Oh, the wonderfulness of the Veganomicon. It arrived at the end of the day last night – why is it the houses that are closest to the UPS center get served last? But it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, because this is the best vegan cookbook I’ve ever seen, and it will never end up on PaperbackSwap or on my Take To Powells box, no siree. In fact you might have to bury me with it. While we’re at it, let’s be thorough: throw in my lemon zester and my garlic press.

You’ll find the Chickpea Cutlets on page 133. I obviously can’t reprint the recipe, but that’s okay, because you want to get your own copy, right? Right. Basically these are delicious patties made up of, NO KIDDING, chick peas. When I opened up the book to the picture portion, these were the first thing that popped out at me, and I knew I had to make them tootsweet.

One of the ingredients is bread crumbs, and I’m sure you all know this, but just in case; making breadcrumbs is super easy with your Cuisinart or other food processor. Just throw in a couple pieces of bread and whir:

Making up the patties was simple. You mash up the chick peas first, which I did with a potato masher. It took a few minutes, but wasn’t hard. The cookbook says to mash until you’ve broken all the chick peas up, and I don’t think I did that – mine had a few whole ones. Next time I’ll be more careful.

Then you toss in the rest of the ingredients, and you might want to think about measuring carefully, because I tripled the amount of lemon zest (who doesn’t love LEMON ZEST? Its awesomeness is right there in the name: ZEST) and then wished I’d been a little tamer. Then you split the mixture into quarters and make patties. I just rolled a ball and pressed it flat into the plate:

Voila! Now pop those babies In a hot skillet, flip them over when browned, and a few minutes later, you’ve got these:

They look blacker in the photo than they were in real life. They were actually very nicely browned. They smelled fantastic, and I was so excited to get them to the table, I even brought out a nice serving dish, all official like. In the photo in the cookbook there’s a spoon pouring a gravy over the cutlets. The recipe didn’t list a gravy, but it was probably somewhere else in the book, I just didn’t search for it. I’ll do that next time.

I whipped up some fruit salad with soy yogurt dressing, and steamed some corn. It was a totally vegan meal for everyone. The recipe makes four, and Greg and I each had two (the kids wouldn’t try them, big shock). If I were going to serve these to guests I’d definitely double the recipe.

In summary: I made a vegan dinner, with vegetables, and it didn’t hurt, and it all tasted sublime, and it was good for us. BEST TUESDAY EVER.