Veggie Patties

I'm always on the lookout for delicious meatless recipes for three reasons: meat is expensive, not my favorite, and not always the healthiest. When I was planning this month's meals, I plunged into a few vegetarian/vegan blogs for ideas and came out clutching a tasty-looking veggie burger recipe. It was a vegan recipe, using flax meal and water in place of an egg. As a result of my last (and only other) foray into vegan baking, I actually had some flax meal, so I assembled the ingredients today and started grinding, chopping, mashing, and mixing. Vegan baking makes me feel like a kid again, in the backyard mixing mud, leaves, and grass in a bucket. These burgers had grated carrots, oat flour, breadcrumbs, chopped parsley, mashed beans, sunflower seeds, and chopped almonds in them. Definitely backyard bucket material. 

When it came time to pour in the watery flax meal goo, I got a whiff of it and decided to dump it down the drain instead, replacing it with normal chicken eggs. When I saucily told Jeff about my rebellion against the vegan recipe and explained the smelly vegan egg substitute, he started grinning. I could see the wheels turning in his head. He said "what do vegans use for cheese? Tears?" Bwahahaha! I was laughing at that one all day! I'm not hating on vegans. I actually admire people who can go 100% plant based. But you have to admit, Jeff hit the nail on the head! I always say that the reason I'm not vegetarian is pork and the reason I'm not vegan is cheese.

While I was making the veggie burgers, Jeff got on youtube and found the scene from Parks and Rec where Ron and Chris have a burger-cook off. Ron is a devoted lover of red meat and Chris is a health nut. That show may be a tad on the...off-color side in general, but when it's good and funny, it's really good and funny, and that scene is classic. We were both cracking up. 

Anyways, the veggie burgers. Oh boy. They smushed nicely together into thick moist patties, almost like mud pies. I George Foreman grilled them and they came out toasty and fragrant. We fixed them up like hamburgers on buns with mayo, BBQ sauce, and cheese. We left off the lettuce, because honestly, with the whole thing being made of fresh stuff, lettuce was superfluous. At dinner I plunked a hearty heavy bunned burger in front of each person and watched the events unfold with growing mirth. By halfway through dinner, I could barely chew because I was laughing so hard! 

Jay's burger--or shall we call it a patty instead--fell off of his bun after the first bite and he left it broken and crumbled on the table with a very confused, slightly disgusted, hilariously disgruntled look on his face. Then he pieced the bun back together, plucked the cheese off of the patty, and ate that. He said "I like the bun and the cheese part best." 

Rose took one bite, made the funniest "I'm trying to eat this because you're eating it, but THIS IS WEIRD AND GROSS" face ever. She left her entire patty, bun and all alone after that bite. Thankfully I made my best-ever batch of oven fries to go with dinner so she still found some sustenance.

Jeff slowly and methodically ate his patty one bite at a time, with a semi-smug look on his face, like "I'm such an amazing husband for eating this weird dinner that my wife made, even though it's weird." When I called him out on it, he said that was a good interpretation. Hah! Making the patties was worth the trouble for all of the belly laughs they inspired! While we were eating dinner, Jeff played the Parks and Rec burger cook off scene at me again "because it's worth repeating," he said.

I didn't dislike the patties but I didn't love them either. They were ok--rather a lot of work for just an "ok" meal, but now I know. 

I was trying to capture his disapproving look, but he caught on to mine and Jeff's suppressed laughter and started grinning.

Normally it's kind of depressing to make a dinner that nobody in the family likes, but tonight I thoroughly enjoyed it.