Black Bean Burgers, Butternut Squash Pasta, and Marshall McLuhan

On Tuesday, I had a lot of time at home and the hubby had a half-day, so we tried something new:  homemade Sweet Tater Black Bean Burgers (hat tip to Tegulator, who sent me the recipe).  We paired the burgers with an old standby in our house, Baked Pasta with Butternut Squash and Ricotta.  As all this was being prepared, I needed to get a book read, Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

Yield:

• 12 burgers (net 10 - we ate 2 for dinner)
• 8 servings pasta (net 6 - ditto above)

Timeline:

Monday Night:  Soak 16 oz. of black beans in pot of water on counter (recipe calls for canned, but we had dried so we figured why not?).

Tuesday:

• 2:45 - Drain beans, refill pot with water, and place on stove.  Bring beans to boil.
• 2:45-2:55 - Wait for water to begin boiling, find any means possible to stall from reading, drink a Coke as part of stalling (justify it by citing its mad caffeine content), try to find backpack to find book in attempt to act like I'm reading.
• 2:56 - Actually start reading McLuhan.
• 3:55 - Bookmark McLuhan (Page 40 - not too bad!)  Check beans (still not done - up the temp).  Preheat oven to 400 to roast butternut squash (cut squash in half length-wise and place guts-down on a greased cookie sheet, roast for 45 minutes).
• 4:02 - Decide I'm hungry and heat up snack (The Grit's Split Pea Dal + Rooster Sauce = YUM!).
• 4:04 - Check the oven.  Realize that while I set the temperature on the oven, I didn't actually turn the oven on.  Spit forth four-letter laced invective.  Turn on oven.  Check beans (still crunchy!), use anger at crunchy beans as an excuse to play on computer while eating snack.
• 4:11 - Finish snack, check on food.  Get impatient and decide beans are done (they're not...).
• 4:13 - Drain beans again; get impatient with not-preheated oven; say more bad words.  Stick squash in oven in spite of lack of heat.  Set timer to 50 minutes to allow for extra preheat time.
• 4:20 – switch to OpenOffice because Word has frozen and lost this twice. Vow to get an updated (aka: not 2004) version of Office ASAP.  Get back to reading...
• 5:05 – Bookmark McLuhan again (page 83).  Take squash out of oven.  Begin assembling rest of dinner.
  
  OK, this is where (if you've stuck with me) this blog (hopefully) gets interesting.  The most important part about effective cooking is multitasking.  As we were making two labor-intensive dishes, they would only be worth the time spent if they could be made relatively (think hour max) quickly.  Another important thing is to find foods that 1) can cook at roughly the same temperature and 2) can fit in the oven (assuming you don't have anything fancy) at the same time.
  
  FIRST, put a pot of water on medium-hot for boiling pasta water.
  
  As the burgers take longer, we started primarily with them.  I microwaved the cubed sweet potatoes (covered, little bit of water for some steam action) while simultaneously cooking the quinoa on the stovetop (made extra for quick entree later in week).  While the potatoes were cooking, I chopped the onions.  Hubby mashed the beans (yeah, they were still too crunchy--make sure they're approximately canned bean consistency first).  When the potatoes were done (5 minutes, stir, 5 more minutes), I heated the frozen corn (1 minute).  Hubby ground the oatmeal (Magic Bullet knockoff FTW), and then we got to mixing everything.
  
  The recipe lied (in the best possible way).  The yield was 12 large burgers, not 8.  Probably could have gotten away with 14 if we'd skimped a little more.  We put the burgers on a (sprayed) tin foiled cookie sheet and put them in the oven for 15 mins.
  
  During this 15 minutes, we quickly got the pasta together.  Instead of soft ricotta, we decided to use ricotta salata instead, crumbled finely.  We also used freshly grated pecorino romano instead of parmesan. Also, I added quite a bit more garlic and added cinnamon and dried thyme (recipe called for fresh) to the squash.  Anyways, after 15 minutes, we flipped the burgers and got both the burgers and the pasta back in the oven...
   
• 6:13 – (Took longer than expected as old friend called and I was trying to help/cook while very distracted)  Go back to reading McLuhan.  Ask husband to actually serve up dinner, as I'm "trying to read!"
• 6:35 – Dinner on table! Om nom nom! Bookmark on page 94 of McLuhan.
  
  The only thing I would change about this meal was the burgers.  While they were awesome, the cumin needs to be upped exponentially.  We ate them on sandwich thins, which was perfect for making the primary flavor the burger itself.

Notes:

After eating, we netted 10 veggie patties (individually wrapped in freezer bag for quick reheat lunches/dinner) and 6 portions of pasta.  So approximately 1 hour of intensive cooking = 8-16 meal components (for time saving later!)

Components we were able to get locally/organically from Eats:  sweet potatoes, quinoa, walnuts, sunflower seeds, ricotta salata (sheep's milk and local), and pecorino romano. Plan to do better on buying local next time.

I was able to finish McLuhan with a full tummy and the assurance of many other study snacks in the future.  McLuhan's pretty cool.  For anyone interested in mass media, communications, history, or a view into the 1960s, I highly recommend reading him.

I also bought a Office 2011 for Mac today...