White bean burgers (Secret Recipe Club)

These simple, healthy white bean burgers with a yogurt feta sauce are super flavorful and won't fall apart like many veggie burgers.

Note: Recipe and photos updated April 2016.

I made this recipe in 2013 as part of the Secret Recipe Club (SRC).

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs and their great recipes.

I was a little nervous about this month's assignment, as I knew it would fall right during Detox January. I had my fingers crossed that I would be assigned a blog with at least a couple of healthy recipes from which I could choose.

I hit the jackpot!

My assigned blog was Cooking Whims, written by Megan, another New Englandah (yay!). Megan is clearly a big fan of Cooking Light recipes, as am I, so I was thrilled to find so many things to try. In fact, I wound up making two of her recipes and had a hard time choosing which one to feature (really, it came down to which one yielded a better photo).

The winner? White bean burgers, a perfect, meatless dinner option for Detox January.

Homemade tater tots (Secret Recipe Club)

Homemade tater tots: Don't bother to buy them frozen -- you can make them easily from leftover mashed potatoes.

Homemade tater tots

It's time once again for another reveal day for the Secret Recipe Club (SRC).

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs and their great recipes.

The blog I got to explore and cook from this month is Finding Joy in My Kitchen, written by the very prolific SnoWhite, who notes that her blog is all about "finding joy in cooking wholesome meals." Believe me, if you're looking for some good wintertime comfort food, you will have lots of choices from SnoWhite.

I love that Sno started her blog simply to show her mother, living far away, what she was cooking; my blog started similarly after I moved away from North Carolina. See how the SRC brings cooks together?

As Sno's site has so many great recipes (example: eight, count 'em EIGHT, different lasagna recipes!), it was definitely difficult for me to decide which one to choose. But I've recently been cooking out of The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making (as part of the From Scratch Club's virtual book club), which has me focused on making my own version of foods that we often buy pre-packaged.

So when I saw Sno's recipe for homemade tater tots, I knew I'd found my match!

Banana breakfast hummus (Secret Recipe Club)

Banana Breakfast Hummus

It's time for another installment of the  Secret Recipe Club (SRC).

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs and their great recipes.

I joined this group a few months ago and it's been really fun, giving me an opportunity to check out a lot of blogs that normally wouldn't appear on my radar.

My assigned blog this month -- The Mommy Bowl -- is a great example of that.

You see, Deanna of The Mommy Bowl cooks a whole lot of gluten-free, dairy-free and often vegan dishes.

(Yes, if you know The Ninj, you are laughing hysterically at this point, because you know I like to throw bacon and cheese into nearly everything and have more than once referred to myself as The Meatasaurus.)

But come, come, I am nothing if not flexible. And I do like to try new things.

Sweet potato bisque (Secret Recipe Club)

Sweet potato bisque with homemade seasoned croutons -- a perfect (and easy) soup for fall.

Sweet potato bisque

It's time for another recipe from the Secret Recipe Club (SRC)!

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs.

I think fate intervened in my assignment this month. Imagine my delight when I headed over to Fran's Favs and found that I was to pick a recipe from a self-described "Italian foodie." That makes two of us!

It's always hard to pick just one recipe from an archive as big as Fran's but, with fall coming on, I gravitated toward the soups and one in particular caught my eye: sweet potato bisque.

Unlike Fran, whose folks were both great cooks (her dad even co-owned a restaurant, lucky girl!), I didn't grow up in a "we-love-to-cook" household -- more of a "we-need-to-cook-to-survive" household, with occasional lapses for holidays (that's when the big Italian recipes came out of hiding) or my dad's specialty: homemade pizza.  All of this means that, after only really learning to cook in my late 20s,  I came very, very late to the homemade soup party.

But once I armed myself with an immersion blender, there was no holding me back. Now I'm practically the Soup Nazi himself: mushroom, cream of asparagus, peanut, stracciatella, pumpkin, turnip, cauliflower ... the list goes on.

Blueberry-peach cobbler with sugar cookie crust

Blueberry-peach cobbler with sugar cookie crust

So this is kinda fun: this post represents my first time participating in the Secret Recipe Club.

Here's how it works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs.

Neat idea, right? I'm excited to see who got the Ninj and what s/he decided to make!

This month I got to check out the offerings from Jenn at A Cook's Quest. She has lots of great recipes, especially if you are cooking on a budget. But of course I knew which recipe I'd choose when I came across her sugar cookie crust for fruit cobbler.

Or cobblah, if you're a New Englandah.