Valentine's Date Night (Nutella Ravioli & Homemade Veggie Burgers)!

Having Valentine's Day on a Tuesday this year was a bummer, because that's our residential coverage night at Landmark (read: that's the night we're at school til 10:00pm), so we didn't get to properly celebrate. Fortunately, however, Mike didn't have worship team practice on Thursday, and I didn't have my usual tutoring, so we finally had a chance to celebrate!

I had in mind a way of using some of the things that we had already in our fridge, and I hoped they turned out well. Luckily they did.

We had white beans and leftover beet/cheese mixture from the raviolis, so I made up a veggie burger recipe with those as the main ingredients. Everything else I eyeballed.

I called them "HeartBeet" Burgers....har har.

"HeartBeet Burgers"

• 2 c. white beans (cooked)
• 1 c. shredded roasted beets (mine also had ricotta cheese mixed in)
• 1/4-1/2 c. oat flour
• 2 T. chopped fresh parsley
• 2 T. sunflower seeds
• 1/2 tsp. grated ginger (or more to taste)
• 1 egg (or 1/4 c. egg white)
• salt & pepper to taste

Honestly, I can't remember if there was anything else!
(however, if I had a lemon, I would have added lemon juice and zest. Also, come to think of it, soy sauce would have been good too.)

Basically, I pulsed the beans in my food processor until they were about half-mushed, then in a bowl I mixed them up with the beets, and all other ingredients, seasoning to taste. Then I formed the mixture into four equal balls and shaped each ball into a patty. Finally, I heated up some olive oil in a skillet and cooked them for 4 minutes on each side. For extra creaminess, I topped each one with a dollop of ricotta.

We served them with a little salad, and roasted cauliflower and sweet potato slices (hearts). Yum! 

For dessert, I decided to make a special treat that I knew Mike would love: Chocolate-Hazelnut Ravioli!

I happened upon this recipe by Giada De Laurentiis the other day, and I figured I had to make it, because
a) it looked delicious,
b) it looked super easy, and
c) I had all the ingredients, including egg roll wrappers that needed to be used!

All you need is: Nutella, wonton or egg roll wrappers (wonton size would be easiest), egg, neutral-flavored oil, and powdered sugar.

 For our date night, I only took pictures of the finished product:

But since they were so good, and I still had more egg roll wrappers, I just made a big batch to freeze for later. This time I took pictures of the whole process.

I folded my egg roll wrappers in half, then in half again to get four little squares.

On each little square, I put a (heaping) teaspoon of Nutella.

Next, wet the edges of the squares with egg white (water would probably work too), and carefully fold into a triangle, pressing the edges together to seal in the filling.

I'm going to freeze these and then just thaw them out before I want to make them.

To cook the ravioli, I heated up a couple tablespoons of coconut oil (Giada's recipe says 2 inches of vegetable oil) over medium heat, and cooked them for about 45 seconds on each side. Once they're all cooked, sift a little powdered sugar over them!

Enjoy!