DIY Veggie Patties

The spring break hiatus has ended and so has my writing drought.

Today I had a yummy meal of handmade veggie patties tonight and decided to link the recipe for all of you creative eaters out there for those times when Boca won't cut it. Nothing against Boca; they make some great eats but making your own veggie patties is a good experience.

I like this recipe (from Guy Fieri of the Food Network) because it's simple and it's the equivalent of fresh hamburger meat for us non-meat-eaters. It has a cool story too. Apparently Guy decided to make the patty after his vegtarian sister (Morgan) was dissatisfied with frozen alternatives (I watch waaaay too much Food Network, I know).

There's a little bit of dicing involved with the bell peppers and artichokes for example but other items, like olives, can be bought diced and canned. Throw it together and you have get to see exactly what goes into the vegetarian version of the hamburger.

One tip that Fieri offered when he made the recipe during the show involved shaping the veggie patty in a small, round left-over container. Line the Tupperware (or whatever brand you have) with plastic wrap, place the patty mixture in, place another layer of plastic wrap over the top of the patty and press the patty into shape.

I sandwiched my patty with a Publix bakery French roll and topped it with lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard and a garlic/mayonnaise mix. Tater tots for the side. Only regret: I forgot to buy ketchup :(

New Favorite Beer

I stopped by the East Colonial Total Wine store this afternoon with Glen (previously referred to as 'boyfriend' but I guess I'll use his name now). I picked up some cosmopolitan mixings for a jewelry party I'm hosting tomorrow - with a five minute delay at the counter b/c a manager had to double check that my 21-year-old I.D. wasn't fake - and Glen picked up some beer. Nothing out of the ordinary.

We got home, he made some margarita pizza (I'll throw the recipe out there once we perfect it) and popped open a couple of bottles of the beer. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. But let me tell you that this beer was good. I mean good. The kind of beer you can drink and when you have that last little bit of warm, backwash beer at the end it's still good (I suppose that's my beer ranking strategy).

The name you ask? Samuel Adam's Blackberry Witbier. Around 52,000 beer drinkers voted the beer it the "Beer Lover's Choice" out of the Sam Adam's lineup last year. I have to agree. It plays up some fruit tones (blackberries shipped out from Oregon according to the bottle's label...whatever) without letting the fruitiness taking over. Some other beers, like Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat or what a friend of Glen's first introduced to the both of us as Fruity Pebbles beer, take the fruit flavor and let it dominate the palette. While I enjoy a cold bottle of Sunset Wheat I can't help but feel I'm drinking a wine cooler at times. Blackberry Witbier has a background of berry and an incredible smell that only adds to the beer's flavor, but there's also that familiar bite that all beers share. Plus, it's always nice to have an American beer that has a little body, that tastes and feels a little less like fermented water and more like, well, beer.

Kudos to Glen on this find. Sam Adam's has had the Blackberry Witbier out in six packs since January and says that it will be available in their "Samuel Adams Summer Styles collection available in April/May." Keep an eye out for it.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

I remember the first time I had 'natural' peanut butter. I was at a Whole Foods and I wanted to press the button on their natural peanut butter maker just to see what would happen. I wound up walking out of there with a 1/2 pound of natural peanut butter. The stuff was pretty good but I thought I could make better.

So last night I made my first batch of peanut butter from scratch in my food processor (it was my coveted Christmas gift this year). It was actually pretty easy and I'm sure you could whip it up in a blender if you have one, though it might take a bit longer.

You need:

- 1.5 c. peanuts, non-salted
- 2 tbs. peanut oil
- 1.5 tsp. sugar

1.) Roast the nuts! I threw my peanuts (which went against the recipe and were the light salted Planter's cocktail variety - it's what I had) into a pan and toasted them on the stove top for about 7-10 minutes or until the smell of peanuts filled the downstairs portion of my townhouse.
2.) Throw the nuts in the processor. Blend to chop.
3.) Keep the processor on and add oil slowly (again I used vegetable oil in my version last night and it came out fine - peanut oil will probably add more flavor). Blend for about 5-7 minutes.
4.) When mixture begins to resemble peanut butter add that sugar in and then blend some more until you reach the consistency you like. The sugar tones down a sort of bitterness that homemade peanut butter can have.

Pretty easy right?

I'm tweeting now...

For those of you who like to obsess at Internet's length over the movements of others I've opened up a Twitter account. Just search my name, find me and be a socially accepted creeper.

Sushi Rama

My boyfriend introduced me to Bikkuri Sushi two years ago. And my life hasn't been the same since.

OK, so that might be a bit more melodramatic than it needed to be but I had to get you to read this post somehow. What I will say is that my sushi intake has increased significantly since I started going there and I haven't put too much of a dent in my dwindling funds.

Bikkuri, a small sushi take out/dine in eatery off of East Colonial, offers some of the best and cheapest vegetarian-friendly sushi you can fine in this town. I got to meet the owner, Sam Chang, while interning at the Orlando Business Journal last summer. He's a quiet guy but very hospitable and he stops bustling for a chat or, at the very least wave, every time I come by Bikkuri (with the occassional free sake plopped in there...hey, what can I say?).

Chang has thrown himself and thousands of dollars into his restaurant and turned it from a small take-out sushi hole-in-the-wall, to an eat-in restaurant and sake lounge in the upper portion of the building. The lounge has the sort of urban feel and technicolor lighting akin to the Tokyo karaoke bar Murray finds himself sitting in in Lost in Translation. Minus the pink-wigged Scarlett. While the take-out sushi operation still pumps out rolls downstairs the dine-in restaurant upstairs offers the full sushi menu plus fare like soba noodle dishes, dumplings, you name it. The best part of it all is that Chang, a Taiwan native trained as a sushi chef for close to a decade in Japan, serves only fresh ingredients, no browned avocado or frozen veggies here (if you are looking for that, however, I'll direct you to the Publix seafood department).

My long-time vegetarian favorite has been the Garlic Roll ($3.99 for 8 pieces the last time I checked) that sidles fried garlic bits right up with slices of cucumber and avocado and a creamy dollop of fresh cream cheese. Though not the best eats for your first date crowd, the play of the crunchy bite of the garlic over the slightly-cooled cream cheese is, well, awesome. An eight piece roll can fill me up.

I'm also a fan of the Asparagus Tempura Roll (fried asparagus, cream cheese), which intertwines the nutty crunch of the asparagus with that familiar cream cheese, as well as the Seaweed Salad Roll, the salty salad toned down by jasmine rice cooked just right. Other vegetarian options are available though you will have to sift through a menu decked out with every variation of sushi you can possibly think of.

I was a bit bummed when I dropped by last Thursday to pick up my order (a 12-piece Garlic Roll for me and 12-piece Philidephia Roll for my flesh eating boyfriend that totalled to about $15) and found that some of the prices had been bumped up by a dollar or so. I guess that's what you're going to find pretty much everywhere now, though. Still, when it comes to good and affordable sushi in Orlando, Bikkuri pulls some serious weight on my list.