Spicy Avocado Turkey Burgers with Sweet Potato Fries, you are my new favorite! XOXOXO
Have you ever found yourself in a love affair with a food that you were previously all like “meh” about? That pretty much sums up my relationship with ground turkey. I once scoffed at it as a subpar substitute for ground beef and all its flavorful, red-meaty, fat-saturated goodness. Because I love to eat clean, but red meat and I are like this! My loyalty to it is fierce. We are bonded together in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque pact.
I could seriously be on the vegan+red-meat diet, if that were a thing. Just me, fruits, veggies, and a ribeye steak from an ethically-raised cow – YUMMM. Ground turkey wouldn’t have been invited to our island before my recent revelation.
Then I visited Detroit restaurant Central Kitchen and Bar (an experience highlighted in this post on my other blog, 100 Places in the D), where its blackened turkey burger invoked me. I mean, a turkey burger coated in blackening seasoning and topped with avocado, sweet peppers, and muenster cheese was not your typical humdrum turkey burger. I needed to keep an open mind and give ground turkey another try, right?
Share this:
TGIF, all! To celebrate the glorious forthcoming weekend, I’ve got this Spicy Chickpea Tacos recipe for ya!!!
I know Taco Tuesdays are all the rage – and for good reason. Tacos are AWESOME, and Tuesdays deserve to be spiced up. I mean, “Party Animal” wasn’t the moniker that immediately came to mind for me around that day of the week before Taco Tuesday became a thing, but now I’m all like, “Tuesdays, you’re so crazy!” Still, I like the idea of tacos being a Friday food, because in my mind they are a celebratory food, and Friday is a celebratory day for me on account of it means a two-day break from my cube-rat corporate day-job existence (who feels me???). So I hereby denote these Spicy Chickpea Tacos an Honorary Friday Food. [Cue the confetti!!!]
Share this:
Because I couldn’t stop with last week’s Cheesy Cauliflower Spinach Quinoa Pesto Bake, today we have: another quinoa casserole!
I’ve deferred from using the word “casserole” in these recipe titles because of the connotations it has for me. It conjures up images of garish 1950s-era concoctions or dishes swimming in cream-of-chicken soup. OK, cream-based-soups have their place in my heart – I did come of age in the ’90s in the Midwest – but you won’t be seeing them as an ingredient here. We value freshness and the use of whole ingredients here at A Cookable Feast! My philosophy is to include processed foods not as a staple of my diet, but as a sporadic indulgence (I do have a fondness for Cheetos, for instance, but I don’t keep them in the house. However, I’ll gobble them at every barbeque and birthday party they’re set out at).
The Postwar era was a cray-cray time for food here in the U.S., with home-cooked meals often relying heavily on then-newfangled processed ingredients and oft-zany brand-sanctioned recipes (Google “Crazy 1950s recipes,” and you’ll see what I mean – an excellent diversion when you’re rendered useless by post-lunch drowsiness at work). But I’ll take one lesson from that time: as long as a not-repulsive combination of ingredients is used, the casserole is an excellent format for a quick and easy meal.
Share this:
Hello, all! For those of you in the U.S., I hope you had an excellent Thanksgiving!
My holiday weekend was nothing short of spectacular. Having a four-day break from my corporate day job had a much-needed restorative quality and allowed me to spend time doing all kinds of things I love: cooking, journaling, hosting a girls’ night at my house, and even attending a concert by Stevie Nicks, who is my all-time favorite Goddess Incarnate (she was AMAZING!!!).
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone here in the States, we have officially entered the Holiday Season – that hectic and wonderful time. How’s your December calendar starting to look, a little cray-cray? Yeah, I know what you mean; there are holiday summons bombarding me left and right, too! With all of the invites to work holiday parties (I’ve seriously gotten asked to FOUR there alone), brunches, and family soirées you are fielding – and remember: you don’t have to say yes to all of them! – you’ve got to be prepared with recipes for stress-free dishes to bring in tow. Say hello to your new pal, Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Molasses Spice Cake!
Share this:
Ahoy, ACF readers! Happy summer! I have missed this blog so! It’s been over TWO MONTHS since I last posted here, which I’m definitely not proud of. I’ve been acutely aware every week over these last two months of the ever-growing chasm of time between this post and the last. But to be fair to myself, it’s been a pretty cray-cray few months.
Over the course of two weeks this May, I juggled working at my day job full time with completing a 40-hour training program that allows me to volunteer with a local women’s shelter. I’d been wanting to participate in it for well over a year, and this was the first out of the last three semiannual training sessions offered where all of the training dates fit into my schedule – so it finally happened! Yay!!!!! Then, because I’m insane, I also decided to pick up a part-time second job waitressing, which included a few weeks of intense training that started a week and a half after the shelter training concluded. So yeah . . . it was nuts. The dust is finally starting to settle, and I’m feeling better equipped to set up a regular writing schedule again. I am very much looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and sharing some new recipes with you!
Enough about me. Let’s talk about our featured guests, lettuce wraps! Lettuce wraps are great because a. they help eliminate carbs, which we all know are quite delectable but not the most cooperative buggers when it comes to staying summer-svelte; b. they help get rid of all that lettuce that is starting to run wild in your garden just now and c. everything is more fun to eat when it’s wrapped up in something! It’s an indisputable fact of the Universe.
And these lettuce wraps are even more awesome because the filling is cooked not by you, but by your handy-dandy Crock-Pot. Yes, it’s a SLOW COOKER RECIPE!!! 🙂
Share this:
Spring has sprung! The flowered trees finally blossomed here in Metro Detroit over the last week, and it’s magical! Seriously, I know that sounds cheesy, but I find flowering trees so beautiful and enchanting. Energy-shifting, on the cusp of powerful, wonderful change. Late spring, people – a powerful time! That full moon in Scorpio last week – it’s bringing some seriously powerful manifestations with it, I can just feel it!
OK, now that I’ve waxed all poetic and hippie-like, it’s time to get down to the practical nuts-and-bolts of why I am here: to relay a healthful veggie stir-fry recipe that will help to cleanse our bodies from all that rich winter comfort food we’ve been eating for months.
Share this:
On today’s menu: chicken tenders! But not the janky diner chicken tenders you ate by the bucketful when you were a teenager (if you were anything like me). OK, those chicken tenders were actually pretty good a lot of the time – except when they didn’t deep fry them thoroughly enough and they were still kind of cold in the middle. Then yuck. But these chicken tenders are not yuck and are much more healthful, because for one, they are gluten-free – yay! The “breading” is made from raw almonds and is really, really quick and easy to make.
Share this:
Peanut butter is SUCH an obsession of mine. It makes everything better! Even yogurt, which is a delightfully worthy breakfast companion in itself – but add to it some yummy natural peanut butter and and raw organic honey and shredded unsweetened coconut and crunchy cacao nibs and it’s an I’ll-never-leave-you! breakfast companion. The fact that this bad-boy is totally processed-sugar-free just sweetens the pot . . . er, I mean Mason Jar.
Share this:
You may have heard of the two-ingredient banana oatmeal cookie. It’s the easiest baked good to make: Take some bananas. Mash them. Add some oats. Mix and form into cookies that you bake in the oven and Bam! The healthiest cookies ever are born.
