Feel the bur(ger)n.

A sound bean burger recipe that didn't fall apart in cooking. Could be a bit more moist, but that's adjustable. Flax seeds act as the glue, they are also really good for you (source of protein albeit incomplete, omega fatty acids, and fiber). Also, they are dirt-cheap.

Bean Burger Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 3/4 cups beans, cooked or canned (e.g. white navy beans)
- 1/3 cup flax seeds, ground
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1/2 cup water (or more, as needed)
- 1 tsp lemon juice mixed with a couple of drops of rocoto paste (that stuff is potent, use with care. Alternatively use tabasco or any other hot sauce).
- smoked paprika, salt, pepper to taste.

Making of:
- Mash the beans with a fork
- Add everything else, mix
- Form into patties, pan fry on medium-low heat
OR
- Blend all in food processor

They can theoretically be eaten raw, but I haven't tried it yet. Another good idea might be adding garlic and caramelized onions, but I was too hungry to think of that while making them.

The purple goo on the left is the red cabbage, mushroom, onion, zucchini, carrot and red pepper stew.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups chopped red cabbage
- 1 large onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 grated zucchini
- 1/4 lbs (1/2 a pack) mushrooms, but could use more
- 1/2 red pepper, diced
- 1 large carrot
- 1 cup white navy beans, cooked or canned
- thyme, majoram, salt, pepper and bouillon cube dissolved in 2 cups of water, khmeli-suneli, if you got any
- 1 tbsp olive oil

Makings:
- sauté the onions and mushrooms in olive oil over medium heat in a large pot
- add all the rest of the vegetables, cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
- add all the rest, and water as needed (depends on how liquid you want it)
- blend half way with an immersion blender of food processor (optional)

The Road to World Domination

Once more, this blog is changing direction. I've been getting increasingly interested in athletic nutrition, thus started paying more attention to the nutritional value of things. I'm nowhere near the professional athlete level where nutrition is tuned to a milligram; it's more of an interest in general healthy eating. However at the level of exercising I'm at, I'm forced to think about nutrition to be able to recover quickly enough to keep up the training.
Last week's discovery - a "dense" meal is not necessarily as filling as a "light" one. I've been surprised at not being hungry 4 hours after eating a salad (lettuce + bell pepper + carrot + cucumber + daikon + walnuts + raisins, olive and sesame oils + balsamic vinegar as dressing). The problem is, being the phony vegetarian I am, I actually don't like lettuce or bell peppers... But that is another story entirely.

Anyhow, the pinnacle of sport nutrition - energy bars! That's right, for people who need gratuitous  amounts of energy. I've seen recipes for home-made granola bars before, but they included 20 different ingridients and fairly complex cooking procedures.
The Thrive Diet book I've mentioned in the last post contains a few energy bar recipes and an indisputable advantage of simplicity - cooking instructions come down to "blend everything in a food processor, shape into bars, wrap in plastic and freeze." While there is half a dozen recipes there, as long as you put hemp protein and ground flax seeds, you get the bragging rights of a thriver.

Seven Days of Thriving

I've recently read the Thrive Diet by Brandan Brazier, a book about eating pattern of a vegan Ironman triathlete. He promotes highly alkaline and alkaline-forming diet and the concept of net-gain (the energy obtained from food VS the energy expended during digestion process). Even if one is not interested in veganism this book is definitely worth reading. The second half of the book is a 12-week meal plan, in case you actually decide to try it, and specific recipes. Ranging from the instructional material on sprouting beans and quinoa, to making energy bars and smoothies (with sprouted quinoa in them, yes. Well, in some of them) it gives plenty of room for experimentation.

So far I've discovered that...
...ginger in smoothies taste like arse (I love it in all other forms... ginger, not arse. Also no idea how the latter tastes, so will assume like ginger in smoothies), but lettuce blends into them just fine.
...during sprouting things quadruple in volume; a 2-litre jar of sprouts is the evidence.
...sprouted white navy beans can cause indigestion (tested on two people - myself and a co-worker). The word in town is that adzuki beans are the way to go.
...in the face-off between the mix blueberry energy bars and the food processor bit of the immersion blender the bars win (my roommate is going to be mad, it was her blender). Truth to say the blender is fine, but the food processor container is kaput.
...sprouted quinoa is the bomb, just rinse well before eating it.

I'm happily eating yoghurt amidst this whole sprouting madness, since I'm not in a rush to go vegan (been there, done that). However shedding eggs and milk was not a problem, Thrive provides readily available alternatives.

So far I've lost 5lbs, which I'm rather unhappy about - my 5'9" x 145lbs constitution is not exactly where I want to be (I'm a very physically active guy, so building muscle mass is my current quest). However as long as my strength-to-weight ration improves I call it a win. That the Spartan Race on June 10th will show; but that is another story entirely...