Cooking 201

So I know my last blog was a short time ago (a week? ha!) and it's kinda odd to self advance myself so quickly and I REALLY promise I am not going to obsessively talk about recipes or my cooking labors, BUT just HAD to share last weekends cooking extravaganza. Because I covered for someone the week before, my schedule worked out to have a 3-day weekend! Ahhh..... sooooooooooooooooooooooooo nice. So as I had plenty of time on my hands, I decided to go a little more elaborate (for me) with my new found interest in cooking.

My weekly menu was going to be....

-Roasted red pepper zucchini soup

-BEAN burgers!!!

Okay, I know it doesn't seem or sound that exciting, but what made these things a bit different was that it was all vegan, dairy, and gluten free! AND, there definitely was an EASY way to do it and a hard way, and I actually went with the hard way! For example, for the red peppers, yes, I could have easily gone with jarred roasted red peppers and fine, I'll admit I did look for it at the store and just couldn't find it, BUT went to the efforts of roasting the red peppers, doing the whole skin burning thing, then steaming thing, to then peel off the covering. The smell was delish! Hmm... now that i'm writing this, it really doesn't sound that exciting or an effort, but it was! This is all new to me, NOT taking the easy way out with cooking and just cooking it self.

As for the BEAN burgers, why was I obsessed with this? Well, I'm ALL about protein. Loooove meat because I feel full from the protein (if I ever eat salads, I'm hungry again like 10 minutes later) and sorry, can't live without it. I had a few weeks of only chicken, which I loved, but they say chicken has a lot of hormones. Fine. So then I tried beef, but beef is red meat and also fatty and not the best for you. Blah blah blah, can we ever win?? People kept on talking about beans, but I am just NOT into salad's, chili soups are not that fun for me, and what to do? Then one fine day I thought, why not bean burgers? I ended up finding what seemed like a fairly straight-forward, no fancy ingredient "Mediterranean Bean Burger" recipe that was from a vegan woman. It was all raw ingredients, which oddly I like, AND it used an equipment piece that I already had, a food processor! Although I had to google what "pulsing" meant (quick spurts of processing or blending), lo and behold there was this even a "P" switch on my food processor (which actually, at the time I just wanted a blender, and I have NO idea how it switched in my head to get a combo unit, but hey, one of the best purchases I've bought! And I NEVER noticed that "P" thing before), and did the whole pulsing thing. When it was all into it's patty form, yes, I could have put it on the pan, but after all this work to make it so healthy, went with the whole oven thing. Which was great!

The other thing that I self-advanced, he he, myself to "201" is that this WHOLE time (okay, like a month) that I've been cooking, I've followed each and every recipe to the T. If they say "simmer for 10 minutes" I set my timer for 10 minutes exactly. I don't know enough to play around or get creative, and just don't feel comfortable doing that... especially since things take me FOREEEVVVEEERRR and if I wasted all this time for nothing by ruining something, I would just die! Sooo.. I know it's not as exciting as it sounds, but to 'spice' up the bean burgers, I added more fresh cut up red peppers then advised (gasp!) and also onions to the mix! Put it above and below the burger and also baked extra to add some flavor to it, and really, are cooked onions not the BEST THING EVER?!!??!

Soooooooooooooo.... all this turned out splendid and I am happily enjoying my week's home cooked meal! I might be 'stuck' in this 201 for awhile, but more fun with recipes and cooking ahead!!