Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Eyelash in your food?

Have you ever gone out for dinner and found a foreign body in your food? Hair, eyelash, spit? Should it be in there? Probably not. 
That's how I feel about processed foods. 
There's absolutely no reason for food to have MSG, high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, 'natural flavors'...none. 

That's just me.

Stepping off my soap box...
So today's meal is Black Bean Burgers! I love, love, love 'em. My husband? Not so much. I wanted to order it when I went Max & Erma's, but I looked online prior to it's nutritional content. Ouch. That's what I'll say:


Serving Size: Portion as served
Total Fat: 28 g
Saturated Fat: 4.3 g
Cholesterol: 20 mg
Dietary Fiber 9.3 g
Sodium: 1495 mg
Calories: 649
Calories from Fat: 252
Carbohydrates: 79.1 g
Protein:: 32.7 g



So here's how I made it husband-friendly.

Black Bean Burgers a la Matt (makes 4 burgers)

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbs garlic powder or 3 cloves minced
1 egg or 1/4 cup egg beaters
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1 tbs chili powder
1 tbs cumin

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl, smash the black beans with a fork. Then add all the above ingredients. I tend to eyeball my bread crumbs, because I find that too little and they don't keep a nice shape. If you plan on making the burgers ahead of time and freezing, then you could probably go with 1/2 cup. Otherwise, stick with 3/4 cup. 

Using your hands, make the mixture into 4 patties. Place onto a tinfoil covered cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes, flipping over about half way through.

To make this pleasing to my husband, I sautéed onions and mushrooms until caramelized. I then topped his burger with swiss cheese and the onions and mushrooms and served it on a toasted Arnold. 


For me, I just like plain 'ol ketchup. And only Heinz. Is there any other brand? (It's the Pittsburgher in me.)

4 comments:

Carly said...

I understand your pain! I'm always trying to make things "Ben appropriate." The other day I made a lowfat, veggie-stuffed mac 'n cheese. I chopped broccoli so fine, but it still wasn't hidden enough for him. *Sigh* Why do some men fight tasty health food so much???

Emily said...

Um, did Heinz take the HFCS out of their ketchup yet? Regular ketchup (no matter what brand) has HFCS in it, but the organic doesn't. I always buy organic, but rarely even eat ketchup anyway. I'm a mustard kinda gal ;-)

Cassie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bachelor Girl said...

Delicioso!

Thanks in part to your posts, The Guy and I are super-vigilant about ingredient labels now.