Woman in Real Life

These quick lentil burgers are a family favourite in our house. My teen daughter asks for them just about every week. And that's something, because she generally prefers sweets to "real" food. Although it's a super simple recipe, I've been refining it for weeks because I wanted to best combine ease of preparation with just the right texture. I think I've finally found the best ingredients and the best process for preparing these lentil burgers quickly and efficiently.

I started making these lentil patties long before our current social distancing practices, but it turns out the recipe is great for these challenging times. It requires ingredients you are likely to have (or can stock up on) in your pantry. This includes canned lentils (although you could certainly cook dry lentils for this recipe too), flour, panko bread crumbs, oats and seasonings. The only perishable ingredient is a red onion, but those are pretty long lasting too.

We were away from home on the weekend and I neglected to take any photos of my food. Being a vegetarian is sometimes a bit limiting on the road, but I have a few favourite places I rely on.

I had a Subway sub piled with veggies and pickles (hold the cheese), as well as a veggie burger combo (fries please!) from Harvey's. They make the best veggie burgers! I also had a baba ganoush pita wrap from The Pita Pit in Blue Mountain Village. The menu was marked with vegan options, which is (somewhat unusual and) very helpful.

Now, if I were to try to go gluten-free as well, that might be a problem! I would love to hear how full-time gluten-free folks handle eating out.

You might well ask why I have started with a picture of my Keurig making tea...

This "What I Ate Wednesday," I'm sharing pictures of the food that I ate yesterday. I called this post the "when boredom sets in edition" because the long, dull winter is causing me to become uninspired in many ways, including cooking.

I am particularly tired of my lazy toast with peanut butter breakfasts. The solution for that? Bake something. Yesterday, I went with an easy, comforting favourite - vegan Scottish Scones. If you are bored with your breakfasts too, print out the recipe here.

I've said it before...this menu planning thing works. There are many times when I want to skip making dinner and buy some Taco Bell for the kiddies.  Then I think of my menu plan, posted on my blog for all the world to see. And I persevere.

Monday's Quick Asparagus Pasta was actually quicker than going for Taco Bell. Nothing fancy, but I enjoyed it. One snag in the plan, though. I needed asparagus. Turns out that's the one thing they didn't have at the grocery store. Does that happen to you too? The one thing you want isn't available that day?

With two weeks of meal planning under my belt, I find I am enjoying the process. Outlining what I want to cook for the week and having all the ingredients available kind of forces me to stick to the plan.

Otherwise, I might be inclined to slack off some nights and make less healthy dinners. In my opinion, half of the struggle with cooking is the daily decision-making.

Last week started off with Monday's Curried Chickpea and Tomato Linguine. I used a recipe from Best Health magazine. It was simple to make and I quite liked the curry flavour combined with the pasta.

Happy What I Ate Wednesday! So far I haven't made any Christmas cookies. If I had, I would be forced to show you lots of photos of all the cookies I nibbled on while I was baking. That's still to come.

In the meantime, a look at some of the stuff I ate this week. 

I like my smoothies to be a little (or a lot) sweet. So, rather than going totally green, I added a bit of veg and a lot of fruit to my breakfast smoothie today. The result is this delicious yet healthy green-ish smoothie.

I am once again linking up with Jenn at Peas & Crayons for What I Ate Wednesday. Jenn's theme for August (yes, it's already August!) is Summer Staples.

A staple for this vegetarian family in summer is barbecued veggie burgers. We had such a dinner this week, along with potatoes, portobello mushrooms and salad.


A staple for us all year round is tacos. This week, I put refried beans, salsa, guacamole and diced sautéed portobello mushrooms in mine. I had broccoli and rapini on the side.


We took the kids to the Art Gallery of Ontario one day. To save money, we brought our own peanut butter sandwiches, fruit and popcorn for lunch.


And now for the sushi making fun. My husband and I have been talking about making our own sushi for years now. I even bought him a sushi book one time...hint, hint. But, we didn't try it until yesterday. We bought the supplies (sushi mat, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sticky rice, Nori) and watched a couple of YouTube videos about rolling maki sushi. They make it look so easy!


For toppings, we went with carrots, cucumber, orange pepper slices and avocado.



Here is my first set of maki sushi. Okay, this is my second. The first roll didn't stick together and I ate it like a hand roll while standing at the counter. The book said to cut the sheet of Nori in half, but we found that size sheet difficult to work with. So, we went with a full sheet after that.


After my husband and I "perfected" (ha) the art, we invited the kids to help.


They LOVED it. They kept saying how much fun it was.



Here is our finished platter of (slightly imperfect) maki sushi. Quite fresh and tasty. And more inexpensive than a sushi restaurant.

Do you make your own sushi?

I am excited to report that I have 99 GFC followers. Will you be my 100th...please? (Thanks Carolyn for being my 100th...yay!)

Not to be too pushy, but would you consider following my blog with Bloglovin' too? It's my favourite way to follow blogs, because you get a daily email summary of new posts and you can pick and choose what you want to read.