Fruit and Vegetable – Fervent Foodie

Spicy black bean burgers two ways

July 7, 2011 7 Comments

ONE:

TWO:

Boom.

Homemade black bean burgers. FINALLY. After all these years I can check you off the Things I’ma Make List. Thank you to this recipe for showing me that homemade black bean burgers are actually super simple to make. Also thank you to Google for always helping me find delicious recipes to try out. I may not be a recipe creator, but I’m one heck of a recipe tryer-outer-and-tweaker if I do say so myself.

Here’s how to make your own black bean burgers in four easy parts.

ONE: Give the following a quick pulse in the blender, then strain out the excess liquids:

1/2 green pepper cut into chunks
1/2 onion cut into chunks
4 large cloves garlic, minced

TWO: Rinse and drain 1 can of black beans and pat those little bean babies dry with a paper towel. Once dry, pour them into a bowl and give them a good mash with a fork. The beans will have a thick and pasty yet slightly chunky (in a good way) consistency.

THREE: Whisk together the following in a small bowl:

1 egg
1 tbsp cayenne pepper (or less if you are a wimp)
1 tbsp cumin
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp Franks Red Hot

FOUR: Combine parts 1, 2, and 3, then sprinkle in 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs and mix until combined. Use a 1/2 cup measuring cup to evenly portion out four burgers. If you’re anal like me, your burgers will have precisely the same circumference. This is optional (though highly recommended).

Cook those burgers up in a 375 degree oven for 10 minutes on each side.

*Ding ding ding* Burgers are done!!!

Now it’s time to get creative.

Last night, I had one of the burgers in a big burger salad (just like we had at Pike’s over the weekend)!

I’m fairly certain ketchup and mustard have never looked so good:

Once the leftover burgers were cooled off, I wrapped them in parchment paper and then in a Ziploc baggie, and tossed them in the freezer. Tonight, I heated one of the burgers up in the oven (again, 375 degrees 10 minutes on each side).

I plopped the burger on a Trader Joe’s low carb tortilla along with some tomato, onion, avocado, and dijon mustard:

Coming in for your close up:

I really enjoyed these spicy black bean burgers. The patties held together well even though the middle of the burger had a soft refried bean consistency (which I actually liked). Next time I think I’ll cook them longer in the oven and see if the burger firms up at all. Regardless, I’ll definitely be making these guys again! I think I’ll try swapping out the bread crumbs for oats and egg whites for the egg.

I’m pumped I still have 2 more of these in the freezer Smile

Stats on 1 black bean burger: 182 calories, 30g carbs, 3g fat, 4g protein, 7g fiber

Fitness, What I ate

Run and done(ish)

June 28, 2011 6 Comments

The low down: This week marks week four of my self-proclaimed Kick the Knee Pain running program. I started off this new program with intervals of 2 minutes walking 1 minute running, and each day I run I bump my run interval time up by 1 minute. Sunday I completed 3 intervals of 8 minutes running and 1 minute walking.

Status: Other than some mild tightness in my knees, I haven’t had any knee issues so far!

Contributing “Success” Factors:

Buying new running shoes BEFORE starting to run.
Running primarily on softer surfaces (trails, paths, etc.)
NOT running every day and giving my knees a chance to recuperate
Being conscious of my natural tendency to heel-strike and focusing on NOT
Strength training. Building up the muscles in my legs and my core supposedly takes stress of the knees.

Conclusion: Boo ya.

*Note that stretching is not on the list above… feel free to leave angry comments about the importance of stretching. Maybe that will get it through my stubborn brain.

Short-Term Goal: Be at 30-minute running only intervals (i.e., no walking) with no knee pain by August 15th.

And now on to more exciting things… like this lovely tuna wrap I had for dinner Smile

Isn’t it perdy? This was a quick hodgpodge I threw together after work and consisted of:

1 can chunk tuna in water, drained
1 tbsp light HELMANS mayo (none of that miracle whip crap )
1/4 cup chopped red onion
1 small dill pickle, chopped
Handful of romaine lettuce
Handful of grape tomatoes
S&P
Dried Dill
1 light Italian Flat-out wrap

This made for one gynormous wrap, that I basically inhaled. Along with some cucumber salad:

This should be called the Lazy Girl Salad. It consisted of 1 sliced cucumber, some white vinegar, and some dried dill. Easy peasy!

Tomorrow is Wednesday! And for the 92nd week in a row, I’m going to attempt to NOT forget it’s What-I-Ate-Wednesday. I even put a reminder in my phone Smile

Question of the evening: How do we feel about my giant head on the right hand side of the page?

What I ate

Loaded Joetato

October 8, 2010 5 Comments

When I first graduated college and entered “the real world” cooking was not exactly my forte. Typically, I’d pick one to two meals for the workweek, purchase all the ingredients on Sunday, and then eat the same thing for dinner for the next five days. Can we say blasé?

Add this lack of knowledge in the cooking-for-one field to my pure disgust for all things raw-meat and you end up with a meal plan that looks something like this:

Spaghetti with red sauce and garlic bread
Chicken quesadillas (using pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, of course)
Ravioli with red sauce and garlic bread
Egg salad
Macaroni and cheese (and garlic bread if I was feelin festive)
Ice cream
Anddddd repeat.

After a few months of this monotony, I started to branch out…. to every local restaurant within walking distance that is. The food was FABULOUS, and the weight gain was… well… FLABULOUS.

Fast-forward a few years. I started to realize that Olive Garden take-out wasn’t the best option for my wallet. And while the Chop House in Cleveland has THEE MOST AMAZING MASHED POTATOES and Fat Fish Blue has fried pickles with hot sauce that rock my friggin socks off, these weren’t the best options for dinner every night of the week.

Dangit.

I love multi-purpose ingredients, but I HATE eating the same foods day in and day out. So how the heck do you eat healthy delicious meals but avoid having to eat the same foods over and over and over again? This is about the time I started batch-cooking basic ingredients to have on hand throughout the week to toss into whatever random concoctions I decided to make each night after work. Additionally, I changed my approach to grocery shopping. Rather than buying ingredients for a specific recipe (that undoubtedly made 6+ servings), I simply started purchasing fresh produce and ingredients that LOOKED tasty and then worked on incorporating those things I really liked into as many different concoctions as I could.

And I FORCED myself to get over my repulsion for raw meat. At first I handled all raw meat with two sets of tongs… Even this method led to sporadic dry heaving… Can you picture forming a hamburger with two sets of tongs?! Trust me… it ain’t easy.

In my house, Sundays are for cooking. Every Sunday, I cook up breakfast for the entire workweek, wash and chop veggies, batch-cook chicken breasts or turkey sausage, and roast up some veggies. Not only does this make healthy eating during the week super easy, but it also cuts down on my work-week cooking time.

Hallelujah.

So where does this lovely story take us? It takes us to a Loaded Joetato. Feast your eyes on this puppy:

This Loaded Joetato consisted of my leftover healthified sloppy joes atop 1 medium sized potato topped off with some fat free sour cream and chopped onion leftover from my chicken quesadilla and some roasted broccoli leftover from my Sunday cookfest.

Ohhhhh Joe.

Recipes

Stuffed Cabbage (hold the red sauce)

September 20, 2010 No Comments

When you think of stuffed cabbage, what comes to mind? I’m guessing you think of ground beef and rice rolled up in cabbage and smothered in red sauce, right? You probably also think of excessive gas. Let’s try and relieve ourselves of that thought for now 😉

I’m not entirely sure why, but my mom has always made stuffed cabbage without red sauce. I can remember going to friend’s houses as a child and getting super excited when I heard we were having stuffed cabbage for dinner. This ALWAYS ended in disappointment because everyone (other than my mom… and my sister) makes stuffed cabbage with red sauce… and I’m not really a fan. In my family, we like our stuffed cabbage with a side of cabbage. And some cabbage broth. And excessive amounts of sour cream and salt and pepper.

Stuffed cabbages has been one of my all-time favorite home cooked meals for as far back as I can remember, yet I’ve never tried to make them myself. So what the heck, I decided to give it a shot. My mom uses ground beef in her stuffed cabbages, but I decided to further health-it-up with 99% fat-free ground turkey and brown rice.

First up, the cabbage:

I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever purchased cabbage. I have a feeling we are going to be GREAT friends 🙂

(Guess who left her camera at work??? Yes, all photos were taken with the lovely iPhone tonight)

I cut the core out of the cabbage:

And dropped it hole-side down in a big ole pot of bowling water.

While the leaves softened in the boiling water, I combined the following in a bowl:

8 ounces 99% fat free ground turkey
1/2 a chopped white onion
1 glove garlic, minced
1 cup brown rice, rinsed and drained
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper

As the leaves began to soften, I pulled off the outer cabbage leaves with a pair of tongs and laid them out while the remaining cabbage kept softening in the pot:

I used an ice cream scooper to evenly distribute the meat and rice mix among 9 cabbage leaves:

Then gave them a roll and lined them up in a baking dish.

Then I gave the remaining cabbage a rough chop and tucked it in between the rolls and threw the rest on top. I used a ladle to spoon some of the hot cabbage broth onto the rolls until the water level was about half way up the dish. Then I covered with foil and baked in a 400 degree oven for 1 hour.

When the rolls were done, I topped two of them off with a dollop of sour cream and some black pepper:

Andd……. whelp… it’s wasn’t mom’s. And it wasn’t my sister’s either. Have you ever tried to recreate one of your mom’s famous dishes? If you’re like me, it probably didn’t go so well. That’s ok, nothing a little hot sauce can’t cure!

All-in-all these were OK– but I think using the ground turkey instead of the ground beef made a HUGE difference (and not for the better). I think ground beef is the way to go. That’s what I’ll use next time for sure!

Stuffed Cabbage Ingredients List (serves 4)

8 ounces 99% fat free ground turkey
1/2 a chopped white onion
1 glove garlic, minced
1 cup brown rice, rinsed and drained
1 head cabbage (about 2 lbs)
Salt and pepper
Fat-free Sour cream (optional in your book, NOT optional in mine)

Stats on 1 serving: 237 calories, 39g carbs, 2g fat, 19g protein, 7g fiber

What I ate

Easy Chicken Pot Pie

September 13, 2010 9 Comments

Holy comfort food!!!!

Ever since we stopped at Bob Evans last week for breakfast, I’ve been craving a pot pie with a vengeance. We’ve got a BIG deadline at work this week, so I’ve been working my little hiney off and have had zero time to cook. Tonight however I made time because I knew my body NEEDED a lil pot pie. I’ve never made a pot pie before, so I did a little googlin’ and found this recipe for Impossibly Easy Chicken Pot Pie. Sounded like a good place for me to start learning the art of potpiedom!

This recipe was incredibly simple to throw together, which made it all the more comforting and delicious. First up, I gathered the mixins.

And quickly threw a chicken breast seasoned with salt and pepper on the George.

Meanwhile, I threw the following items into a bowl:

1 bag frozen stew vegetables (pearl onions, potatoes, carrots, celery)
2 cups chopped broccoli … because I love broccoli and broccoli loves me!
1 can Campbell’s Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom Soup
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black pepper

Once the chicken breast was cooked through, I roughly chopped it into cubes, and added to the mix.

Yes… this is what I called a “cube” 😉

I gave everything a good mix and poured into a pie dish that I had sprayed with some cooking spray.

Next up, I mixed the following in a little bowl:

1 cup bisquick
1 large egg
1/2 cup almond breeze

If you are smarty pants, you may have noticed Bisquick is NOT the baking mix pictured in my ingredients pic… I had full intentions of using my Bob’s Red Mill Low-carb baking mix… but last minute I got a little nervous thinking the pot pie might be a pot-flop, and I wasn’t about to waste my last bit of low-carb baking mix on that. So I decided to use Bisquick instead and save the Bob’s Red Mill for pot pie round #2. (I foresee many pot pies in my future)

Once the batter was all mixed up, I dumped it on top of veggies.

Now, I can assure you that even though this looks like I just poured some paper-mache goopy gop concoction on my delicious veggies it did not taste like any sort of glue… Well at least not any glue I’ve ever tasted. I popped this pie into a 400 degree oven with apprehension, and let it hang out for 40 minutes until the top was nice and browned.

Voila! Pot Pie!

The pot pie was everything I had hoped for! Creamy, comforting, and oh-so delicious!

Not to mention this made four servings so now I have food for the rest of the week. Hooray!

Just a few more days to go folks, then life can return to its “normal” state.

Easy Chicken Pot Pie Ingredients List (makes 4 servings)

1 bag frozen stew vegetables
2 cups chopped broccoli
1 can Campbell’s Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom Soup
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black pepper
1 large grilled chicken breast (mine was approx 7 ounces)
1 cup Bisquick
1 large egg
1/2 cup Unsweetened Almond Breeze Vanilla Almond Milk

Myfitnesspal stats on 1 serving of Easy Chicken Pot Pie: 315 calories, 41g carbs, 7g fat, 19g protein, 4g fiber