Falafel with homemade whole wheat tortillas

I love falafel and I've always wanted to try making it at home. It's intimidating though, getting the spice mix right, grinding the garbanzos up--it seems iffy and messy. This week I stopped by an international grocery store and found a mix with a fairly healthy ingredient list so I decided to try it.

Ziad brand falafil mix:

Ingredients: Ground chick peas, ground fava beans, spice blend, minced onion, garlic, baking soda, salt and sesame seeds.

I realize this would be healthier if I made it homemade. But this is much faster and it's still not too bad. I look for a short ingredient list with clearly recognizable words--not chemicals.

It is a bit spicy--I liked it but I think Chad would say it was too spicy. One option to make it healthier and less spicy is that I could make a half and half mixture, half mix and half ground garbanzo beans. I think I'd still get the flavor of the mix. Another good point is that it makes a healthy amount. I mixed plenty of patties for two (even though it was just me tonight) and I only did about half the mix. The entire box only cost $2.99--I was surprised but the prices were pretty good at the international store.

The box said to fry them in oil until they float but I just did them on the grill with a small amount of olive oil. They stay pretty soft that way but I liked it. Sometimes it almost gets too hard when deep fried.

Here's how I ate it:

Homemade whole wheat flour tortillas topped with falafel burger, organic tahini with no added salt, sprouts, red onion, black olives and a squeeze of lemon. That's a second burger sitting next to my meal. Magnificent. I really, really loved it.