Let's Sup: California Chicken Patties

I'm not sure what school lunches are like these days, but when I was a kid, you lived for two days of the week: pizza and fries on Fridays and whatever day had the chicken patty on the menu. I felt like we were channeling those days a bit creating dinner tonight - the California chicken patty.

The secret to this rich ground chicken patty is making it like you would a beef burger: add lots of seasoning, breadcrumbs as a binder and an egg. Chicken doesn't have the same intramuscular fat as beef, making its patties much leaner and easier to dry out. So, by adding lots of moisture back to it, you lessen the chance that your chicken patties will turn into dry, bland examples of fowl play. The final product is a thick, juicy patty sandwich topped with ingredients inspired by the bright freshness of California agriculture.

CALIFORNIA CHICKEN PATTIES

Ingredients:

• 1 package ground chicken
• 1 tablespoon adobo seasoning
• 1 egg
• Panko bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 avocado, sliced
• Goat cheese, softened
• Green Goddess dressing 
• Burger buns
• Salt and pepper

Eat up:

1. Get the grill heated up. We don't have a grill, so we turned on the good ol' George Foreman.
2. Mix the ground chicken, egg, adobo, salt, pepper and panko bread crumbs together in a large bowl until thoroughly blended. The mix should be slightly sticky and easily able to hold shape as patties. Add more panko until the mixture reaches a dry enough texture to hold its shape.
3. While the patties are cooking, toast the buns if desired. Slice the avocado and give your dressing a good shake.
4. Put one patty on each bun. Top with a generous schmear of goat cheese, a swirl of dressing and two avocado slices per sandwich.

This super-easy dinner is tasty with chips on the side. Not so much into eating a bun? Turn the patties into meatballs and serve drizzled with dressing, diced avocado and crumbles of goat cheese instead. 

Let's Sup: Lean Beef Burgers with Bacon and Spinach

I work for Georgia Cattlemen's Association, and as such, I eat a LOT of lean beef. There's a lot of great stuff going on now in the beef community about lean beef: The BOLD, or Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet, study released in 2011 by Penn State demonstrates that using 4 ounces of lean beef as the daily protein source can help lower cholesterol. There are 29 cuts of lean beef with the total fat in between that of a skinless chicken breast and skinless chicken thigh.

One of those is 95/5 ground beef (that's 95 percent lean muscle and only 5 percent fat), which is what this burger is made of. The thing you've got to be careful with is that because there is so little fat, these buggers will cook up pretty quickly to medium. Burger cooking tip — DON'T press your burgers down with a spatula! Especially ones this lean; what little juiciness there is will leak out when squished.

LEAN BEEF BURGERS WITH BACON AND SPINACH

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound 95/5 ground beef (preferably ground sirloin)
• 1 slice of bacon for each burger (super healthy people can substitute turkey bacon, but I like the good stuff)
• Two handfuls of baby spinach
• Olive oil
• Provolone cheese
• Wheat hamburger buns
• OPTIONAL: 1 tablespoon water
• OPTIONAL: 1 egg
• OPTIONAL: Wheat breadcrumbs
• OPTIONAL: Adobo

Get 'cha grill on:

1. Heat up your grill. If you don't have a grill, you can use a grill pan, pan broil or a George Foreman. Or if you're me, you can cheat by rescuing two leftover burgers from a Georgia Beef Board event the day before! :)
2. Form the burgers into small patties, about the size of the palm of your hand. When Justin and I make burgers, we will also put in some wheat breadcrumbs, a tablespoon of water and one egg to keep the patties bound together. We also sprinkle in some adobo, a Hispanic salty seasoning, for added flavor.
3. Toss the burgers on the grill. Keep an eye on them and only try to turn them once!
4. As the burgers are grilling, cook the bacon in a small amount of olive oil over the stove. As the bacon begins to get golden brown, toss in the spinach and wilt it in the bacon grease. If you chose to use turkey bacon, be aware: It will cook faster due to lower fat content and will have less grease, so you'll probably have to add some additional olive oil when you throw the spinach in.
5. When the burgers are done (they should be 160 degrees F inside!), lower the heat and place a slice of provolone cheese on top. If you're doing this on the stove, cover the burgers with a pot lid to help the cheese melt quicker.
6. Place burger on bun and top with the bacon and spinach.

Boom, done. That easy. You can put sauce on the burgers if you want, but I prefer the flavors of the meats and the spinach speak for themselves!

Ensalada: Mom's Fruit-Punched Salad

Salads aren't always my favorite thing, but my Mom has a knack for making some pretty delicious ones. This is one she made for us over the weekend (the other one I will post later in the week!) that combines sweet summer berries with nuts, lettuce and cheese. It made a very good side to the grilled salmon we had with it!

The title is slightly misleading ... I promise no fruit punch juice actually went into this recipe.

MOM'S FRUIT-PUNCHED SALAD

Ingredients:

• Blueberries
• Sliced strawberries
• Shaved parmigiano reggiano
• Sliced almonds
• Sugar
• Greens of your choice

Directions:

1. Combine blueberries and strawberries with sugar and water. Macerate (fancy word for "soften by soaking in liquid") for a few minutes.
2. Shave your cheese. Mom prefers to buy cheese in wedges instead of the pre-shredded variety and shave it herself. Gives the salad a bit more rustic beauty.
3. Arrange macerated fruit, almonds and greens on a serving platter.
1. Sidenote on the greens: I'm not sure what specific lettuces Mom used this weekend, but I really love Romaine or butter lettuce for salads. Romaine would be great with this because it and the almonds add crunchy texture to balance the softened berries.
4. Toss above ingredients and top with the shaved cheese.
5. Serve with dressing of your choice. I like Caesar, Daddy prefers a vinaigrette. My little brother eats ranch with everything veggie-like, but honestly I don't think it would taste well with this salad! 

Sammige: Turkey, Brie & Apple Panini

Maybe Daddy and I are the only ones in the world who use the word "sammige" instead of sandwich ... maybe not.

Sometimes I like to refer to myself as the "panini queen," because one of my favorite cooking things to do is find ways to turn meals into panini versions. There's something about that perfect grilled bread with melty cheese that makes my mouth water.

This is one of the first paninis I ever created, inspired by one I ate in downtown Augusta several years ago. The tangy sweet of the apple is balanced by the salty meat and brie (which will appear a LOT in this blog. I love Brie). It's a hit with my family and the friends who've had it as well, sooo, bon appetit!

TURKEY, BRIE & APPLE PANINI

Ingredients per panini:

• 2 slices wheat bread (not honey wheat, just a nine-grain or something)
• 3 slices turkey (if you're doing it straight off the bird, make it thin slices, not thick chunks of Thanksgiving turkey!)
• 4 slices Granny Smith apple
• Brie

Directions:

1. Prepare the Brie. Shocking, I'm sure, but I'm weird when it comes to putting Brie on sandwiches. I cut the top of the rind off (and then eat it ... oops) and hand scoop the soft cheese onto the bread.
2. Top the brie with apple and turkey slices.
3. If you want, add some more Brie as a top layer. Since I don't use butter or sauce on these, the melting cheese is what helps the sandwich stay stuck together.
4. Throw the whole shebang on the George Foreman until the bread is grilled and the cheese is melted. Depending on how cold your Brie was when you added it, this could take a couple of minutes.

Let's Sup: Shrimp Pesto Pizza

Aside from beef, my second favorite meat is shellfish. I could probably eat them for every meal and be a happy camper: Shrimp, scallops, crab, lobster ... etc.

I recently saw a similar recipe to this on Pinterest, but the blog it took me to was ... less than helpful. Thankfully, my awesome chef boyfriend and I were able to replicate it by looking at the pictures. This pizza is light and makes a wonderful summer supper, and it breaks up the ordinary by not having a tomato-based sauce.

SHRIMP PESTO PIZZA

Ingredients:

• 1 roll Pillsbury pizza dough (or croissant dough)
• 1 jar pesto sauce (we used Bertolli)
• Mozzarella cheese
• Feta cheese
• Jumbo shrimp

Directions:

1. If your shrimp are raw: Peel and de-vein them. I like to grill them for a minute on the trusty ol' George Foreman, but you can also saute them. Cook them until they are slightly pink.
2. Unroll the pizza dough and top with the pesto. Roll the corners of the dough in slightly to form a barrier that will prevent the pesto from going everywhere during baking.
3. Sprinkle the pizza liberally with mozzarella and feta cheeses.
4. Top with shrimp.
5. Bake in oven at temperature and for time required by the dough. It should have a nice, golden-brown color when taken out and the shrimp should be all the way pink.

BKFST: Spinach & Egg Panini

One of the first things my personal trainer, Lisa, told me was that it's super important to eat a carb and a protein at every meal.

HALLELUJAH! MEAT IS ALLOWED!

Not going to lie, I was freakin' scared to death that with this being a women's gym, the trainers were going to be all Adkins diet on me and force me to become vegetarian, which would in turn force me to get my money back, because that sure ain't happening.

It's a little hard for me to wake up early enough in the mornings to make myself a breakfast that contains a protein and a carbohydrate, but this is a recipe I "created" for the mornings when I do find myself up in time to eat and shower before work.

(Sidenote: By "created" I kind of mean invented from the contents of my sadly empty fridge.)

It's got protein from eggs and bacon and carbs from the bread and cheese. The spinach is a "freebie" according to Lisa, which is excellent because I love spinach. It's one of about three vegetables I will willingly eat a lot of.

SPINACH & EGG PANINI

Ingredients:

• Bread, preferably whole wheat or honey wheat
• Baby spinach
• 1 egg
• 1 slice of bacon (If you want to be super healthy, go with a turkey bacon, but personally I think calling any other kind of stomach cut "bacon" and it not being pork is weird)
• 1 slice lowfat provolone cheese

To Make-a Da Paninis:

1. Plug in the good ole George Foreman. If you don't have one of these, heating it up on a regular pan with a spatula to press down works just fine, too.
2. While the pan/GF is heating up, go ahead and put a skillet on medium-high heat. Spray it with an olive oil spray (juuust a little bit) and then throw in the bacon and spinach. Spinach wilts when you cook it, so if you're like me and like a lot of it, wait until what you first toss in cooks down and then add some more leaves to it.
3. Put the bread on a plate and top one slice with cheese.
4. Once your bacon is a golden brown (Note: If using turkey bacon, this will happen pretty quickly since there's less fat) and the spinach sufficiently wilted, dump that out of the pan and onto the cheese side of the sandwich.
5. Crack your egg in the pan and fry it. There's no need to respray the pan since you'll be cooking it in the oil/bacon grease combo. Adding more spray will increase the fat content of the sandwich, which is no bueno. Now, the first time I made this like, Sunday was the first time in my life I'd ever fried an egg. I waited until it was not so gelatinous and then veeeery carefully flipped it. I cooked it until the yolk was almost cooked all the way through. Why?
6. BECAUSE after it's done and topped on top of the spinach/bacon/cheese, you put the top slice of bread on and transfer the sandwich to your hot pan or George Foreman and grill it. With beef you don't want to press down on burgers or steaks because it'll let the juices out, but with a sandwich like this the beauty is in the grill marks you can only get by applying a little pressure. And when you do that you squish your egg yolk and it makes the sandwich full of ooey, gooey deliciousness.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Meatetarian, 2.0

A few of y'all have probably seen my actual blog that I try to remember to keep up with, Meatetarian. This one's going to be a bit different.

I joined a gym about two weeks ago and found out a couple rather ... shocking revelations about what I thought was my semi-healthy sedentary lifestyle. 

And now I'm determined more than ever to get back to my high school weight. Determination might be fueled just as much by the fact that this whole gym thing is super expensivo, but I also don't want to buy bigger clothes. And I also greatly dislike most "healthy" foods, and there's just some things I won't cut out of my meals. 

So let me present to you Meatetarian: Foodish, the blog about how meat is helping me lose weight and get fit, as part of a healthy, balanced diet and lifestyle.

There will be recipes. There will be workout experiences.

And because any Meatetarian blog wouldn't be complete without it, there will be plenty of food knowledge, too.