Boo!

Hey there!  Ive been around, had ideas to share but the whole opening up the live writer app and applying fingers to keys was just a bit much for me to do apparently. 

Spent a wonderful weekend at Silver Falls over Mother’s Day.  Perfect weather, wonderful camp spot.  It’s a wonderful camp ground for short weekend stays.  No full hookups (other than for camp hosts).  Highly recommended.

Stitching

A finish!  LHN’s Peace

The border gave me fits as well as the whole needing to count but I didn’t ground it! (bonus for me)  Im a bit behind as Faith has been released or will be very soon.

Ink Circles RYO 2013

Anyone else fallen off the deep-end and into this fun SAL?  There is a Lonely Family of just three colors that Ive pulled for pinks and another one for purple and a splash of yellow.  I have grand aspirations of having these done by Oct so I can have them made into pillows for christmas presents.  Time will tell…

Food

Oh yes I have several recipes to share but this one was just made tonight.  Another meal that can be made ahead of time, cooked and eaten later in the week.  Although most of the items Ive “saved” didn’t make it to dinner the next day.

Black Bean Quinoa Burger

This one is from Vegetarian Times and I found it while looking for burger recipes I can make ahead of time for camping trips, lunches dinners when I am gonna be late and really don’t want to put anything together or just eat salad.

For this recipe – I didn’t have black beans but did have white so used what I had.

Ingredients

½ cup quinoa

1 small onion, finely chopped (1 cup)

6 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and finely chopped (¼ cup)

1½ cups cooked black beans, or 1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained, divided

2 cloves garlic, minced (2 tsp.)

2 tsp. dried steak seasoning

8 whole-grain hamburger buns

1. Stir together quinoa and 1½ cups water in small saucepan, and season with salt, if desired. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 20 minutes, or until all liquid is absorbed. (You should have 1½ cups cooked quinoa.)

2. Meanwhile, place onion and sun-dried tomatoes in medium nonstick skillet, and cook over medium heat. (The oil left on the tomatoes should be enough to sauté the onion.) Cook 3 to 4 minutes, or until onion has softened. Stir in ¾ cup black beans, garlic, steak seasoning, and 1½ cups water. Simmer 9 to 11 minutes, or until most of liquid has evaporated.

3. Transfer bean-onion mixture to food processor, add ¾ cup cooked quinoa, and process until smooth. Transfer to bowl, and stir in remaining ¾ cup quinoa and remaining ¾ cup black beans. Season with salt and pepper, if desired, and cool.

4. Preheat oven to 350°F, and generously coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Shape bean mixture into 8 patties (½ cup each), and place on prepared baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes, or until patties are crisp on top. Flip patties with spatula, and bake 10 minutes more, or until both sides are crisp and brown. Serve on buns.

Reducing – this took a bit longer than 11 min and I moved the heat up a bit over med

The recipe says this will make 8 patties at 1/2 c each.  I used a 1/2 cup to scoop and got 4 and a half.  Next time I will use 1/4 c and see if I get 8.  The 1/2c makes a big burger.  The half was perfect for me.

A pic of how P put his burger together.  Hummus may be adding more beans to the mix but its something he is loving and will use more than peanut butter on sandwiches.

Dave’s Killer bread, garlic hummus, spinach, burger.  Mine was similar – just added some cucumber slices for added crunch