Baking in Long Underwear: 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.