Chickpea burgers

This may be the best vegetarian burger I've ever made, and I invented the recipe sort of by accident. I had chickpeas to use up, and some brown rice, and I was looking all over the internet for a burger recipe I could use. The only problem is that they all looked so awful, tasteless, and starchy. I don't really want to put two cups of rolled oats into a burger, because it sounds stodgy to me.

Well, there's plenty of starch in these burgers, but for some reason they didn't seem terribly starchy or stodgy, especially since I made the hamburger buns purposely rather small and thin. I liked the flavor of the chickpeas in the burger, especially the lovely golden crust that formed around them. In the future, I think I might add some more vegetables into this recipe for extra flavor and texture, or some herbs and spices. I'd like to experiment with finely grated carrot and finely diced celery. You could team the burgers up with any toppings you like, really--tomato and lettuce would be good. I used baby spinach, a slice of cheese, and a little bit of mayonnaise, and it was lovely. It passed the exacting toddler test, too.

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked chickpeas
1 cup cooked brown rice
2 tablespoons raw onion, very finely chopped
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon kosher salt (I know this sounds like a lot, but you sort of need the flavor)
a few good grinds of pepper
1 1/2 cups fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs (zap a couple of pieces of bread in the food processor)
1 egg, beaten

1 tablespoon peanut oil (or any other kind of oil you have; however, I like peanut because you can heat it to high temperatures)

Hamburger buns and the toppings of your choice

Put the chickpeas into the food processor and pulse a few times until they're roughly chopped. (They shouldn't look like hummus.) Add the rice to the food processor and pulse once, so that the rice is cut up but not a mush.

Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add the onion, garlic powder, rosemary, kosher salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and beaten egg. Mix well to combine. Form four round patties from the mixture, trying to get them as flat as possible so that they'll brown well.

Heat the oil in a large non-stick or cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat until it's shimmering. Add the patties and cook, covered, for 3-5 minutes on each side, until the burgers get a golden-brown crust.

Serves 4.

Recipe review: Creamy Pasta from the New York Times

I came across this recipe while trawling Martha Rose Shulman's incomparably wonderful Recipes for Health column in the New York Times. It intrigued me, since there are often nights when I have less than an hour's  turnaround between coming home exhausted with Baby B, getting her bathed and into bed, and rushing off to my next appointment (I know; workaholic). Sometimes, I hate to admit, I'll eat toast for dinner, which is just dreadful. So I loved the look of this pasta dish, which seemed like a simplified, time-conscious alternative to macaroni and cheese.

Well, it was ok, and most importantly, Baby B ate every bit of it. But it needs some improvements.

First, I felt that the olive oil really didn't add anything to it, so I'd leave that out next time.

Second, it wasn't cheesy enough. I'd double the parmesan next time, and possible add an extra half-cup of grated cheddar to give it more of a cheesy flavor. (Thereby wrecking the whole "health" component, I suppose.)

Third, it needed more stuff in it. I made it with a side of peas, which ended up more or less getting mixed in on Baby B's plate, since she's a messy eater. But what it really needed was some finely diced cooked ham. Then it would have been really satisfying, and balanced.

But it was a neat idea to put the cottage cheese in the blender so that you still get the flavor without the clumpy bits. I'll definitely make this recipe again, albeit with adjustments.

Frugality tips: when to buy name-brand products, when to buy generics

Part of my path to frugality has been learning to do without name-brand groceries. Often, there's really no difference between a name-brand product and the supermarket generic brand (or the version you can get in the bulk bins). In fact, sometimes it's the same company who makes a slightly less fancy version of the same product for the supermarket, so you aren't necessarily doing any better by getting the expensive name-brand one.

However, I've been forced to realize that you can't get generic brands 100% of the time, because sometimes they simply aren't up to scratch. Here are my carefully-researched findings so far.

Generic/bulk products that are absolutely fine:

1. Produce. I see no reason to buy some pre-packaged bag of name-brand spinach when right next door to it is a bin full of loose spinach that you can bag yourself for half the price. And so on.
2. Baking supplies. Flour, sugar, oats, dried fruit, nuts--they're all probably fresher, and they cost lots and lots less when you buy them in bulk. (I make an exception for yeast, baking powder and baking soda. I prefer name-brands for those ones for quality reasons.)
3. Dried products like rice, pasta, beans. All fine.
4. Tea. At my supermarket, you can buy tea bags in the bulk section. The same brands cost far less per tea bag than if you got them all packed up in a box on the other side of the store. I find this mystifying. 
5. Other drinks, such as soda and sports drinks. I don't drink them myself, but on the rare occasion that I've tried a supermarket-brand cola or lemon-lime soda, I've found them indistinguishable from Coke or Sprite. Of course, people who drink soda and sports drinks regularly may have a more sensitive palate than mine when it comes to these things. 
6. Canned goods of all types. I'm not very experienced with canned vegetables, since I'm more of a frozen veg girl myself, but I consume vast quantities of canned tomatoes and tomato paste, and the expensive ones really aren't sufficiently better than the generic ones for me to bother with them. What's more, my supermarket's own brand of tomatoes doesn't have a BPA liner, which is actually pretty unusual for canned tomatoes.
7. Frozen vegetables and fruits. I honestly can't tell the difference. I mean, frozen peas are frozen peas. I love that I can buy huge bags of them for eighty cents. Some people don't like frozen vegetables because they think they taste funny. My advice is to find out when they were packaged (it's usually stamped on the bag somewhere) and avoid anything older than a couple of weeks old. That way you won't have to deal with freezer burn.
8. Spices. The best thing, of course, is if you have a specialized Indian grocery store in your vicinity, which I don't. That way, you can get super-cheap, very fresh spices (because of the high turnover). But I'm lucky to live near a store that has all the spices I use in my cooking in the bulk section, and they're really very cheap. One of my most unfavorite things in the world is those horrid little jars of spices that sell for $7-10 each, and who knows how long they've been sitting there? Of course, this means that my kitchen is a mess of different-sized jars full of sometimes unlabeled spices, but at least they were cheap.

Things you really need the name-brand for:

1. The top one is boxed macaroni and cheese. I rarely get this stuff, but sometimes you have a hangover and all you want is radioactive orange goodness. I don't like endorsing a moderately evil company, but Kraft is really the only one that will do. I have never tried a generic mac'n'cheese that wasn't utterly revolting. And don't talk to me about the Annie's organic stuff. It doesn't taste good. It probably doesn't give you cancer either, but...well, you probably shouldn't eat boxed mac'n'cheese anyway. You have been warned.
2. Mayonnaise. I seldom buy mayonnaise at the moment, but I had to get some last month to make an eccentric chocolate cake recipe for my daughter's birthday. I decided to economize by not getting the Best Foods/Hellmann's brand, and got the store brand instead. Big mistake. It was vile. Subsequent research (i.e. asking my girlfriends) has revealed that no one has ever had a good experience with generic mayonnaise. Best Foods or make your own are the only two choices. And I've decided, after several failures, that life is too short to be faffing about trying to make mayonnaise.
3. Dairy products. I can't, to my sorrow, live a totally organic-foods lifestyle. I've decided the benefits of eating non-organic fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of the pesticide residues they contain. But I draw the line at non-organic dairy. I feel that my daughter deserves to grow up without ingesting a whole lot of bovine growth hormones, thanks very much, so we drink organic milk, and when we get non-organic dairy products, I make sure that they come from cows that haven't been fed growth hormones. I definitely won't use supermarket-brand dairy products, even though in some cases they're half the price of the organic ones I buy. 
4. Meat. I don't want to buy meat from animals that are full of poisons and have lived horrible lives and died horrible deaths. I would rather be a vegetarian (noooooo!). So I've started buying progressively less and less meat, but when I do, I make sure that the packaging indicates that it's all-natural and cruelty-free. I don't know how much to believe the labels. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there's no way that the chicken we eat can really be all-natural and cruelty-free for the price that it is. Still, I don't buy the supermarket brand.
5. Coffee. I'd rather not drink coffee at all than drink bad coffee. Coffee is now the one thing I don't buy from the supermarket, having had a couple of bad experiences with it in the past. It costs more or less the same to go to a really good independent coffee roasting place where you can ask them where the beans came from, so why not do that from time to time? Mr. B and I don't drink tremendous amounts of coffee because of the price of it, but when we do, we want to enjoy it.
6. Cereal. Knock-off cereal is usually vile. I don't eat much processed cereal these days (Baby B and I are porridge fanatics, and only steel-cut oats will do), but I've tried all manner of knock-offs of Special K, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Chex, etc, and none of them ever taste quite right.

It occurs to me that although this is a food blog, I could include a few other groceries, since this is a post about supermarket shopping.

Other things for which generics are OK:

1. Shampoos and conditioners. A lot of supermarkets do own-brand versions of popular products that have exactly the same ingredients. I've never encountered one that was sub-standard.
2. Paper products. I'm sure the fancy-pants ones full of moisturizers and scents and cushiony textures are nicer, but come on, it's toilet paper/tissues/paper towels, who really cares? I try to avoid using paper towels much anyway, in favor of washable cloths. I'm told the cloth handkerchief is making a comeback, too.
3. Feminine hygiene products. The supermarket ones are fine. Stop being such a priss.
4. Soaps (see shampoos). 
5. Dish and laundry detergents. Cleaning supplies in general. Fancy cleaning products are a waste of money. Leave them to the professionals, or the paranoid.

Groceries you want name brands for:

1. Trash bags. I have had many, many bad experiences with cheap trash bags. Just believe me on this one. Get the fancy ones that don't split and that tie up properly.
2. Moisturizers and sunscreens. Occasionally the knock-off brands are ok, but others are chock-full of parabens and phthalates. Of course, the originals sometimes have these too, but sometimes the knock-off ones add these chemicals where they didn't exist in the originals. In particular, don't buy knock-off cocoa butter lotion instead of Palmer's. I've never found one that didn't have parabens in it. Palmer's is God's gift to ladies who have sustained a few battle-scars in pregnancy, so I don't mind giving it some free advertising.
3. Pet food. My dog can only digest grain-free food. Bulk and generic pet food Will Not Do.
4. Children's acetaminophen and ibuprofen products. I have done a thorough survey of these products, and have been appalled to see that the supermarket brands are often full of food dyes, artificial flavors, high-fructose corn syrup, and parabens--parabens!--in the ingredients. Just grit your teeth and get the expensive name-brand.

Recipe review: Nigella Lawson's pumpkin scones

I came across this Better Homes and Gardens recipe quite by mistake. I was looking for something else, but then "pumpkin scones" jumped off the page at me. Since I had all the ingredients except the chilli oil, I decided to give it a whirl. I ransacked my kitchen for something that might work instead, and settled on using peanut oil and a pinch of cayenne instead.

This is a pretty eccentric scone recipe. I consider myself quite a scone connoisseur, so it seemed strange not to have to rub cold butter into the flour with a pastry blender. And there was an egg! And pureed pumpkin! Strange!

The finished product tasted pretty good, but a little heavy on the baking powder. This is probably my fault, though, because I couldn't get my favorite baking powder--Rumford's no-aluminum one--the last time I was at the supermarket. I swear, it makes a difference. Baking tastes so much better without that nasty metallic undertone. I can't believe I never found out about this stuff until maybe a year ago. My entire life, I'd though baking powder inevitably tasted nasty, but my dears, it is not true!

Pumpkin seems like a tricky product to me. There's a reason people always put masses of spices in it, and that's because it tastes simultaneously bland and odd. I can't explain it. Next time I make these scones (I think I probably will), I'll put twice the amount of cayenne in them if I still don't have chilli oil, and at least twice the amount of Parmesan. I might go even further and add a handful of grated sharp cheddar to improve the flavor and texture.

Recipe Review: Rice and Tomato Soup from Food Network

I had high hopes of this recipe, because I generally love Nigella Lawson and find that her recipes usually work out well.

I suppose even the beleaguered Ms. Lawson has off days when it comes to writing recipes, however. This soup was very bland. Very, very bland. I even added some leftover beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, and butter to it to give it flavor and richness, but it didn't work. What it really needed, I hate to say, was some crumbled cooked bacon or Italian sausage.

My search for the perfect healthy-yet-substantial tomato soup continues.

Recipe review: Chickpea Casserole from theKitchn.com

I really wanted to like this chickpea casserole. It's my New Year's Resolution to cook with more beans, lentils, and chickpeas, and besides, it was so full of interesting and unusual things that I was curious. Would it be like a quiche? A gratin? A luscious, oozing cheese dish that would become a sort of healthy replacement for baked macaroni and cheese on a chilly winter's night?

It wasn't really any of these things. It wasn't inedible or disgusting, but the texture was odd and clumping, with the cottage cheese curds clinging to the chickpeas in an odd and displeasing manner. I felt that the lemon zest overpowered the other flavors, which is saying something considering that the other flavors were raw shallots, raw garlic, and quite a lot of parmesan. I could barely taste the herbs, and the brown rice was more or less superfluous because you sure couldn't taste that, either. On the whole, I felt that the balance of flavors needed some serious tweaking. But it won't be by me doing this tweaking, because I'm not making it again.

The worst of it was that I initially considered halving the recipe, because five cups of chickpeas seemed like an awful lot. But then I thought "This looks like a lot of work, so I might as well have leftovers." Big mistake: it made enough to feed eight or ten people, and now I have a refrigerator full of leftovers that only I am likely to eat, since Mr. B is out of town on business and Baby B turned up her adorable little nose at it and said "Ucky!" until I broke down and made her some toast with peanut butter instead.

You know a recipe is less than wonderful when your favorite thing in it is the breadcrumb topping....... back to the drawing board for my plan to start liking chickpeas.

The one good thing was that I figured out a way to cook chickpeas that makes them at least taste better than the canned version. You soak them overnight in lots of cold water, and the next morning you drain them, cover them with lots of boiling water in the slow cooker, and cook them on high for three hours. Or I suppose you could cook them on low all day while you're out at work. My little 1.35lb bag of dried chickpeas made a whopping eight cups of cooked ones, so I have loads of chickpeas left over to practice on.

Week's meal plan, January 7 2014

Well, here I am in week one of my New Year's Resolution to include more beans, lentils, and chickpeas in our family's diet! This week's goal is to make myself like chickpeas. I'm really not that excited about chickpeas, you know. Apart from hummus, which I moderately like, you can pretty much keep chickpeas, as far as I'm concerned. Falafel seems kind of bland and oily. Channa masala? It's ok, but if I'm going to an Indian restaurant, I'd rather have sag paneer or something like that. Chickpea burgers and other earnest, worthy health-food things tempt me not.

With this in mind, I'm going to cook up a large vat of chickpeas in my slow cooker and attempt two of the recipes I found on the internet: this chickpea casserole and this chickpea spread that claims to be just like a tuna spread, only better. Considering that I don't like canned tuna (ugh, the smell), most things would be better than that, so I have high hopes.

This week's meal plan:

Breakfasts: steel cut oats with frozen blueberries and a scoop of yogurt

Lunches: toast made from my homemade whole wheat sandwich bread, with eggs (boiled, scrambled, fried, whatever), with an apple.

Dinners:
Roast chicken with green beans and a slice of homemade bread
Chicken leftovers into Chicken Pot Pie Soup from Skinnytaste.com
Martha Rose Shulman's Creamy Pasta, side of steamed peas
Chickpea casserole (link above) with a side of sauteed spinach
Chickpea spread (link above) on homemade bread
Leftovers (there will be lots of the soup and the casserole)

Snacks:
Slices of cheese (I have stopped buying grated and individually wrapped cheese products--blocks only from now on. Duh, what was I thinking? So much cheaper, so much healthier and so much nicer to have freshly-sliced or freshly-grated cheese.)

Desserts: apples, grapes.

Drinks: milk for Baby B, tap water for all of us, iced black tea or hot black tea for Mr. B and me.

This week's shopping list (not a complete list for what you need for the above recipes, because I already had quite a lot of frozen fruits and vegetables, yogurt, eggs, whole wheat flour, mayonnaise, etc):

Fruits and vegetables:
1 lb red grapes 2.78
3 lbs Braeburn apples 2.94
10 oz bag of spinach 1.98
2 heads of garlic 0.96
1 bunch parsley 0.58
3.66 lbs onions 2.49
8oz brown mushrooms 1.88

Bulk:
1.61 lbs steel cut oats 1.01
1.35 lbs dried chickpeas 1.42
1 lb whole wheat rotelle 1.09
1.33 lbs basmati rice 2.39
1.26 lbs unbleached white flour 0.42
1.26 lbs white bread flour 0.53

Dairy:
Darigold cottage cheese 1.88
1 gallon Organic Valley 2% milk 7.20
1/2 a gallon Organic Valley 1% milk 3.60
1 wedge Stella parmesan 4.48
1 lb block Tillamook cheddar 4.98

Meat:
1 whole chicken 6.12

Frozen:
1 lb green beans 0.78

Misc.
100 Red Rose plain black tea bags 3.49

Total: $53.00

So a pretty good total, although I still had so much food at home from my mother-in-law's Christmas gifts that the true cost would be greater.

I can't believe it only occurred to me this week that buying cheese in blocks would be better than getting the pre-shredded kind. Where I grew up, cheese was only available in blocks, so when I was an adult and realized you could buy it pre-shredded, I was overjoyed because I hated grating cheese by hand. For some reason I always got my knuckle with the grater, which was painful, messy and disgusting.

Fast forward to this week, when I found out that not only does the pre-shredded kind come with all sorts of nasty fillers to keep the cheese shreds separate from each other, but it's more expensive if you actually examine how much it all costs ounce for ounce. Not drastically more expensive, but enough to keep thrifty Mrs. B from buying it any more. I noticed long ago that freshly grated Parmesan is far nicer than the stuff in containers, and of course freshly grated cheddar, or mozzarella, or any other kind of cheese, is going to taste better than the bagged stuff. Also, the fact that I detest grating cheese so much will probably lead to our eating less of it, which will be both more economical and healthier. Hooray!