Twenty one!

Welcome to the newest año!

Did you eat black eyed peas on New Year’s Day for good luck?

It’s not a tradition I grew up with, but it’s something I heard about a few years back and started to do just for fun. And who doesn’t want or need extra vibes right now?

CSAs are, once again, saving my quarantine life. On the right is my imperfect box (here’s a referral link for $10 off) and on the left is my newest discovery, from a local farm Pedrick Produce. For $35 you can order a seasonal farm box online. Then they email/text you when it’s ready (typically in <24 hours) and then you drive up and they pop it in your trunk. Curbside pick-up, easy peasy!

Now just wait til you hear everything you get for $35:

2 Hass Avocados
1 Celery
1 Romaine Lettuce
3 Russet Potatoes
4 Bananas
2 Red Bell peppers
1 Yellow Onion
1 Red Onion
1 Bag Red Seedless Grapes
1 Kale (Organic)
1 Bag Local Satsuma Mandarines
2 Local Kiwi
1 Bag Green Beans
1 Basket Cherry Tomatoes
4 Carrots
2 Zucchini
2 Tomatoes
2 Limes
1 Broccoli Bunch
1 Cucumber
2 Fuji Apples
2 Local Seedless Navel Oranges

I mean!?!?! Can you even believe it! Now my kids have discovered they love kiwis. And I have no excuses to skip recipes that call for onions 😛

Which is how it came to be that I finally made my own veggie burgers!

These bean patties were from the How Not to Die cookbook and called for whatever bean you wanted, so I decided to use black eyed peas and make them for dinner on the 1st of 2021.

The only change I made was using a red onion (not yellow) which I sautéed in olive oil first, before adding it to the food processor because I wanted to make sure the kids liked it. I’m not a huge fan of raw onions so even though they’d get cooked in the oven, I wasn’t sure that would be enough. By sautéing them first, they were sweet and subtle rather than bitingly noticeable.

I loved all the other umami-filled ingreds, like tahini, miso paste, nooch, etc. And contrary to my previous thinking, forming patties wasn’t a horribly annoying process! Meatballs are WAY more obnoxious. I basically just scooped them right onto the parchment paper and shaped the (sticky) mixture into a burger shape that way without handling it at all.

It was supposed to yield 4 patties, but somehow mine made seven, which was wonderful because I cooked them all and put the remaining three in the freezer to have on hand for some other time (likely when Kyle’s out of town and it’s just the three of us and I’m too worn out to cook).