Good morning all!
So last night I had some free time and decided to do a little experimenting in the kitchen because the lovely Caitlin is hosting week 52 of the Blogger Secret Ingredient Contest. Basically, each week a new blogger hosts, and picks a special ingredient. Anyone can enter a recipe, but they have to use the ingredient in a creative way. So this week’s secret ingredient was… <drum roll>… pancake mix!
First things first:
Cooking is way better with wine 🙂 And music. Which was also involved 😉
So… wanna know what I made??
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……………………………………… FALAFEL!!!
Creative, right?!? I hope so, anyway 🙂
The star ingredient:
Secret Ingredient Falafel
Ingredients:
- 1/3 C whole grain pancake mix
- 1 can garbanzo beans
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/2 C fresh parsley (lightly packed)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp ground flaxseed
- 1/2 tsp dried coriander
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- juice of 1/2 lemon
Instructions:
First, preheat oven to 400. Then toss all the ingredients into a food processor! It should look like this:
Whirl it around in the food processor until it’s pretty much evenly mixed.
Form patties into flattened balls (it should make about 5 to 6) and place on a cooking sheet. Pop in the oven for about 15 minutes.
Once I put the falafel in the oven, I was still feeling creative, so on a whim I decided to whip up a yogurt/cucumber sauce similar to those I always love at falafel shops.
Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce
Ingredients:
- 6 oz container plain Greek yogurt
- 1 clove garlic
- Juice from 1 whole lemon
- 1/3 of a cucumber, sliced
Once again, I popped it all in the food processor….
…gave it a whirl, and voila! Amazing sauce. Mmmm this came out SO good!!
A tip for the lemons when you’re done with them — put them down the disposal… it makes it smell really nice 🙂
So by this point, my falafel was done!!!
I enjoyed two of them for dinner on top of a brown rice wrap (from Trader Joes.. these would also be awesome in a pita if I hadn’t just had one for lunch!). I drizzled drowned them in cucumber sauce, added some fresh cucumber, tomatoes, and spinach, and I was ready to rock!
….Except that once I added the spinach and actually tried to roll it up, my wrap was TOTALLY exploding and about to be a HUGE mess.
Good thing I’m a genius 🙂 Tin foil saves the day!!
So excited to have more falafel today for lunch… I’m thinking on top of a big salad with my cucumber sauce 🙂 I can’t wait to see what everyone else whipped up for the secret ingredient contest!
Hope you’re having a nice day so far! Mine has been productive… knocked out a couple hours of Organic chem homework, di
d some laundry, made some calls, etc. This afternoon I have do some editing work for my job, and we get our second exams back in chem class… eeek!
Now I’m heading off to my favorite class at the gym — PiYo — which is a pilates/yoga mix. I LOVE pilates and while I like yoga, I don’t like doing a full hour of it, so this is perfect for me 🙂 The instructor is great, too. Doesn’t that make all the difference?
Have a good one! 🙂
