Turkey Burgers

Okay. This is going to be hard for me.  Dan and I decided that we wanted to start eating more healthily and I took the giant leap by planning an entire week of dinners WITHOUT RED MEAT.  I've also decided to forgo chicken as well.  I love red meat, love love love.  But I have a feeling my love affair isn't so great for me. For starters, last night we went with one of my all time faves yellow rice, black beans, and sauteed zucchini.  I like to change it up each time and last night I added to red pepper flakes to the garlic as it was cooking before adding the zucchini.  It definitely added a nice bite.

Tonight however, I'm trying something I've never eaten before with a food I've never cooked before either.  Ground turkey.  I found this great website, myfridgefood.com which allows you to plug in what you have and it'll spit back out recipes based on what you've already got at home.

Tonight: from Myfridgefood.com — Ground Turkey Burgers, Home Fries, and Steamed Broccoli

This recipe was actually really appealing to me: turkey, onion, and Dijon mustard broiled into a perfect burger.  I've even got some whole wheat buns to enjoy them on.  I also got creative right before starting the burgers and decided we needed to have some sort of 'fry' with the burgers so I went with home fries.  Yeah, probably not incredibly healthy, but at least it's better than me using the store-bought frozen one in the fridge.  If I'm going to have something unhealthy at least I'll know exactly what went into it!

The Verdict:  Well, that depends on who you ask.  I thought they were pretty good (once you got a piece of lettuce on top with a touch of mayo and ketchup.  Dan, on the other hand, left half of the patty on his plate and resorted to eating the pieced of lettuce I had out for garnish.  I think the biggest issue was that they're REALLY dry (that and they're nothing like a real burger.)  But over all, I'd definitely make them again as a way to throw something different into the mix.  Also, the home fries were definitely perfect with the 'burgers'.

It Starts.

So one of my New Year's resolutions was to start trying different recipes and to keep track of them somewhere. It's February 27.

In my defense, I have started cooking a whole lot more and have attempted many new recipes but . . . not so much on the whole recording it thing. So tonight while I was waiting for my oven to pre-heat, I decided I needed to start. So here I am.

Honestly, I'm doing this whole thing mostly for me. Kind of like a food journal. I have a tendency to cook something delicious and then completely forget that I know how to make it. Hopefully, this will serve as my own personal cookbook that I'll be able to look back on and remember what I loved and what was pretty much gross.

Tonight: from Joy of Cooking — Broiled Fish Fillets with Tomatoes and Herbs

The recipe called for beefsteak tomatoes, which I didn't have on hand, so instead I used some tomatoes my mom had brought over earlier this week. I think they were roma tomatoes but I can't say for sure. For the fish, I used haddock. I usually prefer haddock and it just so happened to be on sale at Stop & Shop.

The Verdict: Not only was this absolutely, amazingly delicious . . it was SUPER easy! My only issue with the recipe is that we don't have a fan in our kitchen which means every time we broil something with olive oil we get smoke. So much smoke that, even though it's below freezing outside, we open all the windows in our kitchen and living room.

The rest of this week I'm going to be trying a bunch of new, healthy recipes. Hopefully now that I've got the ball rolling with this thing I'll be able to keep up with it. We'll see. . .