I have a lot of butternut squash so my eyes have been open to any recipe that pops up with it involved. I use bloglovin to follow blogs. Its sends a nice email to me with updates daily. I can run through the list really quick to see what is new out there. A lot of my blog feeds are recipes. I weed through them trying to find options that will fit for me and have potential to work for my husband. We tend to eat pretty differently. I am plant based. He would eat piles of meat and dairy if he could. He has a fast metabolism. Mine is slower. Thanks genetics. Thus the meal struggle bus.

Thankfully he was willing to try this out. I had back up though if he did not like. The back up would have been a salad, but it was a backup. I refused to tell him what was in it until after he ate. He has gotten better at letting me do this to him. He has found that basically everything I feed him tastes good. It just is different then his meat and potatoes or chipotle.

The recipe makes 4 burgers. The main ingredients of the dish are black beans (1 cup), butternut squash( pureed 1 cup), and old fashioned rolled oats (1.5 cups). You have some celery, onions, garlic and spices added in. You can also choose to do egg as binder or a flax egg. I went with egg. I would normally try flax egg if it was just me. I was mildly nervous because I was trying to sell my husband on this. I didn’t know how flax egg would hold. I knew how the egg would hold. Plus if I had to tell him the ingredients the egg would be comforting to him. 

So the recipe can be found on the blog Peas&Crayons (click the blog name to get to go to the site)

I only needed to get the celery at the store. Went to my local MOMs for that and other grocery things. I had almost everything else in recipe or knew I could throw in other things for spices that I have in my house. Cooking is a giant science experiment.

So what I used/didn’t use

• Coconut oil instead of olive
• fajita blend instead of Italian
• dried basil instead of parsley
• No cheese

There are optional items listed on the recipe. You can do buns or just lettuce. You can make a sauce or not. We had buns and lettuce. I also cut up more onion to put with mine. I freaking love onions. And garlic. 

So how were they? Awesome! Flavor was great. They were filling. I will have one for lunch or dinner tomorrow. It was interesting trying to cook them in the pan. Patience is the key. Be careful with these suckers. They can fall apart if you are not careful. They will also fall apart on the bun a little bit. Serve with a fork. It was nice with lettuce because it was wrapped in there. Something fun was mashing the beans. I got hands on. Squished those suckers with my hands. So much easier. Reminded me of playing with playdoh. Crafting fix with cooking.

Husband gave me a high five. These will be made again for sure. 

All of my ingredients were organic. The recipe does not call for that in case you are wondering. If getting cans of items make sure you look for BPA free. 

In other news. I may have a cut and peel party for all this butternut squash. Those fellas are a pain to peel, but worth it.