Ok, enough heavy posts for a while. Let’s get back to recipes!

I made these Pinto Bean Burgers this afternoon. Bean burgers are one of my favorite things to make because I can play with the ingredients to suit my mood. I cooked the pinto beans from dried beans, and froze them in individual 2 cup portions, roughly equivalent to a can of beans for easy measuring. I flavored the cooking broth, so the flavorings in the burger mix are a bit light. Taste a bit of the mixture for seasoning before you bake off the whole batch if you’re using canned beans.

Something new I’ve been doing with bean burgers is letting the mixture chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before forming the patties and cooking them. The chilling time helps them to stay together better.

Vegan Pinto Bean Burgers
If you have a mini food processor, use it to chop the veggies. If you don’t have one (I don’t), just make sure you get the pieces very small. This recipe makes 6 thin bean burgers.

• 1 small carrot, peeled and very finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 cup very finely chopped onion
• 2 cups cooked pinto beans (1 can rinsed and drained)
• 1 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp liquid smoke
• 1/2 tsp lime juice
• 2/3 cup panko
• 1/3 cup rolled or instant oats
• salt and pepper, to taste

In a large mixing bowl combine all ingredients except panko, oats, and salt and pepper. Mash with a potato masher until all the ingredients are well mixed and most of the beans are mashed. Add in the panko and the oats and mix with a wooden spoon. Add in several dashes of salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with oil or non-stick spray.

Fill 1/3 cup measure with the dough and then form it into a patty about 3 inches in diameter. Place each one on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Flip. Bake for another 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven. If desired, brown the burgers in a pan with a small amount of oil.

Serve on a bun with all the fixings, like lettuce, sliced tomatoes, onion, salsa, cheddar cheese, sliced avocado, ketchup, etc.

I’m going to skip over my Thanksgiving dinner because, as the only person at the table not indulging in turkey, I ended up cooking all of my food in the morning and reheating it just before sitting down to eat.  The reheated meal wasn’t *bad* by any means, but it really just wasn’t that great either.  I need a Thanksgiving where I don’t have to cook all of my food for 1 person.  It’s such a bummer.

Anyway.

Leftover Tofurky is one of the good things about being the only vegetarian at Thanksgiving, because you get that whole adorable ball of soy to eat for the next week.  And I’m pretty sure they changed the formula for making it this year, because the texture of it was far better than I’ve had in the past.

I’ve been enjoying the leftover Tofurky roast on bread that I slather with my homemade cranberry sauce (1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1 bag fresh cranberries; boil it all together for 10 minutes and you’re done), Tofurky gravy, and baby spinach.

I also chopped up some of the leftover roast and added it to lentil soup that I made with the leftover roasted vegetables that I cooked in the pan with the roast.  I also added some mashed yams to the soup, which was delicious but also made it really ugly, so I’ll spare you a photo

I don’t really have much to say about this, except that the recipe is from Veganomicon, it’s suppper easy to make, it’s delicious and I make it quite often.

It’s also low-fat, if that tickles your fancy at all.  I kinda dig that if you replace some of the oil in a recipe with apple sauce, you can also usually decrease the amount of sugar without noticing a difference.  I don’t like things to be super sweet, so that makes me happy.

Also, this recipe doesn’t use any unusual ingredients, which I like.  Some vegan baked goods require a specific egg replacer or something that you might not already have on hand.  But the great thing about banana bread is that the bananas themselves bind the recipe.  Also, you can sub out the molasses for another tbsp or so of apple sauce if you don’t have it on hand.  It comes out a bit lighter in color, but it still tastes great.

Ok so I guess I did have a few things to say about this banana bread.

Twitter can be an awesome thing.  I’ve connected with a bunch of different food bloggers via twitter, as well as a number of companies.  When I saw that Wayfare Foods was offering up free samples of it’s vegan cheese, We Can’t Say It’s Cheese on twitter, I jumped at the chance.  I had heard good things about this product for a while, but I’m hesitant to shell out a bunch of money on a product I’ve never tried.  They sent me a coupon for a free tub of the vegan cheese, which I picked up the other day at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods had both the Cheddar Sauce and the Cheddar Spread.  I bought the Cheddar Spread.  After tasting it my itself, I didn’t love it.  It has a cream cheesy tangy taste to it that I found a little weird.  It almost reminded me of that port wine cheese food that my grandma used to buy in the plastic tubs?

The color was also a little weird.

I decided to spread it thickly on some whole wheat bread slathered with Earth Balance for a vegan grilled cheese.  The problem with many vegan cheeses is that they don’t melt.  This definitely solves that problem, because it’s already a spreadable consistency.  The texture was good, but I just didn’t love the taste by itself.

I’m going to look up some other recipes because I think since the texture is really nice, and the taste certainly isn’t bad, this will taste much better mixed into another dish.  Maybe a casserole of some sort?  Mixed into mashed potatoes?  Heated and poured over broccoli?

What do you think?  How would you use a vegan cheese spread?  I’m in need of some advice.

I want to share with you these great cranberry orange muffins I made last night.  I’ve had a lousy couple of days and these totally made me happy.

Sometimes you have to stress eat, okay?

These are on the healthier side, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.  They are also super festive with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow.  The color is outstanding.  They are quick to make, so these would be great as a last minute addition to your vegan thanksgiving menu.  Or be weird and plan ahead to make them for Christmas.  They would also be yummy as a brunch option while you’re cooking up a storm of veggie goodness.  I hope you give them a try.

Vegan Cranberry Orange Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tbsp Earth Balance
• 1 navel orange
• 1 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries

Preheat oven at 400 degrees.

Grease a 12-cup muffin pan (or two 6-cup muffin pans).

In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients dry ingredients.

Zest the entire orange.  Reserve 1 tbsp for the muffins, and save the remainder in the freezer closed tightly in a freezer bag for another purpose.

Melt the Earth Balance and pour into another mixing bowl.

Juice the orange into a measuring cup.  Add water until you have 1 full cup of liquid.  Add the orange juice mixture to the mixing bowl with the Earth Balance.  Add the orange zest and flax seeds to the mixing bowl.

In a small bowl, combine the cranberries and add 2 tbsp or so of the dry mixture, just enough to lightly coat the cranberries.

Combine the wet and dry mixtures, and stir just until they are mixed.  A few dry spots of batter are fine.

Fold in the cranberries.  Divide the batter evenly between 12 muffin cups.  The muffin cups should be generously filled so that you get that yummy muffin top!

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are lightly golden brown.  Cool on a wire rack in the tins until the muffins are room temperature.