Sweet Potato Black Bean Veggie Burgers with BBQ Caramelized Onions

I have a pretty sweet week at school right now.  I survived Monday.  We reviewed graphing quadratics and I had cheer practice after school.  And now I have Tuesday, which I am already all planned for!  Wednesday is Veterans Day and so we do not have school and then Friday is a Teacher Institute Day.  So, I only have two more days of teaching this week!  Crazy!

Today I went to my boot camp class in the morning.  It was super tough since I was still sore from my work out on Saturday.  This past weekend I was hanging out in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin with my bestie, Tamara.  She took me with her to her work out on Saturday morning.  Slow motion push-ups are officially my least favorite exercise.  They are weirdly easy at first, but then you feel like your arms might just fall off for the next three days...Then today we did SLOW MOTION PUSH UPS!  I couldn't believe it.  I'm half way through my boot camp class when the instructor told us that we were going to do them.  We have never done slow motion push ups before, but of course we did today.  Now, I can barely lift my arms above my head.  Ouch.  I guess the good news is that if I keep doing them I'll have awesome looking arms for my wedding dress :)

Sweet Potato Black Bean Veggie Burgers

Ingredients:
1 sweet potato
3 scallions
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp of cilantro
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 red pepper, chopped
3/4 cups old-fashioned oats
1 egg
8 whole wheat buns
cheese if you want (we used colby jack)
BBQ Caramelized Onions:
1 red onion, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
BBQ sauce, to taste

Directions:
1. Peel the sweet potato and use your food processor with a grate attachment to grate the sweet potato.  If you don't have this, you can use a cheese grater with the largest holes.  Place sweet potato pieces in a large bowl.
2. Put the black beans in the food processor and pulse a few times to mash the beans.  Add these to the bowl with the sweet potato.
3. Mix in the scallions, cilantro, cumin, paprika, cayenne, cinnamon, salt, red pepper pieces, and oats.  Stir well.
4. Preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
5. Mix the egg in with the other ingredients and place the mixture in the fridge to chill until the oven is ready.
6. Once ready, form 8 balls with the mixture and press into burger shaped rounds.  Place on baking sheet.  Bake for 15 minutes and then flip and bake for another 15 minutes.
7. For the caramelized onions, add onion slices, olive oil and bbq sauce to a pan.  Heat over medium until onion becomes translucent and soft.  Serve on top of burgers and feel free to add any other toppings!

Enjoy :)