Burger Mama

So tonight we had black bean burgers (a recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook, and one of our favorites).  We didn’t pick a recipe from our low sodium cookbook, as we were lazy bums today.  I also didn’t do much tweaking to the recipe.  As there are only two of us eating dinner I always half the burger recipe. 

So the recipe (this is the recipe halved) calls for:

½ can of black beans (647mg)

1 large egg (65mg)

½ cup of bread crumbs (whole wheat 0mg)

1 teaspoon chili powder (140mg)

¼ cup of cornmeal (0mg)

and I added a sprinkle of red pepper flakes (0mg) for an extra little kick

Heat skillet with oil on medium heat.  Mix (puree) beans in blender or food processor and add it to the remaining ingredients.  Mix all ingredients, except for cornmeal, and form into patties.  Coat patties in cornmeal and cook for 5 minutes on each side.  Then it’s time to eat.

Our whole wheat lite hamburger buns had 170mg of sodium (it’s hard enough to find 0mg sodium bread let alone hamburger buns!).  Clay added chopped jalapenos to his burgers.  So the total including bun (not condiments, I prefer mayo while Clay prefers ketchup) and cheese came to 518mg for my burger and Clay’s with the added jalapenos was 541mg. 

We could have really cut this way in half, or more than half, had I used bagged black beans, which have 0mg of sodium.  Since I’ve always used canned black beans I was totally unaware that you have to soak the beans either for an hour or overnight and then they take 1 1/2 -2 hours to cook.  So lesson learned.

I also simmered the spaghetti sauce and added oregano, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, basil and chopped fresh garlic.  I think I added about 3 teaspoons of each of these spices and Clay gave the sauce his approval. 

Tomorrow we will be trying pizza since it’s my Friday (I took off work on Friday to go see the final Harry Potter.  I can’t wait!).  We bought an Udi’s brand, which is also gluten free, pizza crust and I’m going to be using a pizza sauce recipe from the low sodium cookbook.  I have a feeling that herbs and spices are going to become our bestfriends.  Clamber+Sperbs=BFF 4EVA!