food

My huni and I recently watched “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a documentary about a man who started a small revolution when he realized that by changing his eating habits, he could not only lose weight, but he could become healthier to the point of getting off of medication that was sustaining his life after being inflicted with a very serious autoimmune disease. His idea was to go on a juice fast for 60 days during which time he would only consume fresh fruits and veggies, slid through a juicer. It’s a very inspiring movie and we really enjoyed it. By the end, I was rooting for one of the guys and I nearly cried near the end. For reals.

After watching it, E got all kinds of ideas about what we should be doing and what our family eating habits should be. Mostly, we have pretty healthy eating habits but he wanted more. So we settled on making a drastic change and decided we would become (mostly) pescatarian (hey, I loves me some Bojangle’s!! I can’t COMPLETELY give it up!! . . .right now). It’s been tough coming up with recipes because it requires a lot more thought but I’m pulling out some oldies but goodies to get us started. Last night, I got in the kitchen and made some black bean burgers and homeade tortilla chips. Thought I’d share the recipe.

Black bean Burgers:

1 tall can black beans (I used a 26.5 oz can which yielded about 8 burgers)

1/2 cup bread crumbs

2 eggs

fresh cilantro (you decide how much; if you love cilantro, go crazy, if you like it, use about a handful)

2 tsp cumin

dash of salt

dash of pepper

dash of onion poweder

dash of garlic powder

(by dash, I mean to taste, you decide how much you’d like based on how well seasoned you’d like your burgers and how you’d like for them to taste)

whole wheat tortillas

shredded cheese (optional)

Olive Oil

Salsa Sauce:

1 tbsp sour cream

2 tsbp salsa

Chips:

Corn Tortillas

Olive Oil

Kosher Salt

For the burgers:

Gather all ingredients into a bowl.
Using a blender, mix all ingredients until a nice, well blended mixture forms.

Pat out burgers to desired size.
Heat olive oil in a warm skillet and place burgers into skillet, about three at a time depending on the size of the skillet.
Cook burgers on each side for about 3 minutes. (If you try to flip too soon, the burgers will fall apart. If you flip too late, they may be a little charred, but still tasty.)

In a separate pan, place a bit of butter (or non stick spray) in a pan and begin to toast the whole wheat tortilla.
(optional) As the tortilla is toasting, add a bit of cheese to each side so that it may melt simultaneously with the toasting tortilla.

As the burgers finish up, take them out of the pan and place them onto a lined pan to drain (won’t be much draining happening but excess oil will be collected by the lined pan).
Then, choose one burger patty and place it onto the toasting tortilla.
Add the special sauce and continue toasting to desired color and texture then close the burger!

For the Salsa Sauce:

Simply stir salsa into sour cream and there ya go!

For the Chips:

Using a pizza cutter, slice approx three corn tortillas at a time into desired chip size.

Place cut chips onto a lined baking pan.
Drizzle chips with olive oil (as much or as little as desired) and sprinkle with salt.

Place chips in a 400 degree oven and bake for 10 minutes or until desired brown, crispy goodness!

The verdict . . .

With a little help from my Pinterest board “Healthy Biology,” maybe I can keep this up. Check it out: http://pinterest.com/pamelovely/healthy-biology/