Day 21: Pinto Bean Rice Burgers!

Today was a lot of work but a fun day of trying new combinations from my ingredients. My crowning culinary moment came in the form of an improvised bean burger recipe, the original found here. I didn't have a lot of those ingredients, so I subbed soaked & blended raisins for the salsa, and cabbage for the onions. I did have an egg, plenty of brown rice and pinto beans, so no problem there. I tried one with a teaspoon of tomato sauce, and one with just Season-All, and although the "tomato sauced" one had good texture and some degree of flavor, I preferred the seasoned one. These were a lot of work to keep the patty from morphing into a blob at first, but after cooking a couple I got the hang of it. I went ahead and made an extra one for tomorrow, and still have the mix for two more. I can imagine a vegan-vegetarian type really digging these burgers, and to be fair, they are really good when seasoned and eaten fresh out of the skillet, but they probably will not make my long-term favorite list. Overall, a great eating-to-live meal, very filling, and a welcomed departure form the norm. Including the corn tortilla and seasoning, each burger costs about 10 cents. Take a look...

Something I've been wanting to experiment on for a while now is roasting potatoes and carrots. I melted some vegetable oil spread and coated that on my cubed/sliced potatoes and carrots along with some Season-All, and then baked them at 450 for 20 minutes, turning them every 5 minutes. It was delicious... I wish I had thought of it earlier. I wrapped half of them in a corn tortilla and and ate the other half straight. It made for a great dinner. Cost of the meal: 13 cents. And it looked great too...

Prayer focus: Please pray for Ma Kanghe, a new orphan we recently took in at our Myanmar orphanage. She lost both parents to Cyclone Nargis last year, and we found her working in the market gathering firewood for a vendor there a few months ago. She is happy at the orphanage but there are emotional scars to be healed from her loss and the dark experiences of living on the streets before we found her.

Estimated Savings for Day 21: We had some guests over for dinner this evening, and we ordered in some Indian food from a place called Shiva. I was enjoying my roasted potatoes and carrots, so that probably saved me about $10 right there, as Shiva is not exactly your budget Indian restaurant. Other than that, today was a little too busy for any other outings. So, add this to my normal estimated daily grocery cost of $7, subtract $1 for today's actual cost, and I saved a total of $16 for my orphanage donation today. My running total is now up to $321.81.