Tuesday: Burgers and pickles, vegan-style

Beet and tofu "hamburgers" on Portuguese sandwich bread bun, served with dilly bean and green tomato pickles.

So we've had this nutritional yeast sitting on our spice rack for an embarrassingly long time. We bought it at the insistence of author Crescent Dragonwagon, whose tome Passionate Vegetarian was one of our very first cookbooks. Although she wanted us to put it into everything from omelets to stir-fries, we never really got into the habit. (Supposedly it's a good source of vitamin B12.) Finally, with this recipe, the opportunity arrived.

We also added some of our smoky paprika, which provides nice depth of flavor to dishes you wish you were cooking over live coals.

Both varieties of pickles seen here are courtesy of our winter CSA. The green tomatoes had an amazing flavor - almost saffron-like, though we never quite figured out what had given them that flavor. The pickled wax beans had a great summery crunch.