Mushroom and Barley Veggie Patties

We regularly eat frozen veggie patties for a quick weeknight meal.  They taste good; however, they come in a box which is packaged far away and are rather expensive for an individual patty.    I have been thinking about how to make my own veggie patties with all of the grains that we have from our Lonesome Whistle CSA and have explored a few recipe possibilites (including my friend Karen's Salmon and Barley Cakes--it's next on my list!).

While I have been contemplating making veggies patties, throughout the Willamette Valley communities are thoughtfully trying to address hunger and find creative solutions to use our farm resources to help. Food for Lane County has started contracting with local growers to grow more whole grains including high protein lentils.  Marion Polk Food Share has developed a Protein Patty which has 10 grams of protein and can be produced for only 10 cents per patty.  (There is a cute video of the production.)  These stories are inspirational, and provide a good reminder of some of the reasons that my family is trying to eat and cook many of our foods from local sources.

I therefore thought it was so timely when Eugene Local Foods recently posted a New York Times recipe for Mushroom and Grain Cheeseburgers from Martha Rose Shulman and suggested making them with purple barley.  These little patties have 14 grams of protein each and tasted great.  The patties are a little fragile, but I was able to carefully flip them in the pan and move them to our plates.  It was more time consuming that turning on the microwave for 3 minutes with the frozen pre-prepared patties (particularly because the barley needed to cook for about 45 minutes).  I would have liked to use some of our local beans, but I did not have any cooked so relied on a can of beans as in the recipe--next time!

The actual patties were easy to assemble, have fresh ingredients, and we all enjoyed them (toppings included ketchup, provolone cheese, and Yumm! sauce).  With one recipe batch, I was able to make nine patties, which means I will be able to put some of these into the freezer for another future quick weeknight meal.