Today I had the usual breakfast; cereal and milk.  I don’t think my vegetarian challenge will really impact my breakfast.  95% of the time I eat cereal/oatmeal/bagels from home and 5% of the time I get some greasy sausage, egg, and cheese from the cafeteria at work.  The work cafeteria is questionable at best so I don’t foresee the breakfast sandwich being a temptation.

Last night I cooked my lunch which was pesto/cheese tortellini with marinara sauce.  Again, this wasn’t really atypical of my lunches at work.  After work however I decided to get creative.  One of my friends sent me a link to a black bean burger recipe on his friend’s food blog.  Sarah came over so we made a double batch and ended up with five burgers.  Here’s the recipe (thanks Paul and Emily):

Ingredients (for two burgers):

• 1 cup cooked or canned black beans (Eden’s organic is the best!)
• 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 2 small slices cheese (optional – I used mozarella)

Method:

• Drain and rinse the beans. Mash them in a bowl until they form a thick paste. Really use that elbow grease!
• Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
• Form 2 patties and cook in a saute pan over medium heat, 5 minutes per side, or until the burger becomes dark and crispy. If adding cheese, place on the burger when the second side is almost fully-cooked and cover so that the cheese will melt nicely.

The mostly empty pot of whipped black beans.

Cooking up my first batch of black bean veggie burgers.

Feta cheese, hmmm amazing.

This was my first black bean burger and honestly I think we whipped the beans too much because the burgers were pretty mushy for my taste.  We used some kind of hand-held blender thingy that one of my roommates has.  For most all foods, my tastes are texture-driven.  I like crunchy foods or at least foods I have to chew on a bit before swallowing.  For example, I love baked potatoes but I hate whipped mashed potatoes, I love bananas but they have to be pretty ripe, as soon as they go soft I think they’re gross.  I figure that I’ll save the mushy foods for when I’m 88 and don’t have any teeth left.  I think I’m going to take the leftover burgers and put them in a quesadilla with salsa and cheese or something.  I would definitely make the burgers again, however, next time I would mash them with a fork instead of whipping them and then I would add chopped onions and jalapenos to give them a crunchier texture and a little bit of a kick.

We were in a bit of a rush to head to a party at a friend’s house so each of us ate two burgers and then took off.  We soon realized that we were still hungry so we stopped by a pizza place with one of my roommates and another buddy and picked up a cheese pie (pizza as a vegetable?).  We all scarfed the pizza en route to the party and decided to put a Smirnoff Ice inside of the pizza box and present it to the host of the party who iced me on the top of my 48th 4,000 footer :) it didn’t work though so we just put it on the kitchen table for the next unsuspecting victim.  If you’re not YouTube-Savvy and you’re not familiar with “icing” it goes something like this (this video isn’t us, but this is pretty much what happened, and yes we know it’s not cool anymore but who cares.).

All in all day #2 was successful.  Ate lots of cookies and had a growler of beer, both are still technically vegetarian options #winning.