Beanosity

I missed beans hardcore this Passover. After whining about this to my mom over the phone, apparently my father took the next day to expound on his personal suspicion that when the Jews fled Egypt, they HAD to take beans with them because they're dry and lightweight, and besides, beans are one of the oldest cultivated crops so obviously they had them, so therefore it's crazy to not eat them, at what point in Jewish history were they banned, and how can beans rise, anyway? (Plus, we can drink wine which has yeast, so who made up these rules and what were they thinking?)

Next year he wants to go to a Sephardic seder so he can eat rice and beans. I agree with him. My mom's hung up on tradition and refuses to eat them (unless we're at a Sephardic seder) no matter what logic dictates. If you don't understand why Judaism has taken the route it has, my parents are a good micro-study.

Anyway, to celebrate the re-commencement of bean-eating, I decided to follow my occasionally faulty food improvisational instincts. I had a whole bunch of broccoli stalks, so I figured starting with the broccoli latke recipe as the backbone and morphing it into bean burgers would be tasty. In a very complicated, technically advanced, highly skilled procedure, I opened, drained, and dumped a can of black beans into the food processor. Voila, bean burgers. Ah, what the hell, I thought. I have some open chipotles en adobo in the fridge. Why not toss 2 of them in? I food processed until just blended, tasted, and it was good! Frying them up was even tastier, and eating them with some cheese, lettuce, tomato, and ketchup was phenomenal.

It was very close to Dr. Praeger's veggie burgers (unabashedly vegetable in nature, not some weirdly processed meat wannabe). Next time, I'm going to stir in - not food process - some frozen mixed veggies, and maybe add another can of beans. I'll probably have to scale up the flour for binder (or I could try oatmeal... veggie haggis, anyone?). Either way, it'll be healthy, cheap, and delicious.