Turkey – Fervent Foodie

Turkey Artichoke Panini with Garlic Aioli

April 9, 2012 2 Comments

It’s that time of year. The days are getting longer (and less depressing). The temperatures are creeping up. There are bugs. Everywhere. Especially caterpillars. Green ones and whites ones and ones that like to dangle discretely from low lying tree branches causing you to bust out a Michael Jackson sidestep during your walk to work. Granted, those people walking toward you have no idea that move you just finangled saved your face from creepy crawly impact. Just smile and nod. Or pretend you just received an important phone call. Can you hear me now? … How about now? Smile… Nod.

Besides the bugs, the gym is also crowded with people frantically getting ready for you-know-what season. Ok, fine. I’ll say it. The dreaded swimsuit season.

*cringe*

This time of year, swimsuits are in the back of my mind (in that deep dark spot where I keep all my greatest horrors hidden). Instead, I’m primed for a different sort of season: Sandwich Season.

Fitness, Ramblings

14-Day Fitness Challenge–Turkey Trot Edition

November 13, 2011 6 Comments

I don’t know about you guys, but my level of motivation to exercise is dwindling downward along with the temperatures. Add to this the impending holiday of gluttony, and I’m a wee bit concerned my pants aren’t gonna fit come the new year. Let’s just face the facts. I’m not one to turn down delicious grub, and my food intake around the holidays can be downright excessive. That’s just me. I love food. I definitely make an effort to be “conscious” of what I’m eating, but when you give me fifty options there’s no way I’m walking away from that buffet line without a mounding plate of glorious home cookin’. There will be pounds of turkey slathered with cranberry sauce.. and several hot buttery rolls… and potatoes in every fashion: mashed ones, and cheesy ones, and sweet ones topped with melty marshmallows and brown sugar, and a potato salad… or three. Let us not forget about the dessert table. I can hear the angels singing now…. I have to sample everything. It’s tradition, and not doing so is just, well, downright rude in my family.

Hence the aforementioned pants fear.

Since I function best in life when I have goals to strive towards (Type A? Moi?!??), I’m rolling out a personal fitness challenge to get me amped up to exercise over the Thanksgiving holiday. This isn’t just ANY fitness challenge, this is the 14-Day Fitness Challenge – The Turkey Trot Edition. The goal of this fitness challenge is to exercise every day for the next 14 days. Yes, that includes Thanksgiving… and my beloved Black Friday. Every.Day. For 14 days. Here’s the kicker: I’ll also be running my first EVER race — The Cleveland 5 mile Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day.

Can we all keep our fingers crossed for no snow, please?!

I WILL EXERCISE EVERY DAY.

Who’s with me?

Feel free to add this badge to your blog! Just copy and paste the code below:

Recipes, Slow Cookin

Slow Cooker Sunday: Sausage & Peppers & Apple Crisp!

November 13, 2011 9 Comments

Geeze. Can’t believe it is Sunday. Strike that. I can’t believe Sunday is practically over.

Waaaaaaaa!!!!!

I feel like life is moving along at crazy fast speeds and I’m just flailing my arms about trying to stay afloat. The good news is I’m taking over a week off of work for Turkey Day. So hopefully that helps to revive me!

This lovely Sunday I woke up and got straight to work destroying my kitchen.

When will I learn to clean as I go?

Never.

This week I pulled BOTH of the slow cookers out of the pantry for some slow cooked sausage and peppers and slow cooked apple crisp deliciousness!

We make sausage and peppers pretty regularly and don’t really get crazy with them. We simply throw some grilled sausages in the crockpot with a jar of tomato sauce, green peppers, onions, and some seasonings. You know, garlic garlic garlic and maybe some oregano.

Then we just let everything simmer together until we’re ready to feast. Soup was BOGO at Harris Teeter this week (HOLLA!), so I nabbed some Chipotle Chicken soup I’ve been wanting to try.

Altogether:

Since I had to pop into work for a few hours today, Jarrod was in charge of throwing everything together. Holy cow these sausage sandwiches were DELICIOUS. Absolutely delicious. I asked Jarrod what seasonings he used for the sauce… his response? “Ummm… nothing?”

Men.

Thank you Ragu, thank you. Smile

The soup was great as well—way to hook a sister up, Harris Teeter.

The Slow Cooker Apple Crisp was a wee bit more involved, but totally worth it. I used this Allrecipes.com recipe as my guide, with a few tweaks. I used three granny smith apples and three red apples.. I always get confused on the red apples. What are these? Galas?

First up, mix the following together in a large ziploc baggie or large bowl with lid:

1/3 cup white sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
6 apples peeled and sliced (I used 3 granny smith, 3 gala)
2 tbsp lemon juice

And give it all a good shimmy shake.

Spray the crock with cooking spray, then toss in the apple mixture.

THEN, in a medium bowl, combine the following:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, cut into pieces

Use a fork or your hands to combine everything until the butter is dispersed throughout. I recommend using your hands, of course. Then sprinkle over top of apples.

Ta-da!

Cook on low for four hours, remove lid half way then cook 1 hour more. And you’ll get….

A big fat gloppy mess.

This is NOT ok.

Luckily, my crockpot is oven safe (up to 400 degrees). So, I popped the crock into a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Hooray for crispy topping!

The apples of the bottom of the crock disintegrated down into a delicious chunky applesauce. A spoonful of the steaming sauce, some chunks of apple and crispy topping from the top of the crock, and a dollop of slow-churned vanilla ice cream….

O…. M…G….

DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The swaps I made to the original recipe nearly cut the calories in half. Next time I’m going to reduce the sugar more to further healthify the dessert. I’m willing to do several trial runs if necessary 😉

Slow Cooker Apple Crisp

1/3 cup white sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
6 apples peeled and sliced (I used 3 granny smith, 3 gala)
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, cut into pieces
Vanilla ice cream

Step one: mix the first five ingredients (through lemon juice) together in a large ziploc baggie or large bowl with lid. Shake the bag/bowl to coat the apples. Spray the crock with cooking spray, then toss in the apple mixture.

Step two: in a medium bowl, combine the next seven ingredients (flour through butter). Use a fork or your hands to crumble the butter into the flour mixture. Then sprinkle over top of apples.

Step three: Cook on low for four hours, remove lid half way then cook 1 hour more.

Step four: Verify your crock is oven-safe, then place uncovered crock into a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes to crisp the topping. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Restaurants, What I ate

So simple, so tasty.

August 17, 2011 5 Comments

For as much as I like to go out to eat, and boy do I like to go out to eat, I too enjoy having a simple tasty meal at home. Tonight’s dinner was just that. So simple, so tasty. Since I talked myself out of running this morning (I guess I learned nothing from yesterday’s post), I wanted a quick and light dinner so that I could spend some quality time with my tenner shoes this evening.

After a quick fridge inventory, I decided a turkey wrap was the feature entre of the evening. 1 whole wheat Flat-out wrap, 4 ounces of Boars Head Turkey Breast, 2 tbsp Trader Joes creamy original hummus (MY FAV!!!!), some tomatoes, onions, and cucumber:

P.S. cucumbers are my new favorite vehicles for loading up with hummus. So friggin good… why did I not discover this combo sooner?!

I also had some lazy-gal’s cucumber salad on the side:

Since I go out to eat quite a bit on the weekends, during the week I shoot to eat as healthy as I can. The key for me is that “healthy” still has to equal tasty. If it ain’t tasty, I ain’t eatin!

It’s a wrap: 324 calories, 30g carbs, 9g fat, 39g protein, 13g fiber

As I sat on my balcony devouring this delicious dinner, I started thinking about how varied my meals are throughout any given week. Tonight I was feasting on a simple wrap—and Saturday night I feasted on French cuisine. Is it just me, or is it kind of crazy how much food there is to taste and experience in the world? It just kind of astounds me! I have problems. I know.

Speaking of that French Cuisine, Saturday night after Jamie, Vanessa, and I saw Harry Potter, we took a stroll over to Café Monte to get our grub on. I wonder how you say “grub” in French…? Grubeaux?

We had a bit of time to spare before our reservation, so we used a bit of it to oogle over the dessert case.

And then their expansive breakfast menu (must come back for breakfast soon).

Then headed to the bar for some cocktails because that’s what any self respecting lady does on Ladies Night Out.

Hello orange dress Smile

The restaurant was really cute inside and reminded me of some of the places I visited during the week I spent in Paris in college.

Speaking of that week, the one main thing I remember about Paris was how rude the people were and how much I hated the food. The only French word I’d learned was “poulet” (translates to chicken). So at every restaurant I visited I‘d scan the menu for poulet, then use the point and repeat technique to order my meals. Poulet. Poooooolettttttttt (insert rapid menu tapping here). No wonder the people hated me Winking smile

Luckily, the folks at Café Monte were very hospitable and also very knowledgeable about the menu items. Plus the menu was in English, so I didn’t have to search too hard to find the chicken dishes

Since I had a Living Social deal for the restaurant (Boo.Ya.), we decided to get crazy and order the cheese fondue for our appetizer:

Give me a loaf of bread, and I’m a very happy lady. Give me a loaf of bread AND a tub full of melty cheese and I may kiss you and beg to be your sugar mama. Do not be alarmed.

For our dinners, I went with the Chicken (poulet! pouuuletttttttt!) and Wild Mushroom crepes, Vanessa got some crazy looking fish dish (the Trout Amandine), and Jamie got the Lobster and Crab risotto:

I think we were all pretty happy with our meals. My crepes were really tasty, and I especially enjoyed the juiciness of the pulled chicken breast against the creamy madeira sauce. If the dish would of included sundried tomatoes it would have been a show stopper. That’s probably not very “french” though, huh?

After dinner, we decided it would only be proper to cap our night off with coffee and dessert. After nixing the desserts each of us weren’t feeling, we were left with the winner.

Carrot cake:

I’m not sure what carrot cake has to do with French Cuisine, but it was pretty darn delicious. Especially with the coffee!

On a side note, I really enjoyed the Harry Potter movie! There were some parts that were a bit cheesy and child like–but I had to keep reminding myself that these were SUPPOSED to be kids. Even though Harry had a 5 o’clock shadow and six pack abs and Ron and Hermione we making out every time they had five seconds to get a quick grope in these were the KIDS I’d been following for the past 10+ years… they’d just grown up a bit. *Sigh* … haven’t we all?

Restaurants

The (not so) Common Market

August 9, 2011 9 Comments

During my blissful day of unplanned meandering, I wandered over to The Common Market in South End for lunch:

How adorable is that little sandwich guy? The Common Market is one of those places you’d probably just drive by if you hadn’t heard through the twitter grapevine that they had delicious sandwiches. It looks, at least from the outside, like a standard convenience store, and it wasn’t until I walked along the side of the building that I realized they have this great secluded courtyard to sit in and enjoy your lunch!

Once inside the Market you can spot newbies <aka ME> who are unsure where to go to order… where to pay… and frankly what the heck is going on inside this quirky store. There’s STUFF everywhere in the store. Not just stuff to fill space, but stuff that is interesting and unique and fun to look at and drool over.

If your heart is set on getting a sandwich (as it should be), you can head straight to the back of the store where the deli counter is located. You order your grub there and then pay at the register at the front of the store.

DSCF7227

While waiting for my sandwich, I snooped around the store a bit and noted that you can even dine-in at one of the handful of tables perched right in the middle of the store.

You can crab a bottle of wine (or five) from their extensive wine selection to enjoy with your grub. Or if beer is your thing, they’ve got quite the selection of high-end bottled beers as well.

The sandwiches don’t come with chips or drinks or any sides, but that is A-O-Kay because the market is chock full of yummies. The shelves are packed with snacks and chips and TONS of homemade baked goods:

I somehow exercised superb self control and did not snag any of the baked goodies. Though they had these brownie logs that looked to die for, and that I’ve been dreaming about since!

The Market also has a random hodgepodge of fun gadgets and gizmos and cards and signs for sale and some random gluten-free products on the shelves. I’ll have to bring my friend Tracy here when she comes to visit!

$6.25 for a sandwich ain’t bad in Charlotte. Especially when it comes with a compliment stamp:

I went with the Turkey Capri sandwich, which had sundried tomato spread, a slathering of goat cheese, a big handful of baby spinach, and red onion between two hearty slices of 9 grain bread:

The sandwich was FABULOUS. I think i could eat one of these every day and not get tired of them. Though they also had a pepperjack turkey panini on the menu that looked quite tasty…

The the funkyness of the market carried out to the courtyard area which was full of random odds and ends, crazy signs, and patrons enjoying the nice weather and even nicer food.

The South End location does wine tastings on Wednesday nights and beer tastings on Thursday nights. They also have live music on the patio on the weekends.

Sadly, my sandwich came to an end. Too soon. But isn’t that always the case with a tasty lunch?

Ohhh! Lest we not forget the scratch off giveaway winner!

Yay Nicole! Email your mailing address to: ferventfoodie@gmail.com.

1 2 Next »