I’ve yet to see an actual tomato plant, but my balcony garden lettuce** is doing quite well — at least in comparison to the tomato plants. In fact, some of the lettuce leaves have grown big enough to, say, cover a burger!

So in celebration of these adult lettuce leaves, I decided to make veggie burgers — from scratch! I hit the Santa Monica farmers’ market, then modified this Black Bean Burger recipe** to create this:

Farmers’ Market Easy Veggie Burger

* 1 farmers’ market onion, finely diced
* Santa Barbara Olive Oil Co.’s** oil for frying
* 2 cups (cooked) farmers’ market black beans
* 2 slices organic whole wheat bread from NoCal’s Alvarado St. Bakery
* 1 tsp garlic salt
* salt and pepper to taste
* Roughly 1/2 cup organic flour
* 6 organic burger buns from NoCal’s Alvarado St. Bakery
* Tomatoes, avocados, and/or other farmers’ market veggies to top the burger
* Farmers’ market ketchup**

Sautee the onions for 3-5 mins, until soft.

Mash the beans to a consistency you like. Add the onions, bread crumbs, salts, and pepper and mix well. Then add the flour a couple tablespoons at a time until you have a thick mixture.

Divide the mixture into 6 parts, and shape each part into a patty and fry in the oil until slightly firm.

Toast the burger buns and place a veggie burger patty on each bun. Top with tomatoes and avocados. Use ketchup to taste.

As you can see, I forgot to buy burger buns and just used more of the bread instead. Still, I’m proud to say that aside from the garlic salt and flour, all other ingredients are local!

And I plan to save money by making my veggie burgers from scratch from now on, instead of buying the plasticky packaged ones from the frozen section of the grocery store. If you’ve got another good veggie burger recipe, please share it!

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