Blue Cheese Burgers

Arugula comes in a big old package. At least the arugula I bought was in a big old package. And even after I made flat breads two days in a row, I still had a ton of arugula left. What to do, what to do? I had some ground turkey breast and a few days ago I came acrossed a recipe for blue cheese sauce. I knew I could work with this.

I made some blue cheese sauce first.
-3 tablespoons fat free plain yogurt
-2 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese
-1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

And you're supposed to mix all that together. Except remember when I said I don't like to measure things? Yeah. So I eyeballed the yogurt and the cheese and planned to add just the required splash of balsamic. Oops. I splashed in a little too much. So to fix it I added some more yogurt...and some more cheese...and then it was really cheesy and balsamic-y and delicious. Score! The lesson here? Mix all that stuff until it tastes good to you.


Next came the turkey burgers.
-ground extra lean ground turkey breast meat
-hamburger buns
-tomato
-arugula


I used about 1/4 of a 1lb package of turkeyy. I usually season the meat with some garlic salt or Mrs.Dash or something similar. Sometimes I also add a splash of Italian dressing or tomato juice to make the turkey breast a little more moist. The only problem with the juice is that it makes the meat pink, and then I panic over when it's done, because you just don't want to eat undercooked poultry...but I digress. Once the burger is cooked, stack it on a bun with a generous amount of blue cheese sauce, a thick slice of tomato, amc a heap of arugula. A-MAZING!! Also, understand that this was the first time EVER that I ate any kind of lettuce on a burger. I didn't eat lettuce at all until I was literally 18. I was a late vegetable bloomer. And, from now on, if arugula is around, I will happily use it to dress my burgers. You should too. It's good for you ;)

Goat Cheese, Apricot, & Arugula Flatbread

So, the other night on my way home from work I decided that California Pizza Kitchen sounded good.  Except I was tired, and didn't feel like going to the stupid mall to get dinner. Instead, I figured I could stop at Publix and get some stuff to make something close enough to what I'd get at CPK. I figured I'd make a goat cheese, fig and arugula flat bread.  Except Publix didn't have any fig jelly. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

Here's what I got at the grocery store:
-Publix fresh Pizza dough
-a small log of goat cheese
-Publix reduced fat blue cheese crumbles
-arugula
-and  as a splurge, shrimp.

Here's what I used that I already had at home:
-apriot jelly
-I can't believe it's not butter spray
-minced garlic

First things first, I pulled out my wonderful roommate Jamie's George Foreman grill.  I pulled off about  1/3 of the dough, flattened it into the thinnest rectangle-ish shape that I could and slapped it on the GF grill on high.

While that cooked, I put the oven on broil and while that heated, in a pan, I tossed in about 10 shrimp (shell on) with about 3 teaspoons of butter spray and a teaspoon of garlic. By the time that was pink, my flat bread had gotten lovely grill marks on it and was a pretty even golden color...ready to go! 

I put maybe a REALLY heaping tablespoon of apricot jelly in the middle of the flatbread...which melted enough that I was easily able to spread it all over. Then I sprinkled that with blue cheese and goat cheese (this is up to you...I used enough so I'd have cheese in most every bite, but not enough to cover the entire thing) and popped it in the oven while I shelled the shrimp.

It really only needs a few minutes broiling...then pull it out, heap it with a good sized mound of arugula, shrimp on top of that...and there you have it.  I don't want to toot my own horn or anything...but I promise it was SO delicious that I made it again the next day.  ;)

Confessions of a wannabe chef...

I was taking a walk this morning and it occurred to me in light of some of the cooking "experiments" I've tried lately that I should start a food blog. I mean, I love food. Buying it, reading about it, cooking it, eating it...especially eating it. Now to be clear, I'm not perfect. I've made some duds. I've also made some amazing things. We can figure this out together. Before we get started though, I'm going to tell you a few things about my food philosophies. First...I believe that anything edible can be made edible and anything good can be made better with the addition of one of the three following ingredients: sour cream, ketchup, or peanut butter. I LOVE all three of those things, and I can't think of too many things I like eating that I wouldn't like better with one of those. Second...I hate onions, peppers, mushrooms, and celery. I probably hate some other things too, but those four above and beyond anything else. If a recipe has any of those things in it, I either ignore that recipe or delete that ingredient. Third...and this is directly related to #2, I am an improvisational cook. I mean, for baking I stick to recipes, but for most anything else, well...I'm eating it, so I should cook it how I want to, right? And so should you! If you want to add onions (yuck!), add them. If a 1/4 cup of shredded cheese doesn't sound like enough (and let's face it, you can't ever have enough cheese), throw in more. Fourth, I could probably live happily the rest of my life on a diet of cheese, bread, and tomatoes in varying forms. And finally, sprinkles! I love sprinkles. Everything should really have sprinkles. So that's it...let's start cooking together and see what we come up with!