4. SPICE! Go to town with spices. Our general rule is just to evenly coat whatever we are making with the spice, or if using fresh herbs/spices start with 1/4 of a teaspoon and go from there. Because we’re not using any ingredients that can kill you like raw eggs or meat, go ahead and taste as you go!

Garlic

Basil

Oregano

Cayenne

Thyme

Cumin

Rosemary

Nutritional Yeast (which will give it a more cheese like flavor)

Black pepper

Curry powder (works well with chickpea burgers)

Turmeric (use a very small amount – a few dashes will do) works great with chickpea burgers.

We know that we did not list every spice (our apologies to the fans of certain spices left out) but really any spice you like will do just fine – get creative! Italian burgers? Mexican burgers? Jamaican-jerk burgers? Whatever you can dream up!

5. Liquid: 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup start with a 1/4 and add as needed.

Low Sodium Vegetable broth

Liquid from cooked beans.

Non dairy unsweetened milk

For a different taste you can try 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree, mashed sweet potato or butternut squash puree. If you opt to add a puree you may need to use less liquid overall.

6. Flax

Ground flax seed – combine 2 tbs of ground flax seed with 3tbs of warm water. Set aside and let it gel a little.

Now to make your burgers.

Pre-heat oven to 350

Have a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper ready to go.

1. Put cooked beans in a big mixing bowl. Mash them up – however you get the job done is the right way, personally we just use our hands.

2. Add your starch. You will want to mix the starch and the bean really well – we also use our hands for this.

3. Add your vegetables (you can cook them first if you like, dice them first and then put them in a pan with a little water or low sodium vegetable broth and cook them till the are done, no need to add any oil)

4. Add spices

5. Add liquid

6. Add flax. (be sure to follow instructions)

7. Mix every thing – you can use a spoon.

8. Form patties 

9. Put patties on parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

10. Stick in oven for 15-20  minutes or until they are looking slightly crispy on the top. We like flipping them half way through.

11. Do a happy dance around your house while you are waiting for plant-strong burgers to cook. This step is absolutely necessary.

12. Take out, bask in your greatness for a minute.

13. Serve on a nice whole grain bun with all of your favorite burger accessories, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, tomato, hummus, ketchup, mustard, go wild. You can also serve it on a nice bed of leafy greens. Also, serve with baked sweet potato fries, it will make for an even happier experience.

This should make 4-5 decent sized burgers or 8-10 smaller burgers. You can freeze them as well.

*Tips: Too crumbly? Add more liquid. Too watery? Add more starch.

Veggie Burger - Step-by-Step Guide: 

1 Pick your bean/lentil/peas (you will need 2 cups COOKED)

Black Beans

White beans

Kidney beans

Chickpeas

Lentils (any color)

Split Peas

(any kind of bean ywould work fine)

2. Pick your starch (1 cup)

Dry Whole Wheat Bread Crumbs or whole grain gluten free bread crumbs

Uncooked Quick Oatmeal

Cooked Quinoa

Cooked Millet

Cooked Amaranth

Cooked Buckwheat

Cooked brown rice. (you can also use a wild rice if you like)

3. Pick a vegetable (or a few vegetables) : dice them! If you pick more than one vegetable, you will want to decrease the amount you use, probably by at least half. So if you use carrots and celery – use 1 rib of celery and 1 carrot stick.

Celery (about 2 ribs)

Carrot (about 2 sticks)

Onion (about 1 small onion)

Mushrooms (about 1 cup)

Jalapeno (1 or 2 depending on how spicy you like things)

Puddings

• Dates & Celery, blend.
• Mango–5 mangos, 2-4 frozen nanners, 1 lime juiced. Blend until smooth.
• Nanner Date Pudding: equal amounts daets and ripe nanners and process until smooth.
• Creamy “Manana” Pudding: 1 mango. Blend until smooth and creamy.
• Nanner Cinnamon: 3 ripe nanners, 2 frozen nanners, sprinkle of cinnamon. Blend all in food processor.

Miscellaneous Goodies

Parfait: Whip up some nanner ice cream (frozen nanners in food processor until soft-serve consistency) and add to parfait glass. Layer with strawberries or blueberries.

Cookies: Mashed fruit (mangos or strawberries, etc.) mixed together with dried fruit (raisins or dates). Pulse or blend in food processor.

Applesauz: 5 apples, cored, handful raisins, sprinkle of cinnamon. Blend in vitamix until smooth (using tamper to push apples down).

Nanners Swimming in Date Sauce: slice up many nanners (or however many you’d like). Add handful of pitted dates to your vitamix, along with a little water. Blend the dates and water to make a “date sauce”. Pour the date sauce over your nanners and eat up. So deeeelish!

Fruit Oatmeal: 7 nanners, 3 apples, peel on, raisins. In food processor,pulse until chunky.

Apple Pie in a Bowl: 5 apples, 1 cup dates. Peel & grate (with a cheese grater) 4-5 apples and put in bowl. Add a handful of dates to your vitamix, along with a little water. Blend dates and water to make a date sauce. Pour the sauce over your apples, stir up and enjoy.

Lettuce Hoagie: (great way to get your greens!) Romaine Hearts, 1 TB Tahini, cukes-sliced, toms, sliced. Search my blog for instructional pics.

Smoothies & Datorades

• 12/12 Smoothie-11 nanners, (1 frozen), 12 organic medjool dates
• Nanner Strawberry: Blend a few handful of fresh strawberries and 5 dates in your blender (don’t add water) until smooth. Add in 5 frozen nanners and blend until smooth.
• Green Smoothie: 1 lb spinach, 1 apple, 3 fresh nanners, 1 mango. Blend all.
• Papaya: 1 papaya, few fresh ripe nanners, 1 frozen nanner
• Celery Nanner: 1 stalk celery, 8 fresh nanners, 2 frozen nanners.
• Strawberry Datorade: 8 oz organic medjool dates, 7 cups water, 3 cups (1lb) fresh strawberries, 8 fresh nanners, 1 frozen nanner.f
• Mango Datorade: 8 oz dates, 2 mangos, 1 frozen nanner, 6-7 cups water.
• Banana Spinach Smoothie: 3 nanners, 5 oz spinach, 1 cup water.
• Blueberry Smoothie: 1 stalk celery, 2 c fresh or frozen blueberries, 1 nanner, 2 cups water.

Green Soups (Great way to get your greens!)

• Green Goddess Soup: 2 toms, 1 celery, 1/2 cuke, 1 head romaine lettuce. Do Not Add Water. Blend.
• Sweet Green Nanner Mango Soup: 4 nanners, 3 mangoes, 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 head lettuce. Dice 2 nanners and all mangoes, put in bowl. Blend lettuce wand remaining nanners. Mix raisins w/mango nanner mix and pour over broth.
• Spinach Red Pepper Soup: 4 cups spinach, 8 oz red peppers, 8 oz oranges.
• Lime Cilantro Soup: 2 cups spinach, 1/4 c cilantro, 1 nanner, 1/2 lime, 1/4 cup water.
• Sweet n’ Salty Tom Soup: 1 lb spinach, 8 large toms, 2 cups fresh orange  juice.

Soups

• Mango Soup: 2 mangos, 5 toms, 6 sun dried toms.
• Celery Cuke Tom Soup: 1 tom, 1-2 stalks celery, 1 cuke.
• Gazpacho: blend some toms with lime juice as your soup base (add pineapple, optional); then add tiny chunks of toms, cukes, and strawberries.
• Strawberry Soup: 4 cups strawberries, 2 oranges. Blend in vitamix, no water.

Salads

• Salsa Salad: corn, cherry toms, peppers-pablano, jalapeno, banana, scallion, cukes, cilantro, red pepper, w/squeeze of fresh lime. Let sit overnight to marinate.
• Spinach Clementine: mix spinach and clementine sections with fresh squeezed clementine dressing
• Cranberry: fresh cranberries, oranges, dates. Pulse in food processor.

Salad Dressings

• toms, cilantro, scallions, all blended.
• 1 large tom, 1 mango, blended until smooth.
• Sweet Tom Walnut Dressing (recipe by The High Energy Diet by Dr. Graham)-4 toms, 1/4 c walnuts, blend. Then add fresh squeezed o.j. to reach the desired consistency.
• Sunny’s Fave Dressing: run 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds through food processor with any acid fruit until creamy.
• mango, tom, chinese parsley
• 1/2 grapefruit with 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• toms, cuke, 1/3 avo, all blended.
• toms w/orange juice blended. Add your choice of herbs-dried dill, fresh cilantro, basil.
• blend 1b strawberries and 5 oranges, add dates-optional, for sweetness.
• sun dried toms, cherry toms, celery, scallions
• mango, toms, red pepper, herb of your choice–pulse in food processor
• acid or sub acid fruit (oranges, pineapple, lemon, grapefruit, lime, tom, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry,etc.) blended together with celery
• 1/4 avo with citrus juice
• celery, lime, blended
• citrus juiced (grapefruit, lemon, lime)
• fresh orange juiced mixed with tahini

This works well for cc that was loaded via the launcher intentional or not.

Just copy the dccache folder to the desktop. Then move out all the .ebc files from the original dccache folder and the delete the .tmp files that are just copies of the .ebc files.

Then, open the launcher and you'll only see what is in the .dbc file(s). Uninstall anything you don't want.

Then move the .ebc files back into the dccache folder.

You should then copy the dcbackup folder to the desktop and return to the original to delete all the backup files but keep the ccmerged file in there.

The copies you placed on your desktop are just in case backups.

It's really not all cc that causes problems, but it may be any cc that wasn't made with the last patch update or just the fact that you have so much or even how you installed the cc.

Do you put all cc in the mods packages folder OR do you have some installed via the launcher? If the launcher has too much in a file, it can corrupt. I've read that 270 is the magic number. So your compressed file can be up to 270,000 KB, but any more than that and corruption can occur. I don't want to tech talk you into glazed over eyes, but the cc (and some store venues) get installed into the dbc file while all the store stuff goes into ebc files. If you look in the dccache folder in the sims 3 folder in your documents, that's where you find everything that was installed.

While you may not be able to see everything in your launcher because there is so much loaded, you can temporarily move those files out of the dccache folder to look at things one file at a time. COPY your dccache folder to your desktop so that everything is backed up. Then move out all the ebc files to a NEW folder on your desktop you can call working or files or ebc or whatever you want. Move out the downloads folder too if you have a lot of things you've already installed in it (so you don't see all that when you are working).

Then open your launcher and you'll see only the items loaded into that one dbc file (or depending on how much cc you have, maybe more dbc files). This of course implies that you can get the launcher to open. You may have to rename your sims 3 folder first and have a newly created one that you will copy your dccache folder into. And then try.

If the launcher works, you can delete any cc (know that you'll still have it in the file you copied to your desktop if you want to put it all back in AFTER you do what you want to with the launcher AND if you don't clean out your dcbackup file, it's still in your game too, so you should MOVE your dcbackup folder to your desktop and then create a new dcbackup folder and copy just the ccmerged file back in). Then, you'll copy back in the ebc files you moved out (so all your store stuff is back in your game).

Any cc in your mods packages folder that you don't want can simply be moved out or deleted. Hopefully, you keep things organized in separate folders there making things easier to find. :D