Day 1: Ranch Turkey Burgers and Oven Baked Parmesan Seasoned Fries

Today is officially day 1 of the Pinterest Project! For my first official project, I am making Ranch Turkey Burgers with Oven Baked Parmesan Seasoned Fries courtesy of the blogs ‘laaloosh’ and ‘playing with sugar.’  I’ve got my girl, Adele, playing on my itunes in the background, so let the cooking begin.

Ranch Turkey Burgers – For all you healthy eaters or weight watcher participants, this buger is only 3 points.  If you add a bun, then obviously you add more points. Although I’m not a point counter myself, 3 points doesn’t seem that bad, right? Below is the original recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean, ground turkey
• 1 packet  of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing Dry Mix
• 2  green onions, chopped
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic,  minced

As you can see, everything I used I got from Trader Joes except for the Hidden Valley Ranch Mix. TJ’s is the best store on the face of the earth – the prices there are ridiculously cheap and everything is fresh and amazing.

 Once you have all your ingredients, combine everything into a bowl. The only thing I did differently is I used a garlic press and pressed the garlic as opposed to mincing it. I LOVE garlic and wanted to have a stronger garlic taste in my burgers.

Directions:

Once the ingredients are mixed, form four patties. Spray a frying pan with cooking spray or use olive oil to coat the pan. Cook the patties until they are completely done. It took about 20 minutes total to cook the patties. I had the burner on low as I did not want to burn the patties.

Oven Baked Parmesan Seasoned Fries – Since you typically eat fries or onion ring with burgers, I figured I would try these baked fries. They were really simple and easy to prepare, but they took a little while to cook.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of medium russet potatoes (approx 3 medium potatoes)
• 1 1/2 TBSP of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/4 tsp Dried Thyme
• 1/4 tsp Dried Oregano
• 1/8 tsp Dried Rosemary
• 1/4 tsp of Garlic Powder
• 1/4 tsp of Old Bay Seasoning
• 2 TBSP of Kraft Parmesan Style Grated Cheese

I changed up this recipe a little bit. First off, I did not have Rosemary and honestly I don’t really like it in food unless I’m eating italian, so I omitted it completely. Instead of Old Bay Seasoning I used Don’s speciality meats seasoning from Louisianna! My good friend, Amy introduced me to this. For those of you from the south, Don’s is a cajun seasoning, kind of like Tony Chachere’s, but better! I also used 4 potatoes, instead of 3. I don’t have a peeler, so I cut the skin off the potatoes and added an extra potato since I knew I would be wasting some of it. Also, I tried to find potatos that were relatively flat and rectangular like to make it easier to cut the skin off.

Directions:

Preheat the oven 425 degrees. Wash, peel and cut the potatoes into 1/8ths and place them on a cookie sheet that has been lined with aluminum foil. Mix all the spices and parmesan cheese together in a bowl. Take a large, freezer size ziploc bag and put all the potatoes in it. Add the spices mix and the oil to the bag. Seal the bag tightly and shake all the ingredients up, making sure that everything is distributed evenly. Dump the potatoes onto the cookie sheet and spread them out in a single layer. Bake for 30-45 minutes. I baked them for 20 minutes and then flipped them and baked them for 20 more minutes. I did not have aluminum foil, so I coated the cookie sheet with cooking spray and my fries turned out a little darker because of that, but they were still really good. Also, after they were done, I sprinkled a little more Don’s on top of them.

For the burger I used Martin’s potato bread buns and I topped my burger with avocado slices, grilled onions and bar-b-que sauce! Being from Texas, I can’t have a burger without some good old fashioned bar-b-que sauce.

The burger and fries were amazing – especially the burger. That recipe will definitely become a staple in my recipe book. Day was a success! Stay tuned for what tomorrow brings…

My year of anti-resolutions

10 days into the new year and I’m surrounded by people attempting to keep their new year’s resolutions and live a ‘healthier’ lifestyle. Everywhere you look, their are ads for diets, gyms and quick fixes to help you attain that ideal physique.

Take my office for example. I work at a small firm where almost everyone who works there is male. Since January 3rd, all except a couple of men in the office have been on some sort of diet, with the most popular being a liquid diet. The most interesting liquid dieting being the one where you drink 8 different types of juices a day and those drinks are supposed to give you all the nutrients you need for the day. That’s it – just juice, no solids. You’re drinking everything from fruit and veggie blends to the all popular coconut water, which tastes awful and is not more hydrating than water. Now, I’m not a scientist, but when you have men who are used to eating large, filling meals of burgers and fries or chicken and rice plates from the Halal carts (aka street meat) and they switch to a liquid diet, you’re going to have a few unhappy campers as their bodies adjust. Last week you should have seen this place – you would have thought I worked in an office full of women – moody, temperamental and on edge men filled their desks. This behavior was coming from guys who sit around and talk about who can do the most push-ups, with some guys claiming they can do 500 (ha!) to challenging each other in the boxing ring when they have a disagreement and feel then need to show how masculine they are. Those arguements typically go something like this:

Guy #1: “Let’s take this to the ring. Put on some gloves and we’ll see how many rounds you can last.”

Guy #2: “You couldn’t last one round with me!”

Guy #1: “I’d knock you out first. I used to box in high school.”

Guy #2: “You’d last like 1 minute against me. I bet you can’t even handle the speed bag.”

Guy #1: “I use that at the gym.”

You get the picture. After being around this neurotic and narcissistic behavior for too long and in an attempt to not disappoint myself this year, I am not making any new year’s resolutions. Let’s face it, a week into January I was still noshing on some Christmas candy, so if I had vowed to cut out sugar from my diet I would have already epically failed. Although I am cutting back on caffeine and alcohol consumption, I am doing so not as a new year’s resolution, but to help me with my running. Instead of unrealistic resolutions, I have decided to make this year my ‘year of dabbling’ by learning new things I’ve always thought were interesting or doing things I love and have not made time for in the recent years. Some of these things include:

• speaking french
• painting
• hot yoga/yoga in general
• running races [as it’s been an entire year since my last one]
• zumba
• photography [esp. black and white]
• reading
• cooking [afterall, I need to try all those recipes I’ve pinned on pinterest]
• hiking

The difference between what I am doing and what the 99.99% do, is that I am not  setting a goal to complete [insert unrealistic resolution here]. Instead, I’ll do as little or as much of everything as I want. So, if I only learn 10 words in French, well guess what, that’s 10 words I didn’t know before, so kudos to me. I refuse to be dissapointed by things I don’t accomplish this year. I’ll try hard and do what I want/can.

Cheers to my anti-resolutions.