Black Bean Cakes

Ever wondered what to do with the bottom of a bag of stale tortilla chips? I often just chuck 'em in the compost pile, but I'm always trying to figure out if there's something better I could do with them. So there's the inspiration for tonight's dinner. (Yes, believe it or not we were still hungry for dinner despite snacking on apple uglies all day.) I crushed some stale tortilla chips with my hands, then put about a cup of them in the food processor and ground them very fine. Then I added about 2 cups of cooked black beans (or 1 can), plus 2 Tbs. canola oil, 2 Tbs. veg. broth, the juice of 1 lime, 1 tsp. agave nectar, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. cumin and 1 tsp. chili powder. That all got mixed together in the food processor, then for some texture I scooped that mixture into a bowl and worked in 2 chopped scallions, 1/4 c. finely diced red bell pepper and 1 grated carrot. Then I formed them into patties and fried them in a little canola oil. I served them over some rice that was cooked with a little bit of crushed tomatoes and put a sauce on top that was more of said tomatoes plus onions, red bell pepper, garlic, salt, chili powder and cumin. Some steamed green beans rounded it out.

Our trip to the Outer Banks was also somewhat of an inspiration for this meal because we had something kinda sorta similar out there. The vegan food options there are limited and we usually bring a good bit of our own food, but there's a relatively new restaurant in Kitty Hawk called The Seaside Vegetarian and though we stay about an hour south of there we pass through there on our way in and out. On the way in we were getting hungry and just happened to see the sign for this restaurant as we passed it by. A quick U-turn later and we were in the door about 10 minutes before they closed. I took a little exception to the name because among their limited menu are several seafood options and as we all know fish isn't vegetarian. But they were forgiven because they also have some vegan options and everything we had there was awesome. On the way home we stopped there for lunch and I had fried yellow lentil and root vegetable cakes that were served over rice with green beans on the side. The tempeh wrap I had the first time we stopped there was awesome too, so something like that may also show up here in the near future.