Teriyaki Turkey Burgers

In a effort to feed the family in a healthier fashion, we've been trying  a few different things.  We raise beef - we eat beef - we eat more beef- we sometimes feel like NOT eating beef!  Our beef is grass fed, very healthy and we know what goes in it so I never worry about store bought stuff and I am very grateful for that!  I don't remember the last time I bought beef related products at the grocery store.  But in an effort to not ALWAYS eat BEEF we are broadening our horizons and trying new things.  I haven't been a huge fan the the turkey burger, it's very bland and doesn't have a real strong flavor when cooked ,but this time we kicked it up a notch and it was FABULOUS! These Teriyaki Turkey Burgers are a must try!  They have graduated to our DO EAT list and we are trying more things with turkey burger.  They were super simple to make and the turkey when seasoned properly is really tasty!

Grilled Pineapple...YUM!

As you can see, I just grilled them up on our cast iron griddle right on the stove top.  I seasoned the turkey with garlic salt and pepper and I added a little bit of Italian bread crumbs as well. I grilled the pineapple first, then Patti-ed out the turkey burgers and grilled them up.  We topped them with teriyaki barbecue sauce, tomatoes, avocado, lettuce, and of course the pineapple and devoured them!  EVERYONE loved them!  Seriously a must!  I can't wait to get the BBQ fired up this summer and make these with some corn on the cob. DELICIOUS, EASY and Healthy!  

What's your favorite thing to do with turkey burger?

Soup's on!

Potato Gnocchi (organic from Target) 

Have I mentioned that I LOVE FALL!  Okay I may get a bit giddy when Fall arrives.  No I 'm not a summer fan.  Don't get me wrong I love the green grass and the fact that we can spend time outside, but let's be honest after 80 degrees it's just too hot!!  I'm a spring, fall, winter fan!  But Fall is my all time FAVORITE! Especially because of the fact that we get to eat SOUP again!  Yes, I am aware they make (or you can) soup all year.  But eating soup when it's 80 degrees outside just IS NOT okay with me.

I love soup!  Most any kind of soup!  Chicken noodle, Beef Vegetable, Beef and Barley, Ham and bean, Clam Chowder, and I really love any kind of soup from the Olive Garden!  I found some recipes on my favorite Pinning location HAHA! And so I made Chicken Gnocchi soup!  OH HEAVEN HELP ME!  It was to DIE for! I even used the organic roasted chicken I made!  Yeah I was feeling very domestic :)  So here's the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup chicken breasts, cooked and diced (you can use a rotisserie chicken)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 quart half and half
• 1 14 ounce can chicken broth
• 1/2 cup celery, finely diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 cup carrots, finely shredded
• 1 cup onion, finely diced
• 1 cup fresh spinach, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin oil
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon parsley
• Freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 1 pound potato gnocchi

DIRECTIONS

• 1
  Sauté the onion, celery, and garlic in the butter and olive oil, over medium heat when the onion becomes translucent, add the flour, and make a roux, let the butter and flour mixture cook for about a minute before adding 1 quart of half and half.
• 2
  Cook gnocchi according to package directions.
• 3
  Into the roux add in the carrots and chicken. Once the mixture becomes thick add the chicken broth. Once the mixture thickens again, add the cooked gnocchi, spinach, and seasonings, simmer until soup is heated through.

Source: copycat recipes

             

Sauteing

SOUP~!

Now that you have it you may want to eat it alone.......in the dark.............where no one can find you!

Roasted Chicken

I love this rotisserie chickens you buy at the store.  You know the one's that have been sitting for hours under the heat lamp.  The one's that are probably made from hormone injected chickens.  I don't love that part!  I just love that it's DONE, it's prepared and all I have to do is shred and eat or add it to whatever we are eating.  I love that they are tender and their flavor is good.  So I found some Organic, yes ORGANIC, whole chickens on sale for $5.00 each!  So I snagged two up and thought I'd give this whole chicken thing a whirl.  Now they weren't rotisserie but they were roasted :)!  I found the recipe, yep Pinterest, DUH!  You can also find it here.   My chickens were a little larger than the recipe, and I may have forgot to put them in the oven at 3:00 when I had planned to.  Due to husband errands and laundry, they got in the oven at 6:30......which meant I was waiting up til 11:30 pm to get them out.  Oh but no!  They were larger you see and ended up getting done at 2:30 AM!  WOWSERS!  I would recommend starting sooner than that ;)

Don't they look LOVELY?!

The end result was Fantastic!  I used them in some tacos, sandwiches, soups, etc. They were moist and fell off the bone and had great flavor.  The onion in the chicken did a lot of good too and the rub was great!  I will totally be doing this again!

Give Me Food......and FIVE Kids Please!

So, I've been thinking a lot about this Blog and about what I want out of it and what I want it to be about.  I don't really just want to be a Homeschool blogger, because, yes Homeschooling is a HUGE part of our lives or is it, our lives are  HUGE part of Homeschooling?  Do you see the dilemma? Homeschooling is life it's what we do everyday 24/7 not just the "school" hours.  Learning happens each day whether we planned it and studied it or whether we took our 79 year old grandmother to lunch for the afternoon.  It's all life, it's all learning and everything is incorporated in it.  We are REAL people, we have good days, bad days, food days, no food days (only when I decide cold cereal sounds better than actually cooking something), sad days and exuberant days! Which made me think more about what I blog, and really I just want to blog about EVERYTHING, recipes, homeschooling, things I love, things I hate don't love.  Blah blah blah!  So with that, I'm just gonna be me and Blog about whatever makes my heart happy or sad or hungry at any particular time. This post....Happy Heart, Hungry Heart! :)

This past Saturday we had breakfast as a family!  I know, you're thinking..."Okay, that's really Cool... not!" but it really is, we have 5 kids, 2 of whom don't live with us all the time, you know they think school and jobs are all important and stuff, so we don't get to see them as much as we once did, or as much as we'd like to!  Saturday morning I made breakfast and all SEVEN of US sat and consumed it TOGETHER!  AHHH nothing makes a Mama's heart happier than having all her children together and enjoying something.

TRUE LOVE!

And to go along with our MAKE IT MONDAY theme ~ Here is what we MADE to eat!
We had overnight french toast with caramel syrup and Ham cups, and OJ don't forget the OJ!  Delicious, delightful and the perfect way to start a Saturday!  We are going to start planning at least monthly meals together, as they each get bigger it seems harder to get them all together, so making time now and planning things is important to me, (I think this is what they call a TRADITION :)).....and them! :)

All ready for the overnight refrigeration! 

And there you have it!  Food and Family....NEED I SAY MORE?!

What do you like to do with your kids? What TRADITIONS do you have?

Make it Monday: 28 POUNDS of ASPARAGUS

I promise I am not crazy!  Well....we'll just leave it at that.  HAHA!  I recently bought 28 lbs. of Asparagus from Bountiful Baskets.  If you haven't bought from BB you SHOULD!  They have incredible produce for a very reasonable cost, a lot of it is locally grown, or grown from small farmers in other countries (because we don't really grow all that Mexico can grow right?!)  I paid under $1.00 per pound for this asparagus...WOW!!!! Just for the record I LOVE ASPARAGUS, my kids love asparagus, my hubby.....well he isn't apposed to it (did I mention he only ate like 5 things when we got married? more on that another day).  But still 28lbs of asparagus is a little intimidating.  At first I thought, well we could just eat it with everything....realistic? probably not.  Then I thought I'd give some away and what not.  So I googled it and found that you can actually FREEZE it!  Hallelujah!!!  So here is what I did, you can just freeze it straight..... I guess but it's much less colorful.

This is only a portion of the 28 lbs.  It was a lot of Asparagus!

Step 1:  Cut the woody ends off of the bottom.  I usually cut about 2" off the end of all my asparagus.  The ends are tough anyway.  You can chop it into smaller pieces if you want but I usually serve it in long spears so I just left everything longer.

 Step 2: Fill a pot of water (I had a big pot) about half way full of water and bring it to a boil.  This step is the blanching step (I didn't  know what blanching was until I started canning when I got married but I had only blanched peaches and things to can).  When the water is boiling you just put in the asparagus, now remember I had a large pot so I put in about 2 bunches at a time.  My stalks are pretty medium to large sized so I blanched my asparagus for 3 minutes each batch. If you have smaller stalks you could do it for 2 min. or larger stalks 4 min.

  

Step 3: Remove the asparagus from the water when the timer beeps (USE A TIMER!)  Unless you are really good at timing things, I am not so I use a timer for everything and I'll have you know it's been YEARS since I've burned anything :)!  I used tongs to get the asparagus out because I just kept reusing the same water.  Put it right into a dish ( I used a cake pan 9x13) of ice cold water.  The asparagus will still be cooking unless you cool it immediately!  So the ice bath is necessary.  I don't have a picture of this step.  I had the kitchen set up into little stations.  Hank (yep I recruited the MAN!) was cutting the ends off, and I was timing the asparagus and transferring it from hot to cold to towels.  

Step 4: In between batches, take the cooled asparagus and place it on a few kitchen towels.  I just let it drip dry for a couple minutes then placed it in gallon sized freezer bags (Jo helped me label the bags and get it in the bags).

I put quite a bit in each bag.  Like I said we LOVE this stuff!  So feel free to portion your bags to fit your needs.  I even thought doing some quart sized bags would've been great for lunches or a stir fry.  But I only had gallon sized bags and I'm up for leftover asparagus any day.  When it was all said and done it took less than 45 minutes and all my asparagus was ready for the freezer!  I ended up with 11 gallon sized bags ~ holy asparagus!!!!  Wallah!  Fresh asparagus on hand at less than a dollar a pound, you can't beat that!   

And there you have it!  Make it Monday: 28 Pounds of Asparagus!  So now you know what to do when you find a steal on asparagus.  Now to dry my 21lbs of pineapple :)