So, I like vegetarian recipes. I do. I mean, I eat meat – I like hamburgers. I like pepperoni pizza. Ham can be divine. Chicken too, when cooked right. I just don’t enjoy COOKING meat, which is something I hope to grow out of soon. I hate touching raw meat, worrying about whether it’s done enough, etc. But we’ve already been over this.
Yesterday I felt like cooking. Instead of going to the gym, I found this recipe for Rachael Ray’s Vegetarian Chickpea Burgers and decided to try them.
What I love about recipes like this are their flexibility – you can make them as fancy schmancy or as simple as you want. I opted for the cheap hamburger buns, but at the very least I spray-buttered and garlic-powdered them and then stuck them under the broiler for a few minutes. However, these burgers would be AWESOME with some homemade buns, or expensive whole grain buns. You could experiment with various cheeses, and SPICES. I like to arbitrarily add spices to things, and the thing I love about these is I can actually taste them and season to taste before cooking.
I substituted olive oil for the vegetable oil in this recipe. Oh, how I love olive oil.
As a result of my chickpea burger experiment…
I am pretty excited about trying more vegetarian recipes. The thing is, when I tell people that, they assume I’m going to stop eating meat. Not true. I’ll eat meat, as long as I don’t have to cook it. Then they tell me they know a vegetarian who is either too fat or too thin; overly fed on cheese and bread or the victim of severe malnutrition. Here’s the thing: I DO NOT CARE. Isn’t it possible for people to eat vegetarian food simply because they like the flavor combinations, or the lure of trying something new and different?
An aside:
I haven’t been writing much, but I’ve been baking a lot. I’m on a retro bend – I’m digging recipes out of my ‘56 Betty Crocker cookbook and making chocolate layer cake, white layer cake, a delicious brown-sugar based (and ridiculously but wonderfully intense) frosting. The results haven’t been too pretty, but I’m trucking. After I master the art of a simple 2-layer frosted cake, maybe I’ll move on to decorating.
Or maybe I’ll just eat way too much cake.
Until next time, my friends, in which I would love to guarantee some compelling photography (but do not know whether I can follow through)!
