sort of vegan brownies

these were my official first attempt at a vegan dessert. I was mainly excited by the idea of banana brownies and not by the fact that they would be vegan.

So I diligently saved two of my bananas from normal daily consumption and waited until they were nice and brown. And then I looked up the Chocolate Chip Banana Brownie recipe from the Daily Garnish blog (which I love) and got to work.

Near the end, I started thinking about the three Reese Peanut Butter Cup easter eggs that had recently arrived in a letter from my mom and were hanging out in my freezer. What better way to personalize a recipe than by adding peanut butter cups?

So I chopped them up, tossed them in and effectively ended the brownies future as a vegan dessert. Can't be vegan when you add in peanut butter cups :-)

I also just used all regular flour instead of using half pastry flour, and while they were still reallllyyyyyy good, I could certainly tell in the consistency that they would have been lighter had I used the pastry flour.

Also, a bonus of not using eggs in a brownie recipe is that you can stick the batter that didn't fit in the pan in the fridge and eat it like a DELICIOUS pudding for several days after.

Not that I did that or anything. Not at all.

black bean veggie burgers

I'm not a vegetarian but I do have vegetarian leanings.

and while I was in Mongolia, eating beef and mutton was a daily reality that could not be avoided if I wanted to be culturally appropriate and sensitive.

so I ate my meat and day-dreamed about having the choice to avoid meat all together.

my list of recipes to make upon returning to the US cover a lot of this vegetarian ground...including one of my favorite vegetarian items, black bean burgers.

I used this recipe, but then also made a lot of changes, so we'll just say that was the starting point.

mainly, I didn't have any onion or garlic so I instead decided to add the vegetables that I did happen to have- which included shredded carrot, diced cucumber and a little bit of parsley for good measure. I also didn't have any hot sauce, so I skipped that all together.

The biggest challenge to making veggie burgers at home is that almost every recipe I have ever found suggests/requires a food processor. I would LOVE to have a food processor. It's on my list of gadgets to invest in. But I don't have one right now. So I mashed with a fork and diced with a knife, trying to get things as small as possible. I also just realized upfront that my veggies burgers were going to be more on the chunky side, which was fine by me.

verdict? definitely good. definitely easy to make. definitely could have used some more seasoning.

next time I think I'll focus on getting the seasoning down right.

served on pita with spinach hummus, some broccoli slaw and salsa on top: