The Turkey Burger Experiment!

Ok this is one of those 'use what you have' to try and 'make something great' experiments. 

And, of course

I had some things that really needed to be used like

these buns that had been shoved in the freezer lol.  So I thawed them out on the counter all day.

I took a can of diced tomatoes and made my pizza sauce, the same way I've made it for my:
 Pizza Chicken Dinner

and my

Easy Homemade Pizza


which is:
take these ingredients:
can of whole tomatoes, chopped clove garlic, basil, oregano, salt, pepper
and
cook the tomatoes with the garlic and spices until enough liquid cooks out of the tomatoes for it to reach a sauce consistency...  I tear the tomatoes apart when I first dump them in the pot, do this by small pieces carefully or you'll squeeze tomato stuff all over yourself... lol

of course if the tomatoes are already diced there is no need to tear them apart...

this time I did something a little different as well...


I used my new magic bullet blender and pureed my pizza sauce... mmmm

 

I also used part of a box of turkey stuffing mix (~2/3 of the pack, a small part of which I turned into fine crumbs with the magic bullet) which makes this experiment a lot like my:
Turkey Stuffing Meatloaf Muffins

but I have to say this turned out much tastier, which may lead me to re-vamp that recipe at some time.

Ok, so I was also trying to use up a can of spinach.... now I love spinach, but canned spinach... not so much, couldn't figure out how to make it part of a tasty dish...  So I did use a big heaping tablespoon of the canned spinach, I also used 2 heaping tablespoons of the pizza sauce, I also used dried vegetables, (the soup blend) and dried leeks from the San Francisco Herb Co., salt, pepper, mustard seeds, garlic salt

also this was ground turkey in a tube like sausage and it was frozen.  I used my microwave's poultry defrost setting with the turkey on a plate with the metal ends sliced off, worked fine


so here it is with the first round of stuff to mix in... and then after

and I decided that wasn't nearly enough stuff....

so here we go with a second round of more added in

and I decided that was much more the way it needed to be and started pattying out burgers

since this is turkey, I added a little olive oil to the skillet and heated the oil before adding the burgers


the burgers browned pretty fast and I wasn't sure about them being done on the inside so I nuked each plate of burgers for 1 minute on high to make sure



getting ready to toast the buns - because I decided that might add to the flavor

I also made some key lime cajun mayo


also I had some onion sliced up really thin and at the last minute decided to saute most of it :)


so here we are at the end of the experiment with the finished product

:)


at that point I just threw chips on the plate and ate lol, I have to say it was really good.

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Cocoa

I've been meaning to hit the library's book sale room whenever I had a spare $10 in my pocket lol, but those have been few and far between since moving :).  But it finally happened the other day and I remembered to take/make the time to do it before my son got out of school, so I could look at my own pace :D

So I picked up a couple of Coffee table size cookbooks with lots of pictures... the kind I like best lol.  A smattering of other books too :).


In this one I came across a recipe for making your own cocoa mix :).  Knowing that this springlike weather is not going to last and seeing as how I had all the ingredients except for the marshmallows... it seemed like a good idea at the time. 
 

so I made both the plain cocoa mix and the mocha cocoa mix :)

 
Ah well, I was hoping that picture of the recipe would show up a bit better but anyway that was:
1 3/4 cup instant nonfat dry milk powder
1 cup powdered sugar (it calls for sifted - but I mixed all the ing. with a whisk and it worked fine)
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp cinnamon (I left this out just because....)
2/3 cup miniature marshmallows (left out because I didn't have them)

for the mocha cocoa the book says to omit the marshmallows and add 1/4 cup instant coffee granules to hot cocoa mix. (I also left the cinnamon out of that batch too, just made the above and added the instant coffee)

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