In an effort to increase my cooking skill level and because I control what everyone eats every night, I started vegetarian Thursdays last week. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I love to cook. I love spending at least 20 minutes every afternoon fantasizing about what I am going to cook for supper. Then I head off to the store, if anything is missing and buy what I need.

I can’t really say what inspired me to make every Thursday a vegetarian supper, I guess I just wanted to try something new for a change. I only started this tradition last week so for me to do this correctly I asked Chef Google, what I can and cannot include in my meals.

This is what Chef Google said:

Vegetarians commonly avoid animal flesh, which includes beef, pork, lamb, venison, buffalo, poultry and seafood.

Not being too strict, I wanted to allow animal products in my diet too. So I will be including foods like eggs, milk, cheese, butter and any other types of animal products.

Last week, I managed to make a very delicious and creamy, spinach and feta pie. I coupled it with roasted vegetables, drizzled with butter. Comments from the family? No one asked for meat and said it was delicious so I can deduce that I made an amazing meal. (Sorry, i completely forgot to take photos)

This week, I challenged myself more and made a vegetarian burger. I asked chef Google for help on burger patty ideas. I started off going in the direction of lentils, black beans and knew that I could develop more flavour from them with the addition of some herbs. What managed to catch my eye more was portabello mushrooms. I love how big they are, they are packed with flavour and couple with some garlic and cheese, would be enough to carry the richness of a meat patty. The next challenge I found was complementing the mushroom flavour. What landed up working well was not adding parts that would water down the burger. When you grill mushrooms, you release a lot of water so I knew I couldn’t add lettuce to the burger.

With all that thinking and pondering and tasting a lot of flavours, this is what I landed up making:

I added basil pesto to creamy mayonnaise for the sauce, rocket instead of lettuce, on thin slice of tomato, a portabello mushroom with crushed garlic and melted cheddar, and lastly for a bit of sweetness, the carmelised onion.

My husband, who would opt for a meat only diet if he could, said that this was the best burger he had tasted in a while. That put a smile on my face. Look out for next week’s blog where I’ll share on whatever vegetarian meal I have planned.