Category Archives: Vegetarian Eats

Caprese Sandwich with Grilled Zucchini

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Do you guys get this magazine?

Neither do I.

But my MIL does!  And it happened to get to their house on a day that Tex and I were there, before my MIL arrived on the scene. 

FIL sent it home with us because 1) We’re doing the vegetarian thing, and 2) he was worried MIL would make some of the recipes for him to eat.  Heh.

But it was lucky for us because it had this deliciousness pictured.

And so that’s what we made tonight.

Heat a grill pan (except I don’t have one of those, so I just heated a regular old pan.). 

Then you mix up a couple teaspoons of olive oil with one clove of garlic.  (Well, the recipe calls for one, but we don’t do anything half-butted so I did two.  Oh yeah, I did.)

Then cut up your zucchini into long, skinny pieces, dip em in the oil and cook a couple minutes on each side.  Until they look about like this.

Put them back in the dish to mix with whats left of the oil, then drizzle them with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

Brush your bread with this delicious mix too.

Then pull out this stuff: Mozzarella, basil, tomato.

And layer it all on your bread! 

That’s it!  Really easy.  Really yummy and fresh… Even if your final product isn’t magazine worthy.

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Black Bean Veggie Burgers

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My sweet friend at work gave me a recipe she and her family had tried and liked for black bean veggie burgers, and Tex and I made them last night. 

Tex thought they were great. 

I decided not every recipe can be a winner.  ;)

I’ll let you decide for yourselves.

First, you have to mash up 16 oz. of black beans until they are thick and pasty.

Then dig your food processor out of the storage boxes, put it together and turn it on.  Smell something like an electric fire and turn it off.  Disassemble and find Tex to re-assemble it correctly.

Use the food processor to finely chop 1/2 a green bell pepper, (Unless your small town grocery store was out of green, and the red ones looked questionable.  In that case, use yellow.) 1/2 onion, and 3 cloves of garlic.

Stir all that into your mashed beans.

Looks appetizing, right?  ;)

In a different bowl, stir together 1 egg, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, and 1 tsp hot sauce.

Then you stir this mixture into the mashed beans.  Though, now that I’m thinking about it, why didn’t we just add this into the mashed beans in the first place?  Why did we dirty an extra bowl?  Because we don’t do anything half-butted.  That’s why.

Then mix in 1/2 cup bread crumbs until the mixture is sticky and holds together. 

That should make about 4 patties.

You can place on tin foil and grill, but it was a hundred million degrees outside last night, so we baked them at 375 for about 10 minutes on each side.

DISCLAIMER:  These in no way taste like hamburgers!

In fact, if we were to do it again, I would throw in some southwest seasonings like a taco burger and top off with some salsa and cheese.  And maybe some onion and lettuce.  And a tomato.  And guacamole.  And salt.

Yeah, that’s what I’d do.

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Margherita Pizza

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For our maiden voyage into the world of vegetarianism, we went with something tried and true – something we both knew we’d like.

Margherita pizza, y’all!

First things first – crack open a loaf of crusty bread and pour out some balsamic vinaigrette into some olive oil, with a little sea salt and cracked pepper.

Because you can’t make margherita pizza without having this as an appetizer. 

Everyone knows that.

Here’s what we did:

Stir together about 1/4 cup olive oil, as much minced garlic as you can stand, and about 1/2 teaspoon sea salt.

(Demonstrations provided by Tex.)

(Meal also provided by Tex.)

Let that sit for at least 15 minutes.

If, at this point, you wanted to open up that bottle of chardonnay you have in the fridge and drink it out of a dixie cup, who am I to judge? 

Once all the juices have had time to mix together and get all delicious, brush the crust with some of the juice.  Or, “marinade” for all you fancy chefs out there.

Now we get to the good stuff.  Pile on the cheese, folks!

We used fontina, mozzarella, feta and parmesan.

Then just arrange the tomatos on top.  (I think usually you chop them up and use them a little sparingly, but again, we don’t do anything half-butted around here!)

Pile on more cheese…

Add some fresh, chopped basil.

Then cook at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Scrump-diddly-umptious!

Then, be sure you have a mom like mine who bakes you chocolate chip cookies just because she likes you so you can have them for dessert!

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