Mozzarella stuffed madness

I had a rejuvenation of blogging yesterday. I have been reading various food blogs and it reminded me of how simple, fun and rewarding it can be to actually cook your own food. Not to mention how tasty. I think that these long days tend to lend themselves to the local Chinese delivery man or the ever affordable five dollar Subway wraps. However I must say that last night, after returning from the gym with erin, I found myself sitting down to a homemade dinner in less than 45 mins. Not too shabby.


Its summer. I have been craving burgers. I don't eat red meat, so that narrows it down to turkey, chicken or veggie. Erin is picky when it comes to the veggie burger varieties and they can also be fussy homemade (though this is not always the case by any means). Also my EatingWell Mag. has been arriving, been read, and been shelved...where is the cook in this household I know it's asking? In the last issue they had featured a whole bunch of burgers and the Mozzarella Stuffed Turkey burgers popped out on first read. It was time to make it.

These seemed fairly simple and had ingredients that I knew Erin would love. I also had most of the fixins at home, which always helps the wallet. I had picked up FF Mozzarella cheese and fresh basil for homemade pizzas the other night and all the other spices were already in the house.

I found a great loaf of foccacia at Trader Joe's and I froze the remainder that erin and I didn't eat. I also halved the recipe and froze the turkey for a future meal! The fresh basil I had ended up being soggy so I threw that away and just used dried basil (i'm sure fresh would have been a tad more tasty). I also omitted the lemon zest because I didn't have a fresh lemon and used canned tomatoes. Erin opted to eat it as an actual burger (with a top piece of foccacia), I just ate my open faced, fork and knife in hand. We topped the burger with a bit of FF parm cheese. YUM.





Now of course we needed a side dish to serve. I went to the old stand by for erin and made her homemade fries, however my accompaniment of butternut fries can take quite awhile to cook. Instead I saw a recipe on Kath Eats Real Food (one of my new obsessive reads) for Kale Chips. Now I love chips and I am always looking for low-cal substitutions. She mentioned that you could eat a whole grocery bag full of these for only about 100 calories. Sign me up!! For these chips you just de-stem the Kale and cut it into "chip size pieces", spray with olive oil and season to taste (I added some garlic salt, Kath added shredded cheese). You then bake them at 375 for about 15 mins. or until they are browning on the edges. These were great! They had a chewy texture and great flavor even erin liked them!! I have a feeling these will be making many repeat appearances in my kitchen.

I'm back, with a vengeance. I also started thinking that many of the staples in my life (food related) are not even mentioned in this blog.

change is oozing out of my pores like the cheese in this burger!