Black Bean Burgers, Sweet Potato Fries and Avocado Sauce

This was a very refreshing meal. I loved the avocado dip and was really excited about the spices on the sweet potatoes. The burgers were delicious and as you can see from the picture I don't think they needed a bun. The dusting of corn meal added a nice crunch to the burgers and complimented the black beans nicely. We used the avocado dip for both the burgers and fries.


Avocado Dip
1 avocado
1/2 C plain non-fat yogurt
2 T light sour cream
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
2 scallions, chopped
1 lime, juiced
salt & pepper, to taste

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.

Sweet Potato Fries
2 sweet potatoes
2 T olive oil
1 t paprika
1/2 t ground coriander
1/2 t chili powder
salt & pepper, to taste

Cut potatoes into "fries" size pieces. Toss potatoes with evoo in a large bowl. Add spices and coat. Spread potatoes on baking sheet and bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes, until lightly browned and crispy. Don't be alarmed if the potatoes loose their crispness. Sweet potatoes hold more moisture then other potatoes so they become a little limp after coming out of the oven.

Recipe Source: Erica's Kitchen Adventures

Black Bean Burgers
1 can black beans rinsed and drained
1 egg white
1/4 C corn
1/4 grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 T diced pickled jalapeno or fresh
2 T reduced fat sour cream
1/2 t cumin
2 T minced red onion
3 T chopped cilantro
1 T salsa or diced tomato
1/2 t salt and ground pepper
1/4 C corn meal

Lightly smash beans with potato masher leaving some beans intact. Add egg through salt and pepper and mix to combine. Form mixture into desired size burgers. They will feel very wet and may come apart. Place corm meal on a small plate and carefully dust burgers with corn meal. Let the burgers sit for at least 15 minutes to firm up. Heat skillet over medium heat add 1 T vegetable oil and cook burgers 6-8 minutes until lightly browned flipping once.

Vegetable Lo Mein Stir Fry

We have this fabulous heavy wok and I love using it. This vegetable noodle stir fry was perfect. With stir fry there typically isn't a recipe I follow. I think this is a good go to dish that can be created out of ingredients on hand. It just takes a bit of chopping. I like to prep everything prior to heating up the wok. After the preparation this is a quick cooking meal due to the high heat used.

Vegetable Lo Mien

1 box lo mien or Thai rice noodles

1/4 C soy sauce

1/2 C broth (chicken or vegetable)

1 t vegetable oil

1 t sesame oil

1/2 onion, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 C snow peas

4-6 mushrooms, sliced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 large thump fresh ginger, minced or grated

2 carrots, sliced

1 small jalapeno, minced or a pinch of red pepper flakes

1 T corn starch

1 egg, beaten

Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain and rinse, set aside. Whisk broth and corn starch, set aside. Chop all vegetables, beat egg, measure out soy sauce. Heat wok over high heat for at least 8 minutes. Add vegetable oil and sesame oil to hot wok. Add vegetable is order leaving a few minutes between each batch- onion, carrots, bell pepper, snow peas, mushrooms. Vegetables should be tender-crisp. Add jalapeno, garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant, about 1 minute. Make a well in the middle of the vegetables and add beaten egg. Cook until just scrambled. Add soy sauce and mix. Add noodles and toss to combine. Finish with the broth mixture. Toss well to coat everything.

Vegetable Stuffed Zuchini

This is a delicious side dish or meal in its self. My best friend Tess made this for us when we were visiting her on Nantucket this Spring. It is really a versatile recipe. You can stuff them with whatever vegetables are on hand. As you can see from the picture, I used yellow squash. I of course couldn't make it as good as Tess's but it was still pretty tasty! Thanks Tess! Stuffed Zucchini
2 Zucchini (yellow or green)
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 small red onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 C flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/4 C goat cheese or feta cheese
1 t evoo
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut each zucchini lengthwise and carefully scoop out the membrane, leaving a bit of the "flesh" to hold its form. Chop up discarded zucchini. Place zucchinis on a baking sheet skin side up and bake for 5-8 minutes or until slightly softened. Mix tomato, onion,garlic, parsley, including discarded zucchini in a bowl. Mix in goat cheese, evoo and salt and pepper. Stuff each zucchini half with vegetable mixture and bake for 10-15 minutes until heated through.

Sausage Hogies with Green Peppers, Onions and Mushrooms

I don't think you can call this a recipe but I feel the need to post this to remind you that it is a good go to meal that we have actually never had in our house! It was also our first night using the grill.

Sausage & Pepper Hogies
Sweet Italian sausage or Italian turkey sausage (or your choice of sausage)
1 green bell pepper thinly sliced
1 a yellow onion thinly sliced
5 button mushrooms sliced
2 t Worcestershire sauce
evoo
salt and pepper
your choice of cheese (I used American this time)
hogie buns

Saute onions until they are soft and lightly browned. Add peppers and mushrooms. Grill sausage until cooked through. Add Worcestershire sauce at and salt and pepper at the end. Lightly toast hogies and place sausage in bun topped with cheese and vegi mixture.

Dead Grill Walking

You know when sometimes you think something is the funniest thing in the world and then you take some time and bring it up again and realize it is totally lame! Well this title sure fits the bill. Don't pay attention to it, its just another personal joke between Dave and I. Let's just name this post something else! Words escape me at this moment. Maybe I will come back and rename it later...
We had a really nice day yesterday. I won't mention anything about the nice blanket of wet snow that we woke up to. Dave made some delicious pancakes topped with sliced strawberries and bananas and a little dusting of cinnamon. If you have never tried the cinnamon, do it! It just brings out the flavors of the pancake and maple syrup. Yum!
We puttered around the house most of the morning and waiting for the weather to turn around. Around 3pm the sun poked through the clouds and we could finally do what we wanted to do all day, get on our bikes. We had strict plans for the weekend and had to stick to them. The weekend starts on Friday for me. I did a nice long ride with me friends Susan and Steve to Breckenridge. It was fabulous. I am really taking to the cycling thing! Saturday we needed to give equal time to our mountain bikes so we had our first ride around the lake trails and Sunday was back to the road bikes. We were able to fit in a ride around the lake. It almost seemed like we had the road to ourselves. I think the weather deterred all other cyclist so the paths were our own!
Now on to the point of this blog... We had earned ourselves a nice dinner after burning all those calories. We decided on filets with scalloped potatoes a side salad and a great Pinot Nior. It was delicious.
I'll get to the recipes at the end. But first, let's get the title of this post out of the way and answer the question you have been asking yourself since I went on this wild tangent. The GRILL. We have had this tin can for 5 years. Before we were graced with this object that takes up room on our deck it belonged to the Roses. They gave it to us when they were upgrading to a bigger grill built for a family of 4. We were so excited to take this off their hands. We had just moved into our home and Susan just kept giving us stuff to fill up our empty square footage we had just purchased. You would have thought she had just given us a pot of gold. Oh man, we felt like we were large and in charge! The morning after the first night we used it (I wish I could remember what we made, hmm) I was walking down the stairs extremely excited for my cup of coffee when I see this little light outside on our deck. What the heck it that? I open the slider and hear this little blowing sound. You know, that sound the grill makes when the gas is on. The GRILL was still on!!! We had left it on all night long. Oh, our neighbors would have loved us, the "new" people just burned our entire complex down a week after they move in. Thankfully this didn't play out and we not only still have our home but that dang GRILL!! We have replaced every element on it trying to make it limp along. Grills are expensive, we needed to make this one last.
So this brings me to the dinner menu. I like my steak (well done). I know I am blushing as I write this. Filet mignon should not be cooked until it is as dark as a tire but I like it that way! Dave likes his the normal way. He put mine on 8 minutes before he put his on to ensure my happiness. The time goes off and Dave puts his filet on the grill thinking that for medium rare 4 minutes a side. The time goes off again and we take the steaks off to rest for the allotted time. The rest of our dinner is ready and we sit down to a beautiful table and Dave cuts into his steak, RARE. His steak is still mooing! Mine was nice and charred on the outside, just the way I like it and medium inside! Man, was Dave mad. He had to put his steak back on the grill for another 10 minutes. I know what most of you are thinking. 10 more minutes. But yes our grill is not like any other of its kind. It doesn't cook! So finally after I fed Dave the majority of my steak after eating around the middle and Dave had eaten his rarish hunk of meat we laughed and threatened that we would walk that GRILL down to the dumpster hence the name of this post Dead Grill Walking. We didn't end up doing this because we don't have a replacement quite yet but the days are numbered. We ARE getting a new grill!

I like have a sauce with my steak since I am still acquiring a taste for red meat. I decided on a Chimichurri sauce. It actually tasted really fresh with the steak.

Filet Mignon with a Chimichurri Sauce

2 filets coated with fresh pepper and salt

3/4 C of flat leaf parsley

1 t fresh oregano

2 garlic cloves

pinch of red pepper flakes

1/4 C evoo

1/2 t salt

3 T red wine vinegar

Place all ingredients in food processor and process until combined. Let stand for 1 hour before using.

Dave wanted either gratin potatoes or scalloped potatoes. I always shy away from these recipes because they are loaded with fat. I just can't bring myself to make them. I can eat them if they are served to me but I can't just seem to cook with cream in our house. So I searched on the Internet and combined a couple of recipes and came up with this nice little keeper. My main go to site is Eating Well. I absolutely love this magazine and consistently make their recipes.

Scalloped Potatoes Slimmed-Down

3 cloves of garlic

1 lbs potatoes (we used fingerling)

2 C low fat milk

1/4 C of a large onion chopped

1-2 T fresh rosemary chopped

1-2 T fresh Thyme chopped

1 t salt

pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 C low fat sour cream

3 T freshly grated Parmesan

Cut 1 clove of garlic in half and rum over the inside of a gratin dish and coat dish with cooking spray. Mince remaining garlic. Combine garlic, herbs, onion, nutmeg, salt and milk in heavy saucepan. Bring to a simmer, uncovered until potatoes are tender. Transfer potatoes to prepared dish using a slotted spoon. Transfer 1/4 cup of the milk mixture to a small bowl and whisk in sour cream. Pour over potatoes and top with Parmesan. Preheat broiler. Broil until golden brown and serve immediately.

Lentil Loaf!

Every time I say this Dave laughs. I have to agree. The two words just don't go together. I have to say that I went out on a limb on this one. I have had lentils in the cubbard for quite a while. Since we were going away for the week (I"ll dedicate an entire post to our vacation) I wanted to not go to the grocery store and use up what we had. We did a really good job clearing out the freezer but I just can't seem to get through the corner cubbard that seems to open into the black hole of canned and packaged products.

Lentils have been on my mind and I just couldn't seem to find a recipe that sparked my interest. Kate our neighbor is always making the most amazing meals out of grains and dried beans and I have been quizzing her on her recipes. Finally I found this Vegetarian Meatloaf recipe after talking to her about what I could do with these little round/flat dried things. In my obsessive search of food blogs I found this blog and really find her recipes to be quite intriguing. The author is a bit more "vegetarian schooled" them me. You will see that she uses nutritional yeast and flax seed in the recipe. I decided on adding cheese instead!! I would lump her in the Kate category. Someday I will get there! So here is my take on the Lentil Loaf!

2 C water
1 t salt
3/4 C lentils (I think I used more and increased the water)
1 onion diced
1/2 C oats
1/2 C bread crumbs
1 egg beaten
3/4 C tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic minced
1 t dried basil (I think I used an Italian seasoning)
1 T fresh parsley chopped
1/2 t ground pepper
1/4 C shredded mozzarella
2 T grated parm

Boil water and add lentils. Cook covered until tender, about 30 minutes or more. I didn't have to drain too much water but you may have to. I think I even added a little more water towards the end because they were drying up. Drain and mash with a potato masher. Mix lentils with onions, oats, and bread crumbs. Add egg , tomato sauce, and spices. Spoon into a loaf pan sprayed with non-stick spray. Bake covered at 350 degrees about 40 minutes until firm. Cool 10 minutes and then turn out onto a platter.

Top with glaze 1/2 cup tomato sauce + 1 T brown sugar.

Recipes I want to try

My ever evolving list:
I am feeling very overwhelmed! I want to make so many things and just can't keep track of them. I have decided to post all the links here and then I can keep the organized and easily accecible. Hopefully this works.

1. Chickpea burgers (sub black beans)

3. Feta Spinach pine nut tart

4. Pineapple Black Bean Enchiladas

5. Chicken meatballs

6. Chicken and Rice wraps

7. Risotto Cakes

9. Orange Chicken

10. Black and white bean dip

13. Greek turkey meatballs

14. Taco hummus

15. Candied orange

18. Mexican Rice annies eats

19. Berry pie

26. Baked Feta

27. Beef Negimaki

28. Barley Risotto

29. Buffalo bites

30. Sesame Chicken

31. Apricot Preserves

32. Chicken Parm Burgers made it and it was delicious. will blog next time I make it.

33. Scallion Pancakes -made it haven't blog it yet

34. Sweet and Sour Chinese Chicken

36. Cast iron pizza

Buffalo Chicken Pizza -made it, delicious!

37. Tomato Pie

38. Coffee Cake with apricot creamcheese filling http://www.blogger.com/

39. Breakfast (Chicken) Patties http

40. Polenta pumkin stuffed poblanos

41. Hot Brccoli Dip

42. Rolls and burger topping

43. Granola

44. Honey Wheat Buns

45. Stuffed Poblano Peppers

46. Tofu recipes

47. Mu Shu Tofu

48. Lemon Thyme Chicken

50. Safron Rice

51. Pineapple Chicken Salad

52. Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole

53. Stuffed Zucchini

54. Sweet Potato Gnocchi

55. Tuna Noodle Casserole - made it, pretty good!

56. Pumpkin Blondes

57. Scallion Lemon Risotto

58. White Bean Chicken Chili & White Bean Chicken Chili

59. 6-hour Chili

60. Rotisserie Chicken

61. Tomato Mozarella and Basil Tart

62. Ham and Cheddar Gratin

63. Soups and Stews & Others taco soup, broccoli, chicken tortilla, sweet potato, tortellini

63. Shrimp Cakes

64. Orange Chicken