Baby Busey Burger

Gary Busey was born 67 years ago yesterday! I wonder if baby Busey's visage was portentous. That is, I wonder if he was an ugly baby.

"Baby's first Salisbury steak!" No, Rookie of the Year, bad Rookie of the Year. Even the best Salisbury steak you ever ate was the corpse of a cow. We're doing bean burgers instead! Without wheat gluten, because I couldn't find it at the supermarket.

The salad you see above was a delicious one whipped up by my girlfriend. Lettuce, cucumber, Granny Smith apple, chives, parsley, and some oil from a jar of olives because we ran out of olive oil.

makes 4 patties

INGREDIENTS:

1 15-oz. can red kidney beans

1/2 c. white rice

plain bread crumbs

1/2 yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

fresh parsley

fresh oregano

salt

garlic salt

ground black pepper

hot sauce

1 spoonful ground flax seed

2 spoonfuls water

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cook the rice.
2. Stir the flax seed into the water in a small bowl. Ramekin!

3. Sauté the onion with some oil in a small pan over medium-high heat. After a few minutes, add the garlic. Preheat the oven to 425F.
4. Scrape the contents of the pan into a large bowl. Drain the beans and put them in the bowl, too, as well as the flax junk and everything else. Add a few shakes of bread crumbs at a time, for use as a binder or thickener or something. Mash everything up really well, until it holds together.
5. Form four patties. Pop them in the oven for 5 minutes, then transfer to a pan and fry for approx. 6-8 minutes each side over medium heat.

Tiny Mix Tapes continues to publish my comic. This one's called "To send." I find it literally relevant because I just received a letter from my Australian vegan pen pal and need to write a reply soon. (Spoiler alert: the next strip is "To receive." It's the last one in the bunch, but if I can get my fingers on a scanner you might get to see a new one, "Desire orders.")

Vegan Dinner for Two! #1

My friend came over last night to cook bean burgers. She baked some brownies which narrowly missed the vegan mark. Luckily for our sweet teeth, I'd made a chocolate cheezecake using a recipe from a book my parents gave me for Christmas, My Sweet Vegan. I'd put up the recipe, but I'm not feeling motivated right now. I couldn't find vegan graham crackers, so I made my own using this recipe.

I used a little bit of Tofutti, but most of the cream cheeze I made from scratch using this recipe. So much work! It's obscenely rich and chocolate-y.

The burgers were my standard recipe which I'm too lazy to link to. To go with those I baked some rolls using this recipe. Also blended up some cashews, avocado, vegetable broth, and cilantro for a spread. Yum!

The "#1" in the title of this post is a bit of magical thinking. If there's a first, there's gotta be a second. Who else wants to make dinner with me?

Oh yeah, Tiny Mix Tapes is gonna be publishing my comic, A Thousand K.s. Here's "Loneliness."

CORRECTION: Not pictured (because consumed before photo shoot), sweet potato fries.

Kansas Red Kidney Bean Patty Open Sandwich with Green Spread

 

That title's a mouthful, and so is this recipe! Hahaha ugh. This one's named for the 150th anniversary of Kansas' admission as the 34th state. It makes use of the failed bread recipe from yesterday, which I thought I'd be able to fry like chapati bread. I was wrong. Since the dough is sort of sticky it made a mess in the pan. So I rolled it up again, flattened it out, and baked it. Bam. Kinda weird, but whatever. I think tomorrow I'll venture a third attempt at recuperating all that flour by boiling the dough. Bagels?

One thing to note is that I meant to use only 1/4 cup of water in the patties but wasn't paying attention to the measuring cups and used 1/3. There seems to be a new trend in my cooking of failure to properly mind water.

makes approx. 4-5 servings

Patties

INGREDIENTS:

1 15.5-oz. can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1/2 c. bread crumbs

1/2 c. vital wheat gluten

1/3 c. water

2 Tbsp. shoyu soy sauce

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 small white onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. tarragon

1 tsp. sage

1/2 tsp. thyme

1/2 tsp. paprika

DIRECTIONS:

1. Fry the onion in a pan with some oil over medium heat. When translucent, add garlic for a minute or two. Remove from heat.

2. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Mash the kidney beans in a large mixing bowl with a wooden spoon or other blunt instrument. Add everything else, mix together, and knead with your hands until it holds together in a dough. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, form the dough into patties, and stick those suckers in the oven. After 15 min., flip them and flatten them out if need be, then bake for another 15 min.

Spread

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 c. cashews

1/2 c. water

1 red bell pepper
1 avocado, skinned

1 jalapeno, chopped and partially seeded

1 Tbsp. sunflower oil

2 Tbsp. tahini

1 handful cilantro

1/3 c. water

1/4 tsp. salt

juice of 1/2 lemon

ground black pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Soak the cashews in water for several hours.

2. Roast the bell pepper over your gas burner. If you've got electric you're out of luck. I held the pepper by the stem, removed the grate (or whatever it's called), and cranked the burner to Hi. Wait for the skin to sizzle and blacken. Once it's crispy, place the pepper in a bowl and cover (e.g., with a dish towel).

3. Puree the cashews and water in a blender. Add remaining ingredients except bell pepper. Puree.

4. Seed the bell pepper. It's turn has come, so jam it into the bottom of the blender and press the button.

"Bun"

INGREDIENTS:

1 failed recipe of yeast bread

DIRECTIONS:

1. Attempt to fry in a pan over high heat. Remove from heat, knead, and form into a patty.

2. Bake at 350F for 10 minutes.

This is one of the only meals I've eaten with a fork and knife since going vegan. Maybe it's because I like to cut things up pretty well before cooking them, but a knife is only really essential when you're trying to slice through flesh.

I recently bought a book from Friends of Animals by Lee Hall, On Their Own Terms. According to some guy on the back cover, "In this fascinating and illuminating book, Lee Hall calls [...] upon us to seek and celebrate a world where fish can swim, free in clean water, and bees and birds can fly in peace. And it offers a plan to make it happen." Can't wait!