MoFo Day Seven: Woodward Veggie Burgers.

Vegweb really came through for us a few months ago with this delicious recipe. We'd been wanting to try a new burger recipe and this one appealed because it was made of nuts and rice rather than beans, or soya mince. This recipe was on Vegweb but apparently came originally from the late Paul Newman's website and was named The Woodward Veggie Burger after Joanne Woodward, his wife.
  I really love the idea of Vegweb and I don't want to be castigated for a lack of vegan solidarity because come the revolution I'm there, rounding up the meat eaters with the rest of you (!), but I do think that a few of the recipes are a bit strange. I mean I really don't understand when someone posts, say, an enchilada recipe, and lists the recipe as needing: one jar of enchilada sauce, enchilada spices, one packet of vegan cheese sauce mix etc etc.  Maybe people find it helpful to know that such things exist at all, but apart from the fact that many Vegweb users just won't have access to vegan cheese sauce mix, if you did have access to all those things, I would have thought that it was fairly obvious that you could use them to assemble vegan enchiladas..isn't it? Oh, am I sounding horrible? I don't mean to- I love Vegweb. But I just saw a reference to Mock Crab Salad and the main ingredient is..Mock Crab...Just saying.
  Where was I? Some reviewers described this burger as not holding together well when it was cooked, but we haven't found that to be a problem; sometimes if it seems a bit crumbly we just add a bit more flour and until it is holding together better.

  I always usually make our bread a mixture of white and wholemeal or white and spelt flour, but we always make pizza bases white and we usually use white buns with burgers. We hadn't bought any burger buns this week (oops!), which we didn't realise until after I'd made the burger mix. We were going to change our meals round so we didn't need the buns today,and have Lemon and Courgette Linguine instead, because we were busy ordering more chocolates and sweets for our lovely 100% vegan shop VegaNation  (we're so excited: we found Pear & Licorice Bears and also Cola & Licorice Sheriff Badges- ideal for the 'vegan police' amongst us!!) but after shopping like..er..children let loose in a sweetshop (think ''trolley dash''!), we were finished sooner than expected, and I made some bread rolls to eat with our burgers.
   Woodward Veggie Burgers are only a three star meal because Pony doesn't like them and now Mouse, who used to really like them, has decided that he doesn't like them either (sigh).. So, this evening the non-believers are going to be eating..um..not quite sure, actually! We were supposed to be giving them some Tofu Wieners in a bun instead; we all love them and we were going to finish the packet up next week- if we'd remembered to buy them, that is..!

   So, this is where it gets 'real'! I said that I wanted my MoFo theme to be feeding a vegan family- this vegan family in particular! As I said before, Pony has particularly strong food likes and dislikes- it seems to be something that she has grown into. She was breastfed (yay!) and we had always read that children who were breastfed were more likely to welcome and enjoy a range of foods because they were used to getting different flavours through their mother's milk, but although Pony ate a very varied diet as a very small child, I don't think there has been a single new food within the last two years or so, that she has liked; which I can't help finding slightly disheartening at times. For me, cooking lovely vegan food for my children is one of the ways that I express my love for them so it can sometimes feel a bit crushing to have that expression stifled day in and day out, although I do try really hard to remember that she is not doing it deliberately.
  So, we will be eating Woodward Burgers and Pony and Mouse will be eating something else. And if you want to know what it's going to be..it might even be Alphabetti. If any of you keen cooks out there want to re-create this dish, here is what you will need: one 400g tin of Heinz Aphabetti...