Chickpea-Brown Rice Burgers

Well, it's certainly been a while since I have posted anything here.  Gotta say, even though I make most of my recipes from scratch, it is certainly difficult to do that, raise a toddler, work part time, and keep a reasonably clean house...so, the blog gets left on the back burner.  Oh, and I'm expecting baby Cashew in July...so I've been more than a little tired lately!

Now that Peanut is getting to be a little more independent, and I've hit the 2nd trimester (read: more energy), I may be able to post more often...we'll see.  I'm trying to get Peanut more involved in cooking with me, to varying degrees of success.  Tonight she helped me make a salad - I chopped up the ingredients, and she put them in the bowl.  She loved it, and it was something we could do together.

I got this new cookbook for Christmas, so tonight we are trying out a new recipe from it, with a few changes.

Chickpea-Brown Rice Burgers

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked chickpeas (you can used canned if you want.  I cooked mine from dry, and added celery, garlic, onion and salt to the cooking water)

1 cup cooked brown rice (you could cook this in veggie broth if you wanted)

1/2 small onion

1 garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro (if you don't like cilantro, use whatever herbs you do like...the original recipe calls for parsley)

Coarse salt and pepper, freshly ground

1 large egg

2 tbsp olive oil

Burger toppings (such as tomato, lettuce, onion, grainy mustard, cheese, etc)

Burger buns (if you want...you can eat them without too)

Directions:

1) Put the first 7 ingredients into a food processor and blend on low until a thick paste forms (I got Peanut to push the button...but it scared her, so she wanted me to do it).

2) Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high.  Add patties and cook until golden brown, about 4 minutes per side.

3) To serve, put the burgers on a bun (or not), and add whatever toppings you want.

We served the burgers with this salad:

Greens and Cranberry Salad

Ingredients:

Mixed Lettuce

Sliced Mushrooms

Diced tomatoes

Dried Cranberries

Sliced Cucumber

Slivered Almonds

Parmesean Cheese

Salad Dressing

Directions:

Put lettuce in a bowl.  Top lettuce with other ingredients.  Toss with whatever salad dressing you like (I enjoy balsamic).