Veggie Burgers

The weather was so beautiful today... it hit 63 at our house... that we thought we would break from the winter of crock-potting and make something to get us ready for spring and summer of cookouts.

What is great at cookouts? Veggie burgers! We decided to try a recipe from Yoga Journal that I pulled out years ago. I honestly don't know when it was published... When I read magazines, I rip pages out for recipes that I want to try or modify and put them in a big binder for later... I tried to look it up on their website to give you guys a link, but wasn't able to find it.

Anyway, the burger was basically black beans, cilantro, green onions, tomatoes, and spices mushed up. We added in zucchini too. Then we stirred in rolled oats. They cooked up well in the oven and held their shape nicely. I feel like these could be good contenders for going on the grill this summer.

To accompany the burger, we made sweet potato and  white potato fries, plus we made a spicy cajun roasted red pepper "catsup" courtesy of the Happy Herbivore. The catsup was roasted red peppers, onions, and seasonings ground up in the blender and then cooked down until it got pretty thick. To make fries, all you have to do is slice them thinly, toss with a little oil and desired seasoning, and bake in the oven until a desired level of doneness. To pump up the flavor a little, we tossed the potatoes in a little cajun seasoning to match the sauce. The final accompaniment was a hard cider from Angry Orchard. We are particularly found of the Apple Ginger and found it matched the burger nicely.

If you are wondering about our little skinny buns... we found these gluten free, vegan Amy's Sandwich Rounds a little while ago in the freezer section and they work well for burgers. In fact, it is really hard to find gluten free buns that are also vegan and these are the best tasting that I've found so far. They do require a little toasting, otherwise they get mushy pretty quick when they touch the toppings, but it is a small price to pay for a bun that tastes pretty decent and has all real ingredients.

Dinner was so good, that I'm looking forward to grilling out in the near future. Unfortunately, the forecast is calling for more wet and cold weather towards the end of this week, so I'll probably be back to using the old crockpot for one last winter hurrah!