Green Lentils and Potatoes

I rarely cook meat. It's not usually a conscious choice to avoid meat; it's just that pasta, sandwiches, rice, or eggs are cheaper and easier for me. I'm not becoming a vegetarian by any means (I love bacon too much for that) but I have recently realized that my carb-heavy, meat-light diet might be missing a few nutrients.

So this week, inspired by a post on From Scratch, I decided to make Lentil Burgers. And I felt it wouldn't be fair to leave you all out of this cooking adventure!

From Scratch is a "personal recipe journal" by Emma. If you like cupcakes (and who doesn't?) you should pop over to her blog; she makes cupcakes in delicious flavors (like tiramisu or peanut butter and honey) and also features plenty of other recipes and fashion. Someday soon, when I take my road-trip across America, I want to stop in Springfield, MO at Red Velvet, the vintage and cupcake shop run by Emma and her sister Elsie (Elsie's blog, A Beautiful Mess, was one of the first I ever read regularly).

To my knowledge, I've never eaten lentils before this year. But the French eat them frequently, the cafeteria at my school serves them often, and I've found them palatable. So when I ran across Emma's recipe for lentil burgers, I thought "what's the worst that could happen?" She made it look easy.

I bought myself some lentils, and set to work.

However, when a recipe says to use a food processor to mix up all your ingredients, I would recommend actually owning a food processor.  If you don't, your arm is going to be very sore before your lentils are squished up enough to be made into burgers.

My bulging (hah) biceps eventually got the lentils, breadcrumbs and spices to look like this:

Yum, right?  Yes, it does look a bit like cat puke.  At this point, I was nervous, but I had purchased barbecue sauce, just in case. I love barbecue sauce-I used to eat it plain when I was younger-so I knew it could cover a variety of flavor offenses.

I made them into patties and fried one up. They were a little green, but what do you expect from green lentils?

Due to insufficient food processing, my burger fell apart a little in the frying process, but a piece of cheese served to hold it all together.  It tasted really good, even before the barbecue sauce, and I have nine more patties in my freezer. Yum!

I know for some of you veggie burgers might be a little outside of your normal food scope, but I'd like to direct you to the words of a famous doctor, on the subject of another green food:

"You do not like them

SO you say

Try them! Try them!

And you may.

Try them and you may I say."

Your turn: Do you have any good recipes to share?  I'm much more likely to just make a sandwich or eat cereal than cook a real meal for myself, but once I start cooking I always remember just how much I love it and how it makes me feel like a grown-up!