So the temperatures reached above freezing this past weekend AND STAYED ABOVE FREEZING! The snow is melting! My niece and I were able to go to the playground this week and actually enjoy it because it was warm enough! Jeffy (the hubby) and I were also physically able (after being laid out on the couch for days with the worst stomach virus ever) to go on a (very short) run!
Here's a picture of Jeffy taken just before 6pm on our run along the Hudson River in Riverside Park with the sun still out on Sunday (hooray for Daylight Savings Time!):
We were basically in the best mood ever after running outdoors with the sun still out, so we made AMAZING ginger turkey burgers with baked sweet potato fries and a blueberry crisp for dessert!
What follows is too much writing, lots of mediocre pictures, and the delicious recipes we created/adapted. Hope the two of you who read this enjoy!
I do not eat red meat, so when we make burgers, we either make turkey or chicken. We normally buy two packages and mix a super lean package (99% fat free) with another one with a little more fat. We also love a finely diced sweet onion mixed in for a bit more moisture and flavor. I am TERRIBLE at cutting up onions - I can get the job done, it just takes forever - so that tends to be Jeffy's job and he does it superbly every time! Into the burger we also added some BBQ sauce for extra flavoring and we used a Sriracha BBQ Sauce from Trader Joe's (our store of choice most weeks because it is on the way home from the gym). What made the burger extra special was about an inch of grated fresh ginger. The mix of the slightly hot BBQ sauce with the bright pop of the ginger is DELICIOUS! We will definitely be adding ginger to future burgers! We decided to cook these using the stainless steel saute pan in a tiny bit of olive oil and I just smushed out a little extra fat using the spatula when I flipped them.
Here is a picture of half of the burger mixture (I had already put burgers in the pan because we were HUNGRY after that 1.6 mile run....told you it was short!):
Here is a shot of the burgers cooking....so delicious....:
While the burgers cooked we baked sweet potato (potatoe if you remember Dan Quayle....) fries using the simplest preparation ever. We just cleaned the 'taters, cut them, marinated them in a light coating of olive oil, and a good sprinkling of salt*.
*I know I am not supposed to put the note right here, but it is just so gosh darn important that I have to write it now and if you have bothered reading this far, you should know this! SALT IS NOT THE ENEMY! Salt is your friend. It brings out flavors. I know lots of people watch their sodium intake and the best way to do it is to be in control of what you are actually eating. We do not eat many processed foods (so I do eat the occasional packet of Ramen, but I do not add the whole flavor packet) at all because we cook 90% of what we consume from fresh ingredients**. So, back to the point. Add salt while you cook. It is delicious and really highlights the natural flavors in what you cook. When you have to add it after something has cooked it is kind of a failure.
**Again, I understand this should be later, but it was too funny not to note that that statistic excludes the copious amounts of bagels Jeffy eats....
Ok, back to the regular writing. Here are the scrumptious sweet potato fries being mixed in a clean bowl with the light coating of olive oil and salt:
Then we spread them on a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil (we hate doing extra dishes!):
We baked these for almost an hour at 350 degrees. The time varies depending on your desired thickness of the fries. Just check on them after about 30 minutes and every ten minutes after that until you are happy! We cook by feel/taste rather than explicit directions with most of what we make.
When the fries were finished we toasted the ciabatta rolls (drizzled with a little olive oil) under the broiler for two or three minutes until they looked this delicious:
(Okay, so my pictures are not great and there is definitely a big shadow on this one....I blame Jeffy because he took it!)
While the rolls were toasting I cooked a little chopped red onion to top the burger and then we assembled them with a bit of BBQ sauce on the bottom roll, topped with the burger, and onions on top. We did not feel like buying lettuce and tomato (I hate cold tomato most of the time anyway) to top, but you obviously can add whatever you want!
This was a super simple delicious meal straight from our teeny tiny kitchen and it looked like this:
We were extremely excited to both have our appetites back after that stomach virus, so we made a homemade dessert as well. Alright, I made dessert and Jeffy enjoyed some couch-sitting time (as well as picture taking). The blueberry crisp is a pretty simple recipe (I am posting all recipes below....) I adapted from an apple crisp I made this fall after we went apple picking, but we were basically out of butter (we love air-popped popcorn with butter), so we used sunflower oil as our binding fat instead. I had to do that making the apple crisp once as well, so I knew it worked!
Here is a shot of the blueberry preparation of a little bit of flour (we used whole wheat because that is what we have), some lemon juice, and a little sugar:
After baking it looked like this:
And, finally, we ate it!
I will probably (hopefully) come up with a neater way to post a recipe in the future, but this is my third blog post and first real original recipe post, so give me the teeniest bit of a break!
Ginger Turkey Burgers
(Serves four or eight depending on appetites....we normally eat two servings each - don't judge us too harshly!)
Ingredients:
- Ciabatta rolls (or whatever you like to transport your burger to your mouth - we sometimes go bunless)
-2 pounds ground turkey (we like one 99% fat free and the other with a little more fat)
- 1 sweet onion, diced (Jeffy's job)
- 2 tbsp BBQ sauce (we used Sriracha BBQ Sauce from Trader Joe's)
- 4 cloves garlic, grated
- 1" grated fresh ginger (you could use powdered ginger, but it won't have the punch we loved so much)
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 1 tbsp olive oil in burger mix, a little more for the saute pan
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- salt and pepper to taste (do not skimp on salt!)
- 1 red onion, chopped, to top
Directions:
1. In a large bowl, combine the turkey, sweet onion, BBQ sauce, garlic, ginger, cumin, olive oil, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper. Mix well with hands. Form into patties (we made eight from the two pounds of ground turkey).
2. Heat a small drizzle of olive oil (about two turns of the pan) in a stainless steel saute pan on medium/medium-high, then place the burgers down. Give them enough room to cook - we needed to do two "shifts" for our eight patties. Use a spatula to smush a little bit of fat out if you would like. Flip after about five minutes and cook on the other side for about four more minutes.
3. In a non-stick skillet, saute red onion with a tiny bit of olive oil and some salt.
4. Slice ciabatta rolls in half, drizzle with olive oil and place under the broiler for two or three minutes until just toasted.
5. Assemble burger with desired fixings and top with red onion.
6. Enjoy!
Baked Sweet Potato Fries
Ingredients:
- Sweet potatoes (as many as you want - we used six medium sized potatoes for eight servings)
- olive oil
- salt
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Chop sweet potatoes into desired size fries. Ours were about 1/4" to 1/2" thick and 2-3" long.
3. In a large bowl, drizzle a light coating of olive oil and sprinkle with salt to your taste.
4. Spread fries out on a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil (for easy clean up).
5. Bake for 30 minutes, then check on fries until they reach your desired doneness. Ours took just under an hour.
6. Enjoy!
Blueberry Crisp (in 8"x8" baking dish)
Ingredients for blueberry layer:
- blueberries (we used 24 ounces)
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp flour (we used whole wheat, but AP is ok, too!)
- 2 tbsp sugar
Ingredients for topping:
- 3/4 to 1 cup oats (quick cook or rolled)
- 3/4 cup flour (again, we used whole wheat)
- 1 tsp salt
- pecans or walnuts, chopped (ideally 1/2 cup)
- 8 tbsp butter, cold and diced into cubes - OR - sunflower oil ~ 3 tbsp
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- dash (1/8 tsp) nutmeg
- dash (1/8 tsp) ginger
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In your baking dish, combine ingredients for the blueberry layer. Make sure to coat blueberries by mixing gently with hands.
3. In a medium bowl, combine dry topping ingredients (ie everything except for the butter or oil). Whisk together (or use your hands).
4. Slowly add the butter into the dry ingredients while mixing with hands until it sticks to itself a bit. If using sunflower oil, drizzle it in while mixing with your hands and continue to mix until it comes together.
5. Spread the topping over the blueberry layer in the baking dish and bake for 35-40 minutes.
6. Enjoy!
Alright, so there are the recipes! Let me know if you try one or all of them (or only two if you are weird and do not enjoy dessert....)!
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