I made these veggie burgers a couple of weeks ago from a recipe I clipped out of a magazine eons ago. (Yes, I am a compulsive recipe collector.)

I was drawn to the recipe because it used mushrooms (which I love), and also courgette (zucchini), which I have an oversupply of at the moment. (Our tomatoes may all be getting blight in this our third rainy summer in a row, but at least the courgettes are growing like mad.)

The recipe originally called for an egg and 1/4 cup of ricotta cheese. I used a bit of arrowroot dissolved in water for the egg, and tahini thinned with water for the cheese.

The burgers turned out great! They didn’t fall apart in the pan, like veggie burgers are prone to do, and had a nice moist texture and delicious flavour. Mr Thrifty and I liked them so much that I made them again a few days later.

Enjoy!

Marvellous mushroom burgers

1. Heat olive oil in a heavy skillet and saute onion over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add garlic, saute another minute. Then add mushrooms and courgette (zucchini) and saute until excess moisture has evaporated. Add steak sauce, basil and oregano and set aside to cool.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine wheat germ and oats.

3. Put tahini into a small bowl, and stir in two tablespoons of the water until smooth. In another small bowl, mix remaining two tablespoons of water and arrowroot.

4. Add sauteed vegetables to wheat germ / oat mixture and mix well. Then add tahini and arrowroot mixtures and mix thoroughly. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

5. Divide mixture into five portions and shape each one into a burger. Chill for 30 minutes or more.

6. Saute burgers in a bit of oil until lightly browned on each side.

7. Serve in buns with all the fixings. Or naked on the plate. They are scrumptious either way.

Makes five burgers.

I love homemade seitan sausages, but wanted to try a version that used beans instead of tofu. Tofu is kinda pricey here, and since the local supermarket stopped carrying it, it’s a car ride away to buy.

I’d tried seitan sausages using beans before, but didn’t really like them. The recipe I used at that time called for simply mashing the beans by hand, which meant there were bits of hard bean skin in the finished sausages, which wasn’t especially appetising. Also, I thought there was too high a percentage of gluten in the sausages, which left them a bit too rubbery and chewy. I like sausages that are more tender.

Since I really like my own seitan sausage recipes, I decided that instead of using 250g of tofu, I would use 250g (9 ounces) of cooked beans (haricot beans, specifically, which are small white beans). If you’ve tried other seitan sausage recipes that use beans, you’ll notice that I use about three times as many beans as some other recipes use. This results in a more tender sausage.

The sausages turned out fantastic. They had a nice tender texture and a great flavour.

I’ve made these bean-seitan sausages a few times now, including breakfast sausages, bratwurst and olive sausages. For the latter, I used the seasonings in Mihl’s recipe for Olive and chickpea seitan sausages.

I start with 110g (one generous cup) of dried beans for this recipe, which is approximately equivalent to a 400g/14oz tin, drained and rinsed. (This works out to around 250g of cooked, drained beans.) I usually let my Stanley thermos cook the beans.

I’ve gone back to using baking paper plus aluminium foil to wrap the sausages for cooking, instead of baking paper plus cheesecloth. I’m using a new baking paper which isn’t as stiff as the old one I was using, and combined with the cheesecloth, the sausages didn’t seem to cook quite as well as with the baking paper/aluminium foil combo. I still want to try using muslin to wrap the sausages for cooking, but have yet to find somewhere to buy it.

I now use beans in all my homemade sausages, as cooked from dry they cost about 80% LESS than the equivalent amount of tofu, and are indistinguishable in taste and texture. A very thrifty result!

A few days ago, both Mr Thrifty and I were in the mood for pizza, but it was late and I didn’t have a pizza crust premade in the freezer.

So I decided to make pizza using French bread as a base instead.

I used a type of baguette that is widely availably in supermarkets here. The crust is more soft than crusty, and the shape is slightly flattened rather than being more round like an authentic baguette.

The pizza was incredibly delicious, and we’ll be making this super-quick pizza again and again.

Here’s how to do it:

* Cut the baguette into 15cm/6″ lengths, then cut each chunk in half lengthwise

* Spread the bread with pasta or pizza sauce. (I used a premade sauce: Tomato & Basil pasta sauce from Seeds of Change.)

*  Grate some melty vegan cheese on top of the sauce. (I used Redwood’s Mozzarella Cheezly.)

* Add toppings. (I used sauteed courgette/zucchini and sauteed mushrooms.)

* Bake in a preheated 200C/400F oven for 15 minutes, until cheese has melted and bread is crusty

Enjoy!