white bean & quinoa patties

We've been trying lots of new recipes since embarking on the 30 day vegan diet. Any recipe that includes quinoa makes me a little bit leery, but I decided to give the White Bean and Quinoa Patties a try and I'm glad I did.

I mixed together the white bean and quinoa along with some herbs and onions from our garden. We don't have a food processor, so we ran the mixture through our meat grinder (from my grandparents); as an aside, it is surprising how much use two vegetarians have gotten out of a meat grinder...cranberry salad, pesto, peach butter, etc. Anyway, the bean and quinoa mixture looked like ground meat and the flavors were all so good together, I ate several spoonfuls of it just like that.

Then we realized that we did not have hamburger buns. A quick search on the Internet for some vegan hamburger buns and we were suddenly pulling together a gourmet sandwich.

The buns came together rather easily and the texture was like a soft kaiser roll.

Saute the patties in a litte olive oil...

Add some freckled lettuce from the garden and served with wheat berry salad.

Delicious!

some sewing

A few months ago, I made an eye pillow out of fabric scraps from a friend. 

The pillow is filled with rice and lavender buds that I dried last summer.

It had been awhile since I had made anything at the sewing machine, so it was the perfect project for getting back to sewing. 

I decided to make another eye pillow...this time for a friend. I used fabric scraps again.

This time, I made a little indentation for the nose.

I filled the pillow with rice and dried chocolate mint from our herb garden.

Eye pillows are great for helping the eyes relax after doing yoga, or before bed.

strawberry rhubarb pie

David made the first fruit pie of the season! Strawberries are from the farmers' market and the rhubarb is from our garden.

this week

The mulberries around our neighborhood have started to ripen; I picked and froze about a quart today along with some strawberries from the farmers' market.

We are participating in Heather's 30 Day Vegan Workshop; Here are the carrot spice cookies that I made last weekend. They were great!

Honey Oat Bread

poppies

garden

roses

yum!

Nasturtium near the basil

Bean salad, Thai Coleslaw and Roasted Sweet Potatoes with orange glaze. 

You can see the tops of the Egyptian Walking Onions in the background  - they are such crazy looking plants!

around the garden

iris in the evening

around the garden

Nasturtium is starting to come up

The clematis is blooming

The orange rose seems to think it is the middle of summer already

and the poppies are loaded with buds.