Adventures in Sweet Potatoes and Bulgogi

How was your weekend!? 

I had today (Monday) off for Martin Luther King Day, so I had a nice, busy 3 day weekend. It included dinners at two delicious restaurants, one of them new to me (but the 3rd oldest restaurant in Boston!) called Marliave :) I went with 3 friends from college, as well as Eric and my friend's husband. We are all picky eaters with eating restrictions and everyone loved it, so I feel like that is real sign of an amazing restaurant. The weekend also included a baby shower and a baptism. Babies, babies everywhere. Here I am below with my college roommates (except my direct roommate Ash) and my mom at Teddy's baptism. 

The best thing about a 3 day weekend is having Saturday and Sunday to do fun things, and not really needing to be productive until Monday. I spent today swimming, getting as much work as I could handle done, and visiting my friend Tiff and her almost 9 month old Lia. I also cooked up a storm and I have to share these amazing recipes with you. 

My first cooking adventure was Bulgogi Tempeh. If you don't know what Bulgogi is, it's a Korean marinade that Eric is a huge fan of and usually orders with beef at our favorite Korean BBQ. I also had a student's mom make us some delicious Bulgogi back in December. I'm not a vegetarian but I don't love cooking meet either, so I liked the idea of making it with tempeh. You can find the recipe here . I was lucky that Eric enjoys cooking Asian foods so I had a lot of the ingredients in the house already, but they are not impossible to find even if you don't. I used regular soy sauce and substituted the onion with mushrooms. I poured this on top of quinoa and it will be my lunch for the week. 

 

My second (actually simultaneous) cooking adventure was sweet potato veggie burgers, or if you are like Eric and fundamentally object to calling something without meat a "burger" then sweet potato patties. I also found this recipe on Pinterest and made a few changes. I can't do whole burgers made of beans (stomach wise), so instead of using 1 sweet potato and 2 cans of beans, I did 2 sweet potatoes and 1 can of beans. The recipe was relaxed as far as spices so I let Eric swoop in and add whatever he felt like which was: paprika, red pepper flakes, onion powder, salt and pepper. I also omitted the tahini because I don't really like it. I got worried halfway through that they weren't going to stay together so I added some egg whites to a few of them, even though they were supposed to be vegan. They all were fine, so I think you could go either way. 

 

I ate one and a half on a sandwich for dinner with avocado. I love sweet potato and avocado. Best. Eric ate his as a side with a piece of steak :) Hey, at least I cooked for him. Sort of. 

Here are some other Pinterest recipes I want to try soon: Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew, Black Bean Sweet Potato Red Quinoa Soup,  Blueberry and Raspberry Baked Oatmeal, and Strawberry Banana Bread. 

How was your weekend? Have you made any good recipes lately?