Burgers are merely a canvas for toppings.....

Burgers were never my thing. Really. They tasted, bleh.

I remember my granny putting green bell peppers and onions in burgers. That did nothing for me. One of my friend's dad put that awful onion soup mix in them. And green bell peppers. That did something for me. It taught me never to eat at their house on burger night.

I ate plenty in high school, of course, because, well, it was high school. And Carl's Jr. was outstanding. Never had Carl's Jr? Think Hardees, only better.

But as I got older, burgers became more about all the great stuff I could pile on them than the meat itself. Fresh toppings, complicated condiments, slice after slice of gourmet cheese.....mmmm.....cheese.

So when meat didn't agree with me anymore, I thought - oh well. Until I craved BBQ sauce, and crispy lettuce, and all variety of mustard, and tomatos, and pickles, and onions. It was too much, I had to have some sort of meat product.

Now, I've tried veggie burgers before. They are not good. I can't even pronounce half of the ingredients in them most of the time. That doesn't make for a tasty burger. Or they have soy in them, which I can't stand. So, when my book offered about 10 different veggie burger options, I became slightly more interested. Soy, tofu, and gelatinous masses can all be left out, thank you very much.

I started with the BBQ sauce. Because after all, that is really the most important part. What you put on your burger sets the whole tone for eating. Tone, really?

Food geek, I know.

But seriously, when you look at a chopped steak burger topped with sauteed onions and mushrooms - you are getting a different experience than when you have sit down with a great BBQ'd chuck burger topped with yellow mustard and crunchy iceberg lettuce. Both are outstanding, but different.

I wanted to start easy, and simply. So I chose the first variation - a bean burger. Sounds yummy, right???? My favorite Le Puy lentils were in my pantry, so off we went. Why a special bean? Because they have this outstanding ability to hold their shape and not get mushy. This is really important when making a veggie burger. You want texture, not mush. So after cooking them, I realized I had enough for many burgers, or I could split my focus and have lentil salad too! I love to split my focus.

The recipe seemed simple enough, add cooked beans, egg, rolled oats, onion, BBQ sauce and seasonings. A little too easy. I know I say that about all the recipes in this book - but they are super easy, It's that simple.

My daughter was skeptical that anything that looked like that could be good.

It's funny, hamburgers most often turn out gray, and black. It's all about what you are used to eating - another gray food could be just as yummy, but you may not try it because you havn't thought about the colors of the foods you currently eat, you are just so used to eating them you don't think about it. That was a mouthful.

After a little chill in the frig to firm up, I made them into patties and fried them up in a little, ok a lot, of bacon grease. ( Hey, I don't eat meat, but bacon grease is outstanding to cook just about anything in!) They cooked quickly and smelled so good. Just a little crisp on the outside. Even my husband asked what smelled so good!

(Note: he didn't actually try one, no matter how good they smelled.)

No sooner were they plated then my daughter ambled over and asked if she could take a bite. This coming from the girl who just 30 minutes ago said they couldn't possible be good, and that she "passed".

She took a bite. Then she took the plate. Sigh. How do you take food from a child who is gleefully saying 'I got my hamburgers back!"

From what I remember, they were good. Very good. All kinds of toppings can go on these. And maybe when I get to eat one, they will.

More garbanzo fun!

See, doesn't that title just shout out "read me, read me" to you?

No, huh.

Well, toasted chickpeas shouted out at me this week.

And they could not be any easier to make.

Can of garbanzo beans, drained. Check.
Olive oil, garlic, salt and any seasoning I wanted. Check.
Ovenproof skillet. Check.

Done.

Seriously.

I had a few doubts that this could be tasty, but my daughter loves these beans and I wanted to make all her bean dreams come true.

I love my daughter, so I prepared myself for massive amounts of prep work. Anything for her. Heating the pan, putting in the oil, tossing the garlic in and seasonings and the drained beans. I was tired after, but soldiered on. After 5 whole minutes of sauteing, I lifted the enormously heavy pan into the preheated oven and let them cook for 20 minutes. I forced myself to shake them every 5 minutes or so, and finally, after what seemed like hours - they were done.

Warm and right out of the oven, we shook liberal amounts of salt and pepper on them and dug in. Oh man, were they good. And the kitchen smelled wonderful.

(Now, I have had toasted walnuts, pine nuts, etc. I have seen crispy green beans in Whole Foods. Wasabi peas - never tried them, but I hear they are good. Goji berries, acai, etc - seem to be very popular. But crunchy garbanzo beans? Surely you jest!)

Nope. They were delicious. And they were all gone. But for $1.29, I can make more. And more.....

They have a wonderfully crunchy seasoned shell on the outside, and are still slightly chewy on the outside. I drizzled mine with extra lemon juice, and they were phenomenal. Like the taste of hummus, but with texture. And filling - wow! Very filling snack. I can see these with chili powder, dill, sage, rosemary - oh, the places we'll go!!!! Prolly Disney.

(This picture is of the fried oatmeal from a few weeks ago - I knew my mom would want to see it. Fried oatmeal, sauteed bananas, pecans, coconut, raw sugar and chocolate chips with a drizzle of cream. Yum.)

Help! I can't stop eating this!

Doesn't that sound like a new reality show?

Some people who are addicted to food would be on the show as participants, with psychiatrists telling them why they are eating so much of "blank" and then get them to stop eating it and they all go on to lead fulfilled lives.

I never want to be on that show.

My friends, my daughter and I have discovered a food so good, so comforting, so magnificent - that we cannot stop eating it. Seriously.

What is this great food?

Farinata. Cinque e Cinque. Chickpea frittata. Whatever you want to call it, it is amazing.

I guess I'll call it Farinata here. I was strolling the aisles of Whole Foods looking for new gluten-free items. (Honestly, I stroll WFoods like someone strolls Rodeo Drive. Never been to Rodeo Drive? O.K., how about like a teenager shops at the mall - going into every store looking at everything. Just looking for that one item that will make their life compete. Maybe I do need that reality show...............) I went up the aisle that has all the rice and beans , and there was a new item tag with a sale tag under a Tuscan looking bag- I honestly started humming "....these are a few of my favorite things...."

There it was.

On sale.

New.

Gluten free.

With a coupon.

Well, that was it for me. I didn't even know if I would like it, but for $2.50, I was going to find out. Now, how to convince my daughter to try it? I'd figure on that later. I figured any food from Italy had to be good.

And it was.............

So how does this package of sunshine from Whole Foods have anything to do with cooking thru the book? Well, there is a recipe in the book for Farinata. I wanted to have a base concept for what I was going to try to make, with a foolproof model first.

So what is Farinata? Simply put, it is garbanzo bean flour and water. Sound delish yet? If you are like me, the only time I had garbanzo beans growing up was at pizza buffets in the antipasto salad. They were drenched in Italian dressing, and I really didn't pay much attention to them. I just ate them. When my daughter was ready to tackle toddler foods, I read that garbanzo beans were a good way to get kids started eating legumes. And since my doc had ok'd me limiting meat for her, I thought they were a good substitute. So did she. She has been known to eat many, many, many garbanzo beans. Then we discovered hummus. Yum! OK, so garbanzo beans were good. Not beany tasting, still firm and not mushy, and they took on seasoning well. And this is how we enjoyed them until we went gluten free.

When we had to change how we ate, I tried a million combinations of different flours to try to make the baked goods a reality for my kids. I read that garbanzo and fava bean flour was a great substitute, and indeed, it was a common ingredient on many premade gf baked goods. I bought a bag. Couldn't even smell it. It was terrible. Tasted worse. The reason GF food has so much sugar and spice in it is to disguise the taste (and smell) of all of these flours! I ws assured by all the gf cookbooks that the taste and smell would cook out. It did not. I guess if you are desperate for something to eat when you are GF, you will eat anything. I know. I have done it.

So, learily, I bought this mix. My daughter looked at the label, shrugged her shoulders and siad it looked interesting. The ingredients sounded benign enough. Garbanzo bean flour and rosemary. Rosemary is a pungent spice, that should cover up the smell. I couldn't believe the instructions - add water and olive oil and salt. That's it. This was a little too easy to be tasty.

So, I blasted the oven and put my cast iron skillet in. After the pan was preheated, I mixed up the ingredients. No smell so far. I was suspicious, so I added an egg. Why? Well, I just felt it should have something to bind it together. And garlic. It needed garlic. Doesn't everything? Obviously, I know more about cooking than the Italians.......anyhoo, I carefully opened the oven door and poured a little olive oil in the pan, then poured the batter in. It sizzled like a pancake should. Good. Now to let it bake.

In the meantime, I went on wikipedia, and did some research. Seems this delicacy is a pretty popular comfort food that started in Genoa, and has spread all over Italy. It is traditionally served plain, with no toppings, but in different regions it can be sliced and used as filling between slices of focaccia. Hmmm, a meat substutue that did not involve tofu of any kind. You have my interest. Millions of Italians can't be wrong. They are serious about their comfort food.

14 minutes later, I vented the oven door to let the steam out and smelled something wonderful! Not stinky like that old flour. But something good and warm-smelling. Comfort. Out it came, golden brown on top, crispy on the bottom. Looking like a cross between a pancake and a frittata.

Waiting for it to rest was agonizing! It smelled divine. Holding my daughter off with one hand while slicing it using a pizza cutter in the other, we served it up. Slowly, we each tried a bite. Then another. Then another. No big surprise here, we ate and ate. How to explain the taste. Mild, creamy, but with substance. Not doughy/bready like a pancake, because it was made from bean flour and baked with no leavening. Taking a bite was a little like the texture of a mozzarella, or soft gouda. But not like cheese. We decided to use it as a pizza crust in the future, because it really can hold the weight, but is light enough not to weigh you down. I really am at a loss for words to describe it.

I ate it cold in the moning. Then hot topped with fresh tomatos and swiss cheese on top. All of a sudden, toppings started swirling around in my head. Tomatos and onions, sage, parmesan, broccoli, asparagus - you could throw anything on top of it and bake it in.

So, something that I thought could not be anything but smelly and gooey turned out to be something we have been craving all week. We bought the plain garbanzo bean flour yesterday, and there was no unplesant smell. So, prepared to tackle this at home, we are going to dive in this weekend. I am thinking about adding sage, rosemary, onion and garlic. I miss sausage, I really do. So I'm thinking about all the spices that make sausage taste so good. The nose is more powerful than the mouth, and it can outsmart the brain - so I'm thinking I will float it past my tastebuds and my brain will think I am enjoying sausage.

Oh yeah, being on a garbanzo bean kick, we roasted them whole in the oven with spices. But that's for another post.

Attack of the killer tomatos!

Tomato soup comes from a can, doesn't it?

I love Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup. Really. It comes out of the can a gelatinous mass, and turns into yummy satisfaction just by adding water and heat.

What's not to like? Throw some Goldfish, cheddar cheese or rice in the bowl and you have yourself a meal. But when Campbells started adding wheat and corn syrup to tomato soup, well - waiter, check please!

I had always read recipes for tomato soup that looked so stinkin' hard. Roast the tomatos, then puree, then simmer. Blanch and then sautee. Make stock from scratch and then blanch, sautee, roast and simmer. It sounded like a lot of work.

This book promised me it would not be that hard.

This book even let me use canned tomatos.

I LOVE this book.

I gathered a handful of ingredients. Garlic, onion, butter, salt, pepper, a carrot, tomato paste, canned diced fire-roasted tomatos (see, someone else did the hard work for me! Thank you Muir Glen.) and water. That was it.

Did I mention I was watching the royal wedding that day? I did not want to be disturbed by some needy soup demanding to be stirred and comforted all day whilst I basked in the fairy tale with my lovely daughter. I wanted mindless cooking. I was leary, but the book had made me a promise. So I said my "I do's" and committed to making the soup.

Melt the butter in the pot, add the minced garlic and onion and let them soften. Then toss everything else in and simmer. It took less than 10 minutes from cutting board to pot - thank goodness for TiVo and the pause button. So, I let it simmer, and cook, and cook, and cook.

Well, I had to watch the kiss!

Then when I thought it was ready, I poured it into a large bowl and used the immersion mixer on it. (Note: Isn't it lovely to have a recipe that lets you decide when it is done? Like lite soup? Cook 30 minutes. Like rich hearty soup, cook longer. Excellent.)

Voila! Tomato soup. It was that easy. And it was a million times better than Campbells. Not because I made it, but because of the ingredients.

This will be my go-to soup from now on. My daughter put chicken and rice in her first bowl. In the second bowl, which followed shortly after first bowl, she added broccoli. I opted for golden rose rice. I think just about anything would have worked in this soup. Really. It was slightly creamy, just thick enough, very flavorful and super-easy. Too bad I only had one bowl, my daughter commandeered my soup again.

I have to make something she won't like.......