Recipe for Inside Out Caprese Bison Burgers

From Mr. ELEB:  "that's another recipe you can make ANY time you like!"  In other words, I think he liked these caprese bison burgers.  If you don't have access to ground bison (buffalo), you can use ground turkey or ground beef (lean).  If you haven't tried bison, I highly recommend it.  You can read more about bison here (and order some really yummy meat).

Recipe for Stuffed Mediterranean Turkey Burgers

Mmmm, little pockets of goodness tucked inside a moist, delicious turkey burger!  These are a little too fragile for the grill.  They cook up quickly in a pan with a little olive oil for browning.  Make sure not to overcook or they will be dry.

Recipe for Pesto Yogurt Sauce

Here's an easy and versatile recipe.  I use it as a dip, a sauce, or a dressing.  I usually make it with my homemade pesto but store bought works well too.

Ingredients:

1 ½ TBSP pesto

½ cup plain non-fat Greek yogurt

1 TBSP fresh lime or lemon juice

Salt (optional)

Method:

Mix all ingredients together and taste for salt, add if needed (depends on pesto).  Refrigerate.

What do you make with pesto?  Stay tuned, tomorrow I'm making a veggie salad using this as the dressing.

Printable Recipe

Recipe for Mushroom Rice

What’s the best clue that you’ve developed a winner recipe?  To me, it’s when friends ask me to bring that dish to a potluck or party.  My friend Jennifer’s birthday dinner was coming up and her hubby, Ryan, asked me to bring “your rice and mushroom dish.”

The nice thing about this side dish is that you can serve it hot or room temp so it works for dinner or for a potluck where you might not be able to warm it up (picnic etc).  It does keep well covered in a low (200 degree) oven for up to an hour or so if needed.

Bringing a side dish with wild and brown rice gives people a healthier alternative to heavier potato or starch dishes.  The mushrooms make it earthy and flavorful.  If you don’t want to deal with the shiitakes, using all button mushrooms works just fine.

Recipe for Chopped Caprese Salad

I hate wasting food so I’m always looking for ways to use up bits of this or that in our day to day meals.  I made a caprese salad inspired pizza yesterday that was reeeallly good and still had half the heirloom tomato, some basil, and some of the mozzarella left from that meal.

I had an open face breakfast sandwich with mozzarella and tomato grilled on half a thin sandwich bun.  It was a lovely fresh start to the day and surprisingly filling and satisfying.  The rest of the tomato, along with another regular tomato, and some of the mozzarella were used to make this twist on a traditional caprese salad.

So easy! Because of the shape of the heirloom and the fact that I had it and a more traditional tomato to use, instead of slicing I chopped everything in to small bite size pieces. Dressed it lightly with some fine ribbons of basil, salt and pepper, good EVOO and balsamic vinegar and we had a delicious “left-over” salad to go with a meal.

I know you have been creative using left over ingredients-what was your most ingenious creation?
Printable Recipe

Baked Pesto Chicken

Aloha y'all!
Last week, I made Basil Walnut Pesto and stuck it in the freezer for a future use.  I pulled it out last night with a couple of chicken breasts and tonight used them both to make Kalyn's Easy Recipe for Baked Pesto Chicken.  If you haven't found Kalyn's Kitchen recipe website/blog, I heartily recommend it.  Kalyn was one of the first, if not the first, food bloggers I started following.  She mainly features South Beach, or South Beach adaptable recipes and really was a big part of my inspiration to start my own blog.

Tonight's chicken was easy, very tasty and quick-all good!  Here's the recipe, adapted very little from Kalyn's-enjoy...

For the Freezer: Basil Walnut Pesto

I’ve mentioned my weekly produce delivery from Kula Fields in a previous posting. Last week I received some beautiful local basil-sigh, maybe one day I’ll grow my own. I love the basil with local tomatoes, goat cheese, and a squirt of balsamic reduction-a modified caprese salad. You probably know to trim the stems and store your basil in the fridge in a glass of water, covered loosely with a plastic bag. This weekend, the basil still looked fresh and green in the fridge but I knew I wasn’t going to be using it for a while, so I made some pesto. My normal recipe uses pine nuts, but I wanted to try pesto with walnuts instead.