"What?"

"You're making what for dinner?"

This, and other statements with similar skeptical inflections, are often what greet me when I announce my latest recipe discoveries to my husband. Well, I should qualify that. These are the reactions that I get for the "weird" recipes. Anything with tofu or tempeh or a vegetarian-esque flair usually garners one of these responses. After three and a half years of marriage, however, I now know that these seemingly half-hearted responses are almost completely for show and done in an effort at shameless teasing. Deep down, I think he's excited to try all the concoctions I throw his way. He just pretends to be a traditionalist and a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. But I know the truth.

So, when I mentioned Nut Burgers and got the typical response, I knew not to fret. "You'll love them," I stated with confidence. Now, part of this confidence comes from our track record. In the 5+ years that we've known each other, I've only made two meals that he refused to eat: Pumpkin Bisque and Soba Noodle Salad. The Pumpkin Bisque disaster of 2006 occurred too early on in our relationship for me to have known that the guy just doesn't like pumpkin...and that he certainly doesn't like it mixed with a bunch of sweet-ish spices and blended into a soup. So, on that one I feign ignorance. The Soba Noodle Salad, however, was most definitely a lapse in judgement on my part. My 100% Italian husband doesn't like spaghetti. Go figure. So, why, why, why did I think he'd go for soba noodles, which are even more slippery than spaghetti noodles? (His dislike of spaghetti is mostly a texture thing, you see. Other pasta shapes are doable. Spaghetti, and most certainly angel hair, are out.) In any case, I'm not quite sure what I was thinking, but one thing I do know for sure: I ate a lot of soba noodle salad that week.

I assured myself that the Nut Burgers would be a different story, however. I did not want a third rejected meal to mar our record. And while I was pretty sure of myself, I still waited with slightly bated breath as Dan took his first bite. A swallow... a smile... a success! We both thought that these nontraditional burgers made for a fabulous (even unexpectedly good) dinner. So, if you present Nut Burgers to your family and find them turning up their noses at the very thought, just wait for that first bite, swallow, and smile.