Black Bean Burgers

**** RECIPE CHANGE: I forgot to include the very important ingredient: Breadcrumbs. When combining all of the ingredients in the bowl add 1 cup of breadcrumbs. Sorry!!!


Oh black bean burgers we love you. We love how easy you are to make and how flavorful you are. We love that you only take a few basic ingredients and are ready to eat after only 10 minutes of prep and 15 minutes of cooking.

This is surely a meal to be loved by all.... this beloved black bean burger recipe, tucked away on the shelf destined to be remembered mid-summer, happened to make its way to our dinner table last week. And oh how I'm glad that it did. So simple. So comforting. So delicious. I knew it needed to be shared with you dear blog-readers. And so I present to you the easiest steps towards the tastiest of meals....

STEP ONE:
Grab your food processor or blender.
Grab a 14 oz can of black beans undrained, 4.5 oz can of chopped green chilies undrained, 1 tsp cumin, and 1 tsp chili powder and 1 egg beaten.
Blend black beans in food processor until lightly mashed, do not completely destroy them, just lightly mash.




Then combine all of those ingredients together in a bowl.
Form into 5-6 patties and coat with yellow cornmeal. I like to pour cornmeal onto a plate and coat each patty as I form them and place them directly into a medium heated skillet with 1 - 2 tbsp olive oil.
Serve with olives, chips and salsa plus your favorite beverage! = Delicious!

And don't forget the yummy toppings! We like to grill up some onions, mustard, cheese, ketchup (I prefer salsa directly on my burger) and lettuce. Enjoy!

My Shadow

Unfortunately, this blog has to be short because I have classes to sign up for and homework that needs some attention. However, I wanted to share with you all the project I completed today. If you have been following my 3D design assignments you know that I have worked with: balsa wood, wire, and eggs. The next material to add to the list? Screen-door netting. For our latest 3D assignment we were given a little bit more freedom. We could use any material we wanted, and well, make anything we wanted as long as it could be justified as a "body-extension." I know. What does "body-extension" technically mean? It's hard not to take it literally. And well, you can take it literally, that is a part of what "body-extension means... extending an arm... a leg... think of "hair-extensions".... etc... But, it can also mean lots of crazy other things. And the lots of crazy other things is where the class went. For example, today was critique day, and today we had someone walk into class with their dog which was connected to their sweater which was sewn to look like they had long arms that held onto the dog. One person dressed up as a big swiss army knife. One person made a teddy bear jacket. You name it. After contemplating very long finger nails, I settled on the idea of ... drum roll.... my shadow!! It's sounds weird, I know. While most of my classmates came with costumes of all sorts of 3 dimensions I came with simple screen door netting for a shadow. However, the more I thought about our shadows the more I realized how connected they really are to our 3-dimensionality.Shadows prove our volume, our mass, they prove that we aren't transparent. This project was all about the human body as sculpture and I think I added to the conversation today. Here I am...(please ignore the all-gray-pajama-craziness I have on...)





As far as craft goes. I could not have done this one with out Wes. He so kindly traced me onto the netting. I cut myself out and cut out the long legs on the floor. Sewed the pieces together and sewed the whole thing to a pair of socks that I could slip in to. I kept picturing peter pan where he tries to get his shadow to stick with a bar of soap. All for now.... more soon!

Love,
Katie

The Other Pinatas...

So, remember my eggs? Well alongside my eggs were some pretty impressive pinatas and my teacher posted pictures of them on our class blog. Some of them are weird, or one of them in particular (to be clear I'll just tell you... umm one girl made a cross, with a wax jesus hanging on it, that was filled with tampons. The relationship being feminism vs. anti-feminism because Christians are anti-feminism didn't you know? She supported this argument by saying "you know, the whole, 'man is head of house thing.'" umm... yeah... and she destroyed it by burning it.) So anyways, you will also see a police officer filled with donuts, a pig filled with hot dogs, a whale filled with plastic bags, a moon filled with cheese, eyeballs filled with sunglasses, a robot filled with wires, oh- a cancer cell filled with the words "fuck-cancer", a dragon filled with bell peppers and a UFO filled with little green aliens which we all catapulted off of Sky Bridge (a bridge on campus). Awesome! I tryed to upload the images straight to our blog but it didn't work. So I posted a direct link to the pictures below. Enjoy! They are quite interesting...

Check out these Crazy Pinatas!
Love,
Katie

Happy Valentine's Day!

My personal thoughts on Valentine's Day (and Wes agrees with me) is that it is kind of overrated. While I think that chocolate hearts and making valentines are all good fun, sometimes...the reds, pinks and purples can be a little overbearing when walking through the grocery store. However, I will gladly accept any holiday that provides an excuse to celebrate love and so we did the cheesiest thing we could think of yesterday and went and saw New Moon (of the twilight saga) at the Kennedy school. We will be going out to dinner sometime this week. Honestly, after this I completely forgot about Valentines day. I woke up this morning with out a thought of what today was, quietly tip-toed out of the room as to disturb Wes as little as possible (he worked last night, sleeps during the day on sundays) shut the door, turn around, only to find a trail of hearts leading to our coffee table. We aren't the type of people to buy things for each other on Vday. Going on a date is how we celebrate and sometimes we write letters. Wes has been known to make some of the craziest tri-fold-cards with secret compartments and flip down notes I've ever seen. So, seeing hand-cut hearts, and a big paper sign was completely Wes' style. I followed the hearts to the table to see a huge heart cake. Pink cake. Pink frosting. Pink sprinkles. And next to it a sign: "follow these directions." I follow the directions that lead me to a message on his phone singing "you are my sunshine." Yes folks, I am a lucky girl. So on this note, I am sending you all big heart cake love on this Valentines day. Oh and chocolate doughnuts with chocolate frosting too! Wes has one of these sitting at his spot at the table for when he wakes up. Shhh! Don't tell! :)

Have a great sunday!

Love,
Katie

Please ignore the overflowing laundry basket that inched its way into the picture.

A Day in the Life of a Nanny...

My day:

8:15a- I let myself in to a gorgeous two-story house and am greeted by a barking dog running down the stairs to greet me. "Hi Otis, Hi, hi, hi hi, hi, ok.... down Otis. Otis! down!" wash hands? check!

and the day goes by with:

-frizzy haired two yr old girl in her jammies.
-Make valentine heart cookies with two year old girl.
-observe the weather and make notes of weather on "weather chart" with two year old girl.
-Dance to the jungle book elephant march: "march 2, 3, 4, keep it up 2, 3, 4" oh and of course: "I'm the King of the Swingers, Oh! The Jungle V. I. P" (B. I. P in two year old girl language)
-Feed 3 month old while reading books for nap time.
-Two hours of peace and house cleaning, spit ups, and a massive blow out in the diaper later and we all eat lunch.
- We go to the market to get more "Nola Much" which is really "Granola Munch"
-The lucky girl also gets to go to the coffee shop down the street for special treat of chocolate milk.
-Thoughts of "Do I look like I'm a 16 year old mother of two?" go by like they always do, as people open doors for my wide load of stroller + diaper bag + baby carrier + blanket.
-Make it home before it rains and while I take notes in my nanny log two year old girl must take notes in her "book" too.
-Feed baby 3 month old while two year old "reads" to us.
-Yet another outfit change for 3 month old due to poopy explosion.
-Spit-ups ensue while playing "Doctor" with 2 yr. old and every patient (i.e. stuffed animal she can produce) comes to get a check up (not a shot because a shot would be too scary!) me the doctor:
eyes healthy? Check! ears healthy? Check! mouth healthy? check!
-Mom and Dad come home and of course they need check ups too. What a relief, *sigh* Mom AND Dad both have two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth. 2 year old, is relieved.
- Bye, Bye to Katie! and I am out the door with a shirt that smells like baby formula.

This is my first nanny job with two tiny-tots, first nanny job with a child under the age of 2, and the days certainly go by fast. I am loving being a part of this family and no matter how hard its been for me recently I can't help but look at my day and be thankful for the job I have. I could be serving coffee at Borders, greeting & serving each customer in the 5 minute time slot and wiping off tables. That would probably be easier. But then I would be missing out on these little tiny people who laugh for no reason and run around with frizzy hair. Wes will laugh when he reads this because the job/work combo has been really overwhelming for me lately. But hey, atleast I keep you all on your toes right??? hmm... will Katie be sad today? happy? upset? tired? I don't even know most of the time. :)

Love to you all,
Katie

My Pinata Project...

So, my first 3D assignment? balsa wood.

2nd? wire.

3rd? eggs.
eggs?? excuse me???
come again???
Let me explain.

my most recent assignment in 3D design was to make a pinata. Now you are thinking:

"Pinata? and Eggs? In the same sentence? whaa?"

Teacher gives assignment and these are the rules:
1. the pinata has to have a relationship between content and form. [Meaning, what you stuff it with has to be related to what it is.]

2. consider placement, where will your pinata best be viewed. [Hanging like a traditional pinata? on the ground? outside? inside? above the stairs? hanging from a tree? options are pretty much endless]

3. How will you break open the pinata? [hammer? bat? golf club?] Will you break it open or will the class?

4. think about what a pinata is. How do you define pinata? [guaranteed at least one person in every art class I have will try to redefine something. At the beginning of this course a student got frustrated with the teacher and declared "ahhh, man. Music IS sculpture." He stopped showing up after 2 classes.]

So, this project sent me home on the bus thinking of creative pinatas. I knew every single person would go along the path of paper mache' and there was a part of me that wanted to do some re-defining. At first I was down the path of gross things like:

- I could make little ants and each one could have a cherry tomato in it and each person could have one to step on. [Katie, what are you thinking??? that's so gross!]


then I thought....

- I could make a big rain drop and fill it with lemon drops and gum drops. [oh the nanny in me. Isn't that a barnie song??? "if allllll the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops oh what a rain that would be!]

....I can't think of the other things I was thinking of at the time but none of them were great. But then I thought of things that were breakable. And down the path of redefining I went.

I some how thought of my family's tradition to crack easter eggs over each other's heads. Eggs. hmm... eggs are breakable. And certainly not paper mache'. I presented this idea to my teacher the following class. She was in support of anything that would stretch the conversation of "What is a pinata?" I told her of my family's tradition and in the midst of our excitement we talked of having an easter egg hunt in the classroom and actually doing it the way my family does. After thinking about this I stopped myself.

I am no longer redefining pinata. This is just an easter egg hunt. and So I stepped back and said. "hmm..... if I hung the eggs, that could be justifiable." and so I hung them. And I wrote each person's name on an egg to give them each their own pinata.

So, today was presenting day.

I arrived to school early and hung them on the lowest ceiling I could find which just so happened to be in front of the classroom door. As students arrived they walked through the little hallway of eggs I made. And since I got there early, I was able to take a picture for you all... Here is my little pinata adventure at a glance, taking all the steps my family does only instead of hiding the eggs, I hung them.

[look mom and dad, Aunt Linda, and Aunt Sue! I dumped 3 eggs with out breaking the yokes! Used these ones for the cookies! :) ]

Class picture....
The Lady behind the older lady with the long hair on the left, the one looking proud with the big smile on her face? is my teacher. I know, she looks like a student, and well, she kind of is. She is a grad student at PSU or was recently... not quite sure. But I really like her!

Fweeewwwwh... so, that was a long one. But I hope you enjoyed. Never a dull day in the life of this lady. :) Hope you are all doing well. Enjoy your eggs!

Love,
Katie

Kale and Chickpea Soup

Add a little bit of this.....



and a little bit of that.....



and a little bit more of this....



and some other things....

and you get.....

this.

This is Kale and Chickpea soup. Hearty, delicious, nutritious, and comforting Kale and Chickpea soup. Recently, I had a crazy desire to cook meals with a) Kale and b) swiss chard. These desires arose after tasting them for the first time at a restaurant and we were provided with the prefect opportunity to cross"Kale" off the list a couple of weeks ago when New Seasons did a tasting of Leafy Greens. This tasting of Leafy Greens consisted of meals containing spinach or kale. We tasted this soup and grabbed the recipe and went home and made it. We thought we'd share the recipe just in case if you too were just waiting for an opportunity to make something yummy with Kale. Even better, this soup has red potatoes in it. My favorite!!! Enjoy, and please do tell us if you decide to make it. :) Oh and be prepared for leftovers because, it makes A LOT!

Love,
Katie & Wes....


Here's the recipe!

You will need:
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
4 small red potatoes, cut into 1/2" cubes
8 cups vegetable broth
6 cups water
2 bunches kale
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
2 14 oz. cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes
salt and pepper

In a large soup pot over med. low heat, saute' onion and garlic in olive oil, about six minutes or until onions are soft. Add potatoes, kale, broth, water, tomatoes and curry powder and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and allow to cook, covered, until potatoes are tender, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in chickpeas and continue to simmer, uncovered, an additional 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. serve warm.