Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Veggie Patty-licious

This is the story of how these ingredients:

became dinner:

It all started with the book "Skinny Bitch" by  Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman, a "diet" book with colorful language that cracked me up and inspired me.  The book basically advocates vegan eating.  I'll be honest. The book itself didn't give me any new info.  I've heard this all before. I read Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and I lived in Eureka Springs, which is the Taos of the Ozarks. I've heard the whole cruelty to animals speech and I do not dispute it. I just freely admit that it never before kept me away from a tall glass of milk or a medium rare filet. 

Until Skinny Bitch. For some reason, the presentation whether it's simply the confrontational attitude or the multitudinous amount of swear words (which I loved, by the way) made me pay attention this time. Still, to be completely honest, it's not even the PETA speech that gets me, it's just that I suddenly thought "I've never really liked eating meat...so why am I doing it?"  I could get up on a big moral high horse and tell you that I've been enlighted and that the poor fish hurt from being hooked but that really isn't me or how I think.  We're people; they're animals. We're the top of the food chain.  I'm middle America all the way and I know it. I grew up in a family of hunters in a community of hunters.  My dad and his friends took vacation time to go out in the deer field every year.  My siblings and I all knew how to cast a fishing line practically before we could walk.  BUT, unlike a former acquaintance whose father goes to Africa twice a year to shoot big game just so he can hang heads and skins on his den walls, my family ate what dad brought down. We grew up poor and I admit my dad poached deer like crazy to put meat on our table. I still have no problem with that at all, nor do I have a problem with people who do eat meat.  On the flip side, I've known for a long time that as long as I eat a varied vegetarian diet I'll get plenty of protein and I'm very well aware that factory farms are not the same thing as hunting a deer or two out in their natural habitat for my family's personal use and to keep the deer populations from starving themselves out.  One is conservation; the other is a really poor process that's mostly about dollars not purity of food or compassion for animals. Of course, I don't like the idea of factory farming animals in cruel ways although I stop short at the argument that if we didn't eat cows the ozone  layer would be safe from cow farts. 

I know I'm simplifying but I'm doing it to keep things light not because I take these things lightly.

My point is, in a nutshell, I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not.  For me, this is all about how nice it would be to get off the protein guilt merry-go-round and not worry about it all the time. I can't tell you how many years I've spent preferring to eat a quinoa salad or a vegetable salad with a thick piece of whole-grained peasant bread but denying myself thinking I had to eat a hunk of meat. Well, no more. I'm not completely locking myself in because, quite frankly, I don't do well with ever telling myself "no" to anything without a rebellious back door to escape thorugh when I feel the need, but over the last few weeks the only animal flesh I've had is teeny amount of chicken in soup, part of a crab cake, and two bites of Gene's birthday steak.  I just don't crave meat so I'm getting off the guilt ride, South Beach and Atkins be damned.

Earlier in the year, I went on a 3 month diet with coworkers and lost 20 lbs.  Since then I've gained back 8 lbs followed by losing 4 lbs the first week I stopped eating meat, followed by I'm-not-sure-what-but-it-can't-be-good (I refuse to get on the scale) since this horrible past week where I've been ravenous at night and the voices in my head won't shut up until I feed them popcorn covered in butter and melted marshmallow at 2am.  Being inside my own head is like living out a Stephen King novel behind my eyes at times.

Living with a meat and potatoes husband complicates the process a little but it's not as bad as I first imagined. For one, for years now, I've often made dinner and not eaten the meat entree, just made sure there were several vegetable sides so this is just more of the same. I also talked to Gene about not only getting back to him eating a fatty fish twice a week, that I also would like us both to go vegetarian at least one night a week for the sake of his heart disease. To be honest, I expected a little grumbling but he said he was up for it as long as he didn't feel like he was going hungry.  Fair enough.

In the meantime, I've been doing some work at the grocery. Less meat; more nutritional alternatives: brown rice, quinoa, soy milk (plus regular milk for Gene), lots and lots of veggies, my favorite.  Gene admitted the other day that he'd tried the soy milk and while he hates it in his coffee he can live with it on his cereal and has been eating it that way for a few days now. Rock on!  I kept wondering why the container was going down so fast. Duh.  But how cool is that? I did not expect him to try it, nor did I ever mention a word about it, I just left the container in the fridge next to the regular milk and he took it up on himself to give it a whirl.  Maybe that's the key to this whole thing and the lesson I should learn. I don't like anyone telling me what to do, why do I think he would? He's not a child. But if I have the other choices available to him he will try it on his own.

Last night was our first vegetarian night although it was lacto-ovo, well..ovo, rather than vegan. Hey, you can only push people, including me, so far so fast.  I can live without meat or a tall cold glass of milk with my cookies but if you try to take away my cheese and butter, you're gonna to lose fingers, got it? 

Our first official vegetarian meal last night was Veggie Patties with Spicy Basil Aoli and Microwave-Baked Sweet Potatoes.  Our final review was two thumbs solidly...undecided.  The sweet potatoes, of course, were good. The veggie patties were okay, we both thought, in that the flavor was good but the insides were a little too light, texture-wish.  Crunchy-ish but not solid.  I think what we needed was more heft. I did add quinoa to weigh it down a bit but I think next time I'll add legumes of some kind to "meat" them up more.  It was like eating Chinese. We liked the flavor but a half hour later Gene warmed up the leftover salisbury steak I'd made him the night before and I ate a bean burrito.  So....cooking is like comedy...they can't all be gems. Sometimes you have to polish up the recipes a bit through trial and error until you really make a winner.  I'm going to give you the recipes because there was nothing exactly WRONG with the veggie patties, they just didn't quite muster as an entree. As a side they would have been great.  But keep in mind, I'll be working on these to get a better texture because the flavor was very nice and I don't want to walk away from that.  As a side note, the recipes are my own. I looked at something similar in a couple of places online but the combination, method, and seasonings are my own in both the veggie patties and the aoli they're served with.

VEGGIE PATTIES WITH SPICY BASIL AOILI

recipe by Glenna Anderson Muse

Chunk the vegetables in uniform smallish size:

1 large carrot, peeled

1/2 red or yellow onion

1/2 red or green pepper

2 ribs celery

Handful sugar snap peas

Grind the veggies in the food processor, adding in batches along with:

1/2 cup toasted walnuts

1 cup cooked quinoa

1/5 cup toasted sesame seeds

1 clove garlic

To this mixture, add:

1 egg, scrambled lightly with a fork (oh no, ovo!)

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tsp worcesthire sauce

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp Hungarian paprika

1 tsp annato

1 tsp minced fresh parsley

1 tsp vegetable stock base (JB Abrams is my choice)

1 tsp pepper

Salt to taste

1 tsp Pampered Chef Bell Pepper Rub (optional)

3/4-1 cup matso cracker meal or bread crumbs to make mixture dry enough to form into patties without falling apart, the consistency should be the same as a crab cake.

Form into six large patties, dredge in additioanl bread crumbs, and lay out on a surface covered in was paper.  Set into fridge to chill for about 2 hours. This makes the patties, like crab cakes, retain their form easier when pan fried.

SPICY BASIL AOLI

I could walk you through the whole process of making mayo, which I would normally do, but it didn't happen that way this time. By the time I got through tinkering with the veggie patties it was almost time for Family Guy, and..well... a girl's got to have priorities. It was Sunday night after all.

So...the easy way to do this is to start with

1/2 cup good mayonnaise such as Hellman's

Chinese or Louisianna hot sauce to taste

1 tsp fresh basil, minced

a small pinch of sugar

1 tbsp vinegar

Mix all the ingredients together and dollop onto veggie patties.

For my basil sugar, I used a combo that my cousin Ann gave me as a "treat" the other day. This is such a unique combination but it worked beautifully for this dipping sauce.

And then when it's all done it looks like this:

Comments

[sher]

WOW!!! This is big for you. That looks wonderful. I don't like most store bought veggies burgers---but I love them made at home. Yours looks delicious. I have to try that.

Now go untie Gene and let him have a Little Debbie's cake!

[Albany Jane]

This looks amazing!
And woo-hoo for the hubby trying new things!

[jennywenny]

It certainly looks tasty, even if it isnt that nice. I really like black bean burgers, I posted on it a couple of weeks back.

Fat free vegan kitchen always has fantastic ideas. I make her seitan pepperoni at least once a month for my sandwiches!

Good luck with the not eating meat, I've been umming and ahhing over trying to eat meat again and I just cant face it so I wont.

[egoldstein]

I've found that it was easy to have one non-meat meal per week, then two... Now we alternate meat and non-meat days with my husband not noticing the missing meat.

[tom]

Good for you...I do the same, just trying to limit the amount of meat and dairy consumed. If you look at those diets deemed "healthy" such as the much praised Mediterranean diet, you'll see that meat and dairy really takes a much less prominent role (as well as portion sizes being much smaller). Same goes for traditional Asian cuisines; meat was expensive, so you ate it sparingly. Some would argue that the health issues regarding obesity that are increasingly being seen in Japan and China are directly tied to huge increase in the consumption of meat and dairy(as well as to a lesser extent, processed foods).

Could you give us a recipe for how you make sweet potatoes in the microwave? Yours look great...mine inevitably end up shrivelled...I think they require different instructions than regular white spuds. Do you agree?

[MyKitchenInHalfCups]

I think we're about right together on this one. Mean generally leaves me cold - one bite of a nice steak once a year and I enjoy the taste but want no more. This burger and sweet potato look incredible!! Wow!!

[Cynthia]

Glenna, you should market this veggie patty. It has veggies in it and it is moist and well seasoned.

[Fruittart]

Looks very tasty! I could eat this, but The Husband would add 1/2 lb of cheese and still ask 'where's the beef?'. :-P

My favorite restaurant serves a warm quinoa salad full of red onion and other tasty things stuffed in an avocado half and I think I'm just going to have to get me some quinoa and play with it. Thanks for sharing this!

[Kate]

You know, I wonder if more people aren't coming to conclusions like yours?

I had to cut dairy out at the beginning of this year, and I'd chosen to cut red meat out about a year ago. 95% of the time, I miss neither. I've been experimenting, which is fun, and found that many vegan dishes are excellent. I've even got my mother cooking vegan meals occasionally. Funny enough, she even tried tofu last week -- because someone other than me offered it to her and she didn't want to be rude. And she LIKED it!

You know, a little bit of silken tofu added to that might bulk it up without changing the flavor.

[DaviMack]

You know, you might find that adding flax seeds (both whole and ground) would improve things a bit. The whole ones will give you some crunch & nuttiness, while the ground ones will act as an additional binder, to help things firm up a bit (grind them in your coffee grinder - the oils in the seeds go rancid quickly once ground). The other thing you might consider would be to add whole, rehydrated, dried mushrooms. If you add lentils you'll raise the protein content & also help them to feel a bit heftier.

(We were both raised vegetarian, so things like this are natural to us, where we have to study on how to cook meat!)

[Coffee & Vanilla]

Very interesting! I must look for this book :)

Margot

[Glenna]

Sher--Gene loved your Little Debbie comment!

Jane--Yes! I'm so proud of him.

Tom--I will give that recipe. We're going out of town for the weekend but when I get back I'll post it. Thanks!

Jenny--thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate it! The black bean burgers sound wonderful.

Tanna--Yes, exactly! I'm not anti-meat, just don't want much of it.

Cynthia--From your lips to God's ears. :-) Well, once I really get the recipe perfected. It's good but it's not good enough.

FruitTart (Wendy?)--Yes, we're married to the same man. LOL! Love quinoa!

Kate--I'll have to try the tofu. I'd wondered about it but not added it on that go round.

David--Thanks for all the suggestions. I sure like the lentil idea a lot!

Margot--Only if you like cussing...:-)

[Chris]

I have to check out this book. I love this patty! I am always looking for uses for quinoa since trying it for the first time last year.

[Girlie]

Glenna, that's a delicious-looking veggie patty! Husbear was a vegetarian for 9 years before we went to Italy, for many of the same reasons you state, and he's really doing some soul-searching now that we're back.

Sorry I haven't been on your blog lately... the trials of moving! I'm loving catching up, though!

[Lisa]

I just started skinny bitch a month ago and I am so in love with it. Those girls are soooo great. Like having my own personal Hollywood trainer! I have posted you as a link on my blog, hope you don't mind!! I love these photos. Hope to see more vegan goodies here, and recipes!

[Lisa]

Also, if you want a quick easy vegan dinner without going to all the work - GardenBurger Meatless Riblets - oh my God. BBQ! With mashed potatoes (with soy milk), you won't even miss meat.

[Glenna]

Chris--I really liked that book but do keep in midn there is tons of cussing in it. That just made me laugh but if that offends you, don't read it! LOL!

Girlie--No way! That cracks me up, especially after all the exotic meats he ate in Italy and in Asia!!

I know what you mean. I've been so busy lately I haven't been able to check on any of my favorite blogs. It's like missing old friends.

Lisa--Thanks so much for the link. Will get over to see you soon. Hey, and thanks for the gardenburger tips--I'll be trying that!

[chefgreypoupon]

I remember when I went the vegetarian route years ago. I gave up beef because of a very bad experience I had with a hamburger one night out to eat, but the rest of it kind of just came naturally. Everyone would ask me why and I had to reply that I really had no reason other than I didn't feel like eating meat. What would crack me up is that people would ask me if it was okay if they ate meat when we went out to dinner. i always laughed because why would it bother me, go ahead and have a big fat juicy steak you know. I commend you on your new vegetarian ways and I'm like you, try to take my cheese and butter and watch out. :)

[jay]

There's nothing better than getting out in the wodds with your gun. What makes it even better is when you comes across a really nice 12 point buck.

[Eve]

Thanks for the recipe! Your photo makes me hungry!
I found you while looking for simple recipes for my daughter and it sounds like you know your way around the mechanics of food (i.e., what's necessary for "heft", glue, etc.) so I wonder if you would offer me a suggestion? I'm looking for something I can make for my 16 month old that will be nutritious, delicious and easy to eat. She likes grains and vegetable very much but grains are a big mess, so I thought a grain patty would be a good way to go.
I'm thinking of something like cooked squash mixed with quinoa, but I'm wondering if there's a way to hold it together in a form she can hold (that won't break into a million little bits) without frying.
Should I just add egg? Cheese? Both?
I'd love to hear what you think!