i love my grill (and my grill master)

Tonight we had turkey burgers. Here's the thing. I love ground turkey. I use it all the time, and I think that everyone else should, too. In fact, I have never bought ground beef. Isn't that weird?

A 4 ounce serving of ground turkey has about 160 calories, whereas the same serving size of ground beef (85% lean) has about 240. I think that's a significant difference! And when you can have a burger with yummy toppings for about 230 calories, even better.

I had some pesto in the fridge as well as some red peppers that we needed to eat, so the burgers (that I found the recipe for here) were topped with roasted red peppers and a pesto mayo that I mixed up. One of my earlier posts includes how to roast peppers. As for the pesto mayo, I just used a 1:1 ratio, and added some black pepper. There's also some feta and fresh greens on 'em. :)

We had a salad alongside, with a balsamic vinaigrette. This recipe is kind of just estimates...

Balsamic Vinaigrette

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 teaspoon sugar

salt & pepper

I added a tag cloud to the blog. It shows up on the column on the left side and categorizes all of the posts. If the text is a larger size, it means that I've blogged more about that category. I'm also working on changing the recipe index page. Since I added the tag cloud, I'm changing the recipe page so that it organizes by type, not ingredient. Just an FYI!

what we've been eating...

So far, we've grilled out both nights this week. By that, I mean Mike has grilled both nights this week, and I've watched. :)

No picture from yesterday (I know you guys love my crappy pictures!), but we had chicken with an awesome marinade. I'm all about making my own marinades and try to stay away from pre-made junk, but I am obsessed with McCormick's Grill Mates Tomato Garlic & Basil marinade. It's soooo good. I also had Mike grill some asparagus that I had seasoned with some salt & pepper - then I drizzled some lemon juice on it. So simple, but so good. I love the flavor that grilling adds to vegetables.

Tonight we just had beef tenderloin on the grill and then some oven roasted potatoes with red peppers. I drizzled the veggies with some canola oil, herbes de provence, salt and pepper and roasted them for about 45 minutes at 425 degrees. It was a yummy dinner.

roasted red pepper & avocado sandwich

I enjoy the challenge of figuring out what to do with the ingredients I have on hand... this sandwich was really good! I also love that you can make it huge, because it's pretty much just yummy veggies :)

Roasted Red Pepper and Avocado Sandwich with Herb Mayo

2 red bell pepper

1 avocado

spinach

whatever bread you'd like

1 tablespoon herb mayo (recipe after)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place the whole peppers on a sheet of foil over a baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes, flipping once - the peppers will start to get dark and bubbly, that's okay!

2. Remove from the oven and place immediately into a gallon ziplock bag (I heard this helps sweat out some moisture, I dunno) and let it sit for 15 minutes or so.

3. Assemble your sandwich with the veggies & mayo, which I have the recipe for below. Mmmmm.

Herb Mayo

1/2 cup light mayo

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon herbes de provence (probably my favorite dried herb blend ever!)

Combine ingredients - let sit for a few minutes before serving to let the flavors develop.

ahhh, a gift!

When I got home from work today, I was greeted by a box! Way exciting, who doesn't love to find that waiting for them?! After some research and accusatory text messages, I discovered it was from my good friend Andrea (so thoughtful) - she sent me probably one of the neatest things I've ever seen. It's called the Emulstir and I'm super excited to try it out. Thank you Andrea :)

My laptop broke two days ago. Okay, let me rephrase. My laptop died a tragic, slow, and painful death two days ago. I had this really bad habit of letting it rest on the arm of our couch, and it always decided to go bungee jumping. Now it's sitting in 3000 pieces on our kitchen table because Mike is fixing it. Unfortunately, this has been interfering with my blogging. I'm currently not-so-patiently waiting for a part to come in the mail. I will be posting more updates once this occurs.

Anyway, dinner was a slightly altered recipe from smitten kitchen and a marinade for salmon I kind of made up (some canola oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar).

Couscous and Feta Stuffed Peppers (original recipe here)

Vegetable-oil cooking spray

1 1/4 cups fat-free chicken or vegetable broth

2/3 cup couscous

2 bell peppers

2 tsp olive oil

an unknown amount of zucchini and yellow squash, thinly sliced

1 tsp herbs de provence

1/2 tsp salt

1 small tomato, diced

1/2 cup feta

3 tablespoons tomato paste

Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat a small baking dish with cooking spray. Bring the broth to a boil in a saucepan, add the couscous, cover the pan and remove it from the heat. Cut the stems and top half inch off the bell peppers and scoop out the seeds and membranes. Place peppers upright in a baking dish and roast them for 15 minutes or so, until they soften, then remove them from the oven until the filling is ready. Heat oil in a nonstick skillet. Add zucchini, yellow squash,herbs de provence, and salt. Cook, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes or until vegetables are softened. Remove from heat and stir in the tomatoes and tomato paste. Using a fork, scrape the couscous into the skillet and toss with the vegetables. Stir in the crumbled feta. Fill peppers with the couscous mixture. Bake 15 minutes. Serve immediately.

It was pretty tasty - the original recipe includes chickpeas, which I did have, but I wasn't really feeling it tonight. Mike liked this too :)

xo, Lindsay