Happy Fourth of July!

Okay so back to the whole food concept. :)

It's the Fourth of July, Independence Day here in America and I totally started my day off with a pot of tea straight from Piccadilly, London. A nod to the Boston Tea Party, really. However, I am fully prepared to spend the rest of my day in my red, white, and blue and enjoy my version of America's summertime fare--a black bean burger.

Some of you may have heard me lament my ability to buy any of the fake meat products on the market due to the yeast being used as a preservative. So my mom and I embarked on an effort to find something that could work as a 'burger' and we played around with a black bean burger recipe. Many use egg to help bind the beans today, so obviously that's got to be tweaked. Some use rice as a filler. No go there too. Interestingly, we stumbled on to barley as a substitute. They still may fall apart, but it's the best I've got.

Black Bean Burgers

1 can black beans
1/4-1/2 c cooked barley
Spice (Hamburger spice is an option, but whatever works for you)
1/4 c corn

Drain and rinse can of black beans. Mash with pastry blender. Add cooked barley and spice. Mash more with pastry blender. Add corn. Mix and make into patties. Fry/saute til slightly browned.

Obviously however big you make your patties can determine how many you make. For me, it's usually between four to six. I make mine a little smaller because I also can't eat the store-bought hamburger buns, so I make them biscuit sized. But whatever works.

It would probably all make you  laugh to look at my version of the hamburger: Pillsbury biscuit split in half, black bean burger oozing out the side, a slice of cheese melting over all, and Pam-kosher-ketchup in there too. Usually one of the messiest meals I eat, simply because it's so cobbled together with a little hope and love trying to keep it from falling apart. But it's so incredibly awesome to have a burger to eat--they're one of the few things I truly, truly miss.

So enjoy those fireworks (if you're not rained out) and burgers today, as we celebrate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[Query: did Jefferson use the Oxford comma? Hmm...quick search tells me no...]