Beans! Part 2

Well, I wasn't home to finish transforming the beans into a meal so I left my wife in charge, which is never a good idea. I may have recipe ADD, but she has domestic blindness when it comes to ingredients, especially ingredients that I've gone ahead and prepared to save her work!!! Never finds them in the fridge, or remembers that I told her that I prepped them. But I love her anyways because she still goes out of her way to complete the recipe despite the "missing ingredients".

Unfortunately I did not get to taste the stock from the crock pot beans, but she claims the beans were tasty so we'll go with that. I imagine that if you were going to serve the beans direct from the crock pot, they might actually need some more flavor like some fried onions, cumin, etc, but they did work wonderfully well in the "burgers". This is in quotes because they're really more like pancakes. They don't achieve a thickness that's quite satisfying for layering toppings on and stuffing in a bun, but don't let that deter you from their tastiness!

Black Bean Sweet Potato Burgers (adapted from Extra VeganZa)
2 c. cooked black beans (which means starting from 1 c. raw black beans or using a 14 oz can)
1 c. sweet potato, grated (I used the large grater size)
1/2 c. natural peanut butter (or almond butter)
1/4 c. black olives, diced
1/4 c. whole spelt or whole wheat flour (we ended up adding 1/2 c. in total -- I think  some combo of flour and bread crumbs might work well also)
2 tbsp tamari (or a mixture of soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce to taste)
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 tbsp fresh grated ginger

Mash the beans in a medium sized bowl and then stir in the remaining ingredients. Make sure the thickness is appropriate. Heat a cast-iron frying pan to medium heat and add a bit of canola oil. Scoop 1/3 c. of batter for each burger into the pan and fry for ~3-5 min on each side until browned, then flip and brown the other side. (We actually flattened the burgers in the pan, but the original recipe may suggest just leaving it as the ball of batter that emerges from the scooping process since it wanted you to fry each burger for 7-10 min on one side...)  Make sure the burgers are cooked through. You can always turn the heat down if the outside is cooking too quickly. Serve with sweet chili sauce on buns or alone!
Makes 10-12 burgers.

Oh and the other pot of beans in the dutch oven was rinsed after almost 24 hours of soaking, put back in the dutch oven and simmered with 4 c. water, half a bouillon cube, 1/2 onion, 4 bay leaves, 1/2 bell pepper for 30 min until the beans were just soft. I think the beans would have been amazing if I had used homemade veggie stock for the cooking process, but at this point I'm not sure if they will become rice in a very basic rice & beans dish or if I will muster up the courage to continue with the Cooks Illustrated recipe!