That's not a salmon patty, but trust me, it's delicious (and EASY). by Sarah Henning

Well, that’s that. The CSA season is over, and, just like that, winter is coming. Darn it.

I suppose distance makes the heart grow fonder, but next spring feels like forever from now. Sigh. Well, when the CSAs do start up again, we’ll be that much more excited to have our first pickups, right? CANNOT WAIT.

So, for my last bag (sniff!) of the Rolling Prairie season, we received a pretty good haul: Swiss chard, sweet potatoes, apples, turnips (including black ones!), salad greens and green peppers.

If you’ve been reading this blog all season, you probably have a pretty good idea of what I did with most of that pickup: fajita veggies, roasted turnips, apples out of hand and Swiss chard in my homemade vegetable juices.

As for the rest of it, we enjoyed the salad greens and sweet potatoes on the very same night for a fabulous and hearty dinner. We used the salad greens as a basis for a delicious salad that also had carrots and cashews and bell pepper. We topped it off with homemade honey mustard dressing.

On the side, we had steamed kabocha squash (one of my very favorite squashes — I highly recommend you try it) and then for the main course, we had homemade veggie burgers.

If you look in the picture above, they kind of look like salmon patties with avocados on top, but they are actually sweet potato-based burgers and they are fantastic. Nothing fishy about them! We used a CSA sweet potato mixed with garbanzo beans and spices for a very hearty burger, that we both loved (the hubby had two, I had one and a half).

Note: They don’t stay together well, but trust me, you won’t have any problem chasing down every single crumb.

Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers (Adapted from kblog.lunchboxbunch.com — Check out her pictures of them, they are splendid!)

2 cans garbanzo beans, drained

1 large sweet potato, baked/peeled/mashed (about 2 cups)

2 tablespoons tahini

2 teaspoons maple or agave syrup

1 teaspoon cajun seasoning (or another fave spice!)

1/4 cup wheat flour

Optional: additional seasoning (whatever you have on hand - I used a few dashes cayenne, black pepper and a scoop of nutritional yeast) salt to taste if needed

Plentiful Panko crumbs

To serve: avocado, Dijon mustard, grain buns, romaine, onion, olive oil, pepper

1. Bake sweet potato. Peel, place in large mixing bowl. Keep oven on at 400 degrees.

2. Add drained beans to mixing bowl. Mash beans and potato together.

3. Mash in seasoning, flour and any additional seasoning. Your mixture will be quite soft and moist. But you should be able to form a patty. Add more flour or a scoop of breadcrumbs - or dry rice to thicken the mixture if needed.

4. Form a patty from mixture and coat in Panko crumbs. Yield eight patties (we made seven).

5. Place patties onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake at 400 for 20 to 30 minutes, or until starting to lightly brown.

6. Serve open-faced with avocado on top or on a toasted bun with lotsa toppings.

Next week, I’ll run down the CSA season and then we’ll be onto yummy cold-weather eats!