesome. They taste even better after they've sat for a day and the cocoa has had a chance to kind of sink into the cookie-part of the balls; then it tastes less bitter but still like dark chocolate cocoa powder. I can't really explain it.

1C shredded coconut
1C whole pitted dates
1C toasted chopped almonds
1 beaten egg
1/2C packed brown sugar
1 squirt of lemon or lime juice (maybe 1 tsp?)
Baking cocoa

In a food processor, chop up almonds. Toast in the oven for a while until they taste toasted. In same food processor, chop up dates as finely as possible. Mix together almonds and dates in a bowl, with your hands. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix together with your hands. Form into little balls, roll in baking cocoa. Bake for 10 minutes, allow to cool before eating. I got about 40 balls out of the recipe.