The Ultimate Veggie Burger 1.0

Well, I was cooking up a storm this weekend and I have firmly resolved to develop the ULTIMATE veggie burger within the next couple of weeks. I am calling this one The Ultimate Veggie Burger 1.0 because there will be several versions as I continue to tweak and improve the recipe. I couldn't believe how well this first try came out, especially in the appearance department, I mean look at that thing. It looks exactly like a beef hamburger! I would dare say that if this were on a grill with some meat-based hamburgers you wouldn't be able to tell them apart, except maybe for the tons of grease pouring out of the meat ones. The appearance is almost right on, even on this first version, and the taste and texture aren't bad. Let me tell you a little bit more about it.

I ended up FINALLY trying this veggie burger recipe over at Bunnyfoot's blog. I believe it is, in turn, based on a recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan, who is, of course, one of my vegan idols. I had been wanting to try this for quite some time, because it sounded like the combination of Vital Wheat Gluten and TVP might be the key to achieving the texture of an actual hamburger. Now, don't get me wrong, I like all of the other types of veggie burgers too, you know, the ones based on nuts or smashed up beans and things like that, the ones that are just delicious being what they are, not trying to copy a beef hamburger. Right now though, I am intent on developing this recipe to turn it into the best copy of a beef hamburger that I can. There's no need to really worry any more about the appearance, because the appearance is perfect. These tasted good too, but they taste more like the VwaV Veggie Burgers than say, a real beef hamburger.

I can remember lots of tricks from other veggie burger recipes I have tried in the past for making them taste "meaty". I plan on trying all of them until I find just the right combination. Some of the things I plan on adding to the mix are chopped onion, Portobello Mushrooms, maybe Dale's Seasoning (that soy sauce based stuff that people use to grill meat with), peanut butter?, walnuts?, Montreal Steak Seasoning, vegan Worcestershire Sauce, and who knows what else? I also plan on getting to Walgreens at some point because supposedly they sell these "Beef Bullion" cubes that are so cheap that they're vegan. I don't know if that's true or not, but I've heard it and plan on checking it out. Needless to say, there's lots of experimenting to do, so you might be seeing veggie burgers pop up pretty often in the lunchbox here in the near future. As soon as I get everything perfected, I will post the entire recipe and procedure here. Until then, if you'd like to experiment yourself, just use the recipe over at Bunnyfoot's blog because that's where I am starting.

This should be really interesting because these burgers are already fantastic. There's so much that you could do for the taste though, that once they're really jazzed up, they may be worthy of the title of Ultimate Veggie Burger. I guess we'll see huh?

To go along with my burger, which is on a Light Wheat Bun by the way, I brought some Lay's Light Potato chips. They're the ones that are fat-free since they're fried in Olestra. That stuff doesn't hurt my tummy, so they're just fine to me. I do have friends though who can't eat it because it messes with their insides. Looking at my lunch today though, I could smack myself for spending $3.49 on that bag of chips when I could have just whipped up some of those Microwave Potato Chips that I like to make. I'll bring them later this week when I try my first changes to the veggie burger recipe.

And then, to finish out the lunchbox, I brought some veggies. I've got some Peas & Carrots and some Sweet Yellow Corn, both of which just came from the freezer section of the local grocery store. I've mentioned before, that I just dump these in the lunchbox frozen and then they're thawed out by lunch time. A quick 45 seconds or so in the microwave, covered with some Glad Press-n-Seal, and they are good to go.

No dessert for me today since I've got that big veggie burger and I'm still trying to lose weight. I don't think I need any anyway because this is PLENTY of food. That veggie burger is HUGE! It's only got a couple of grams of fat too, so that's good.

Well, it's Monday, so I guess I need to update everybody on how my weight loss is going. It's now been 4 weeks since I started at my highest weight ever of 225 lbs. Last week, I weighed in at 211 pounds, so I had lost 14 pounds in 3 weeks. I ate pretty good last week, and got my exercise in as best I could. I actually only got to walk 4 out of 5 days because it poured down rain one day. But when I weighed myself this morning I weighed 209 lbs. So I lost another 2 pounds last week. YEAH! That means that I've lost a total of 16 pounds in 4 weeks. Not too shabby. Just 4 more pounds and I'll be halfway to my goal of losing at least 40 pounds.

It's kinda' slow going now, only losing a pound or two a week, but that's the healthy way to do it. Plus I have gotten encouragement from the fact that I actually LOOK like I am losing weight now, I can see it in the mirror, and I assume everyone else can too. Plus, I actually got to move in another belt notch last week. So that's good.

So that does it for Monday's lunch & weight loss update. I am really excited about messing around with these veggie burgers because grilling season is almost here and I would LOVE to have some awesome veggie burgers available to impress all of my meat-eating friends with. I want to make these things so good that they'll all actually want to try them, and LIKE them! I guess that's a pretty lofty goal, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Thanks for coming by today. See everybody tomorrow!