Every couple of months I get the urge to give up my carnivore ways and get off the meat-eating grid. That’s right, I admit it – I’d be happy to go crazy and swing totally vegetarian. Usually the feeling comes over me following episodes of particular overindulgence…after spit-roasting baby animals, for instance, or in my more recent case, a few weeks spent over the holidays cooking, feasting and drinking….a little too much.

Truth be told, I haven’t been cooking or eating much red meat lately. Whenever I shop for food I try to load up my cart heavily in the produce section before moving on to the seafood counter to see what looks good. I tiptoe past the meat department, occasionally getting a chicken to roast. Except for really good bacon, which I will argue is another category of food altogether, our consumption of meat has gone down considerably. And a few people I know have flirted with Mark Bittman’s concept of healthy, conscious eating – Vegan Until Six.

It can be a hard sell to a certain member of the family – my son- who shuns most vegetables unless, inconceivably, they are floating in some kind of soup. When I called these chickpea cakes “veggie burgers” I got a much more positive reaction than I expected. I served them in warm naan bread,  and the boy actually ate most of it.

This recipe is inspired from  one in Heidi Swanson’s book Super Natural Cooking, a book that I’ve used so much the pages are falling out – and now that I’m on the subject I wish the publisher had used a better binding – it’s kind of cheaply glued together. Celestial Arts, if you’re reading, heads up!

I made a dairy-free creamy sauce to accompany the cakes, but the recipe doesn’t qualify as vegan since there are a few eggs involved.