Nancy on the Home Front

Turkey Burgers with Tropical Salsa

Our grill has finally appeared from under the snow bank and although it may not be feeling like spring outside it is never to early to do some grilling. Enjoying these turkey burgers with tropical salsa will give you a taste of the warm summer weather to come. This recipe serves four people.

Turkey Burgers with Tropical Salsa

Ingredients:

1 pound ground turkey
2 scallions, minced
¼ cup whole wheat bread crumbs
2 Tbsp minced celery
2 Tbsp salsa
¾ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp chili powder
½ peeled and cored fresh pineapple, chopped
2 kiwifruit, peeled and diced
1 scallion, sliced
¼ cup fresh cilantro
1 tsp grated lime zest
2 tsp diced pickled jalapeno peppers
2 whole wheat hamburgers buns, split and toasted
4 lettuce leaves

Directions:

Combine the ground turkey, scallions, breadcrumbs, celery salsa, cumin, and chili powder in a medium bowl and mix well. Shape the mixture into 4 patties.

Cook the patties on your grill or use a heavy skillet and cook them over medium heat. Cook until the internal temperature in 165, about 5-6 minutes on a side.

Meanwhile make the tropical salsa. Stir together the pineapple, kiwi scallion, cilantro, lime zest and juice and jalapeno in a medium bowl.

To serve place the bun, cut side up on each of 4 serving plates. Top each bun with one lettuce leaf and one burger. Top evenly with the salsa and serve!

Missing My Garden

Recently I wrote a post on planning for this year’s vegetable garden. Gardening has always been a big part of my life. I enjoy planning out my vegetable garden each year, what I will plant and how I will preserve the harvest. For years I have always started my own seeds, often using seeds that I saved from the year before. This year I will be planting mostly flowers. With the house going back on the market and an enthusiastic realtor who seems to be confident that the house will sell in 2017 I am not going to be planting a big vegetable garden.

Instead my time will be spent packing and de-cluttering! I will miss my garden. Now I have eight beautiful raised beds that my husband built for me and I will not completely ignore them. After all we do have to keep up a beautiful appearance for any potential buyer! So I will plant flowers and beans and a zucchini plant perhaps, just enough to provide some fresh vegetable this summer and some cut flowers for the house. I have a neighbor close by that offers beautiful heirloom tomato seedlings so I may just have to plant a couple. It wouldn’t be summer without garden ripe tomatoes!

Luckily we have a wonderful Farmer’s Market that offers a wonderful variety of locally grown fruits and vegetables. But I will be missing my garden and the wonderful harvest I used to get.

The sad reality is that the future owner may not be as into gardening as I am. Perhaps this will be a second home for them and they just won’t have the time to keep up the gardens. It makes me sad to think that way but we’ve moved in the past and each time I have left behind a beautiful garden. One of these moves I hope to move into a home where the previous owner had beautiful gardens and I can take them over. That hasn’t’ been the case yet.

Have you experience leaving a wonderful garden behind due to a move?

Buying and Storing Eggs

There is no difference in taste or nutritional value between white and brown eggs. The breed of chicken determines the color of an egg’s shell. Freshness, however does affect taste, so always buy the freshest eggs available. The best option is to find someone selling local eggs nearby. For years we raised our own chickens and had plenty of fresh eggs year round. We no longer have our own chickens, but instead rely on a neighbor who has chickens and often has eggs available for sale.

Eggs are best used within a week of purchase, but will last up to three weeks in the refrigerator.

A simple test will tell whether an egg is still fresh, place the egg in a small bowl of water. A fresh egg will stay on its side; an older egg will stand straight up and float. Eggshells are porous to air, but if so much air has permeated the shell that it has made the egg buoyant, it’s a clear sign that the egg has been sitting around too long and should be thrown away.

Old eggs will not necessarily spoil or cause food-borne illness, but they may dry up, lose flavor, or develop unpleasant odors.

When purchasing eggs from the grocery store check the carton and see is it has a USDA shield on it. It’ll also have a three-digit code. That’s the pack date. The code corresponds to the day of the year. 001 means the eggs were packed on January first. 364 means they were packed on December 30. You may also see a sell by, use by or best by on the carton. The sell by date is one month from when the eggs were packed, while the use by or best by date is no more than 45 days from the pack date.

When you purchase eggs you want to buy the freshest eggs possible, ideally if you buy your eggs directly from the farm, you will be getting the freshest eggs. Fresh eggs will have the most flavor.

Eggs will keep, refrigerated, for several weeks before the quality starts to slide – five weeks according to the USDA. But remember those eggs you purchase at the grocery store may have already been sitting in the store or in storage for a while. Eggs should not be stored on the refrigerator door, but in the main body of the refrigerator to ensure that they keep a consistent and cool temperature.

Buy the freshest eggs possible, check the codes if purchasing from the grocery store and when in doubt put the eggs to the water test. Buying and storing eggs the right way is important to ensure you are getting the most use for your grocery dollars.

Planning a Move – More Things To Consider

Moving across town can be a very different experience from moving across the country. Before making a move from one coast to another there are a few things to consider. Moving is an adventure but you also need a reliable plan. There are several things to consider when planning a move.

By starting now, before we even have a contract on our home we can make the actual moving part of our relocation go smoothly.

First of all we know where we are going. At least we know the general area. We won’t purchase a house until our current house is sold. So in the meantime we look at real estate in the area we want to move to. We talk to those we know in the area and are finding the parts of town that we would like to end up in.

If you’ve been reading my blog you know we are in the process of getting rid of excess stuff. A move across country is based on weight so we want to lighten the load as much as possible. We have items we want to keep, items we want to sell, stuff we want to give away and junk we just need to trash. As we go through our belongings those are the categories we divide the items into. As we pack up the clutter we pack room by room. When we eventually arrive at our destination we want to know which boxes things are in. When we’re looking for the coffee pot we want to know it is in a kitchen box!

As we sort through our belongings we try to use the one-year rule. If we haven’t used it in a year consider donating it to someone who will use it. There are a few exceptions, such as my grandparent’s turkey platter! We didn’t celebrate the holidays at home this year but I’m planning on packing that platter and taking it with us! It’s all packed and ready to go!

While we plan on doing the majority of the packing ourselves there are a few larger items where we will enlist the help of the movers. Professional movers know how to pack and transport a houseful of items with a minimum of breakage and fuss. The larger precious items we will let the professionals pack.

We don’t know when our move will take place as it depends on when our house will sell. However we continue to pack up the items we really don’t need but want to move. Eventually when we have a move date I will have a schedule. Time can get away from you when you are in the middle of a move, so I will want to stay organized to stay on target. There is a lot to consider when planning a move but if you can stay organized it should all go smoothly and before you know it you will be unpacking in your new home!

Black Bean and Sausage Soup

The first day of spring has arrived but here in Vermont we can expect cool weather to continue for another month or so. There is still time to enjoy a bowl of hearty black bean and sausage soup. The combination of sweet Italian turkey sausage, jalapeño peppers and fresh cilantro gives this black bean and sausage soup a distinctive flavor. If you have any leftovers they are easily reheated in the microwave or can be frozen for later use. Serve along with a leafy green salad and a loaf of bread and your have a meal!

Black Bean and Sausage Soup

Ingredients:

½ pound sweet Italian turkey sausage
1 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and minced
3 (15.5 oz) cans of black beans, rinsed and drained
4 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:

Spray a large nonstick saucepan with nonstick spray and set over medium low heat. Add the sausage and cook until browned on all sides, about 15 minutes. Transfer the sausage to a plate and when cool enough to handle, cut into ½ inch slices.

Heat the oil over medium heat in the same saucepan then add the onion, garlic and jalapeños. Cook, stirring until tender, about 8 minutes. Stir in the beans and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the flavors have blended, about 8 minutes.

Transfer 2 cups of the bean mixture to a blender or food processor and puree. Stir the puree and the sausage into the soup. Simmer, uncovered, until the soup is heated through, about 5 minutes. Remove form the heat, stir in the cilantro or sprinkle on top and serve.If you have an emersion blender that could also be used to puree the soup.

The Case For A Brown Bag Lunch

Perhaps you’ve entered into the thrifty journey. You’ve mastered being thrifty in the kitchen. Here is the case for a brown bag lunch. When it comes to the weekday lunch rush it’s easy enough to think of your convenient dash to the deli or pizza place as a negligible expense. After all you’re not sitting down to a three-course meal! But deep down, you know it’s no good for your wallet. Perhaps you just need a little convincing.

Everyone’s got a different lunch preferences, but let’s start with a plain turkey sandwich. Packing a no-cook lunch costs only as much as the bread you buy and the cost of sliced turkey breast purchased at the store. Add a little lettuce, cheese and some mayonnaise and you’ve got a sandwich that is probably costing you no more than $4.00. To buy that same sandwich from the deli will probably cost you twice that. If you make your own bread you can save even more money!

Might sound like small change but over the course of a year it adds up! Brown bagging may not sound glamorous but how do you like the sounds of an airline ticket to a tropical sandy beach? You could also pay your cellphone bill for the entire year or take a chunk out of your car insurance payments.

Once you get good at making your sandwiches each day you can get creative with your lunches. If you have access to a microwave at work bring leftovers that you can just heat up for lunch. Go onto Pinterest and look up lunch ideas, you’ll be amazed at the ideas you can find.

There are many people that will prepare whole weeks worth of lunches on Sunday night. That will not only save you time but it will save you money. Your brown bag lunch will be the envy of your fellow workers!

Take small steps. Start packing your brown bag lunch and see how much you can save!

Delicious Doughnut Muffins

Monday Muffins – Doughnut Muffins

This delicious doughnut muffin recipe has been adapted from one I found on the King Arthur website. I replaced some of the butter with applesauce. The end result was very tasty and I like to think a bit healthier! The doughnut muffin has a basic sugar-cinnamon flavor and is more reminiscent of a plain doughnut than anything else. It would be a good candidate for additions of dried fruit or nuts or garnished with a bit of jam or fresh preserves.

Doughnut Muffins

Ingredients:

¼ cup butter

¼ cup applesauce

½ cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 ½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

1 tsp nutmeg

¾ tsp salt

1 sp homemade vanilla

2 2/3 cups flour

1 cup milk

Topping:

3 tbsp melted butter

3 Tbsp cinnamon sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425. Lightly grease a standard muffin tin. In a medium bowl cream together the butter, applesauce and sugars until smooth. Add the eggs and beat to combine. Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and vanilla. Stir the flour into the butter mixture with the milk. Make sure everything is thoroughly combined.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, filling the cups nearly full. Bake 15-17 minutes or until the muffins are a golden brown. Remove from the oven and let them cool for a couple of minutes or until you can handle them. While they’re cooling you can melt the butter for the topping.

Use a pasty brush to paint the top of each muffin with the butter.Then sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Or simply dip the tops of the muffins into the melted butter and then roll in the cinnamon sugar.

Serve warm, or cool on a rack and wrap airtight to enjoy later. Makes 12 muffins

If you are planing to freeze some of the muffins I would freeze them before dipping them in the butter and cinnamon sugar.

Spicy Orange Beef with Vegetables

This spicy orange beef with vegetables can actually be served two ways. For an Asian meal serve the spicy orange beef over rice and garnish with fresh orange slices. For more of a western meal serve the spicy orange beef in warmed flour tortillas. Either way it’s delicious. Serve it over rice for dinner and enjoy the leftovers the next day in a flour tortilla.

Spicy Orange Beef with Vegetables

Ingredients:

¾ pound beef top round, cut into thin strips
2 Tbsp cornstarch (divided)
2 tsp grated orange rind
½ cup beef broth
¼ cup ornge juice (from an orange)
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sugar
1 ½ tsp chili garlic sauce
4 tsp oil
1 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
¼ pound green beans, halved crosswise
1 red pepper, seeded and cut into strips
1 carrot, cut into matchstick thin strips

Directions:

Combine the beef, 1 TBSP of the cornstarch and the orange rind in a medium bowl. Toss well to coat the beef and set aside. Combine the remaining 1 TBSP cornstarch, the broth, the orange juice, soy sauce, sugar and chili garlic sauce in a small bowl and set aside.

Heat your wok over high heat until a drop of water sizzles. Swirl 2 tsp of oil in the wok and then add the beef. Stir fry until cooked through, about 2-3 minutes and transfer to a bowl. Swirl the remaining 2 tsp oil in the wok and add the ginger. Stir fry just until fragrant or about 10 seconds. Add the green beans, bell pepper and carrot. Stir-fry until crisp tender about 2-3 minutes. Add the broth mixture and cook, stirring constantly until the mixture boils and thickens. Add the beef and cook until hot, about one more minutes. Serve hot over rice. Enjoy the leftover the next day by serving them in a warm flour tortilla

Spring Cleaning – Throwing Clothes Out

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know I’ve been working on de-cluttering our home in preparation for an eventual move. Even if you aren’t preparing for a move spring is a great time to do some spring-cleaning. Do you have clothes cluttering up your closet? Clothes that you’re just hanging on to because of a memory associated with them? Or perhaps it’s a favorite pair of jeans that used to fit and almost fits now but you haven’t worn them for ages. I have numerous things in my closet that I haven’t worn in some time for various reasons. For example a sweater that my mom knit more than 50 years ago! That is so hard for me to throw out but I haven’t worn it in years. Maybe it’s time to donate?

I’ve read about tips like putting your clothes on hangers and then hanging the hangers backwards in your closet. After a year throw out all the clothes that you haven’t touched and the hangers are still backwards! Great idea but I’ve never done it.

Recently a company called Tommy John created this amazing graphic to help you purge your closet of unwanted clothes. Tommy John is a men’s underwear company, but the graphic works equally as well for a woman! If I follow these simple steps I will definitely have fewer clothes hanging in my closet! I love the fact that I can answer a few simple yes and no questions and have a cleaner closet! I definitely hold on to too many clothes.

How is your closet? Do you regularly clean it out and get rid of or donate clothes you don’t wear? I’m not encouraging you to go spend more, but to take the steps to have a manageable wardrobe.

By the way if you want to save 20% on your first order here is the promo code for my readers: TJ20Spring.

Market Street Meat Loaf

I love meat loaf and make several different kinds from healthy versions made only with ground turkey, quinoa and zucchini to more indulgent recipes with a nice sauce on the top or even topped with bacon. The Market Street Meat Loaf is from one of my favorite cookbooks called The New Basics Cookbook written by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins.

This meat loaf has an assortment of chopped vegetables added as well as some spices that you might not normally put in your meatloaf. The original recipe calls for cooking the meat loaf in a baking dish, which is then placed in a larger pan, and boiling water is poured into the larger pan before baking. I’m sure that’s a wonderful way to cook it but the several times I have made the meat loaf I have either cooked it in my normal meat loaf pan or made an oval and placed it on a pan and cooked it free form. Both ways have come out perfectly.

Not only it this meatloaf delicious when warm but it makes wonderful meat loaf sandwiches especially with my homemade bread! There is a bit of chopping involved in this recipe but it is more than worth it!

Market Street Meat Loaf

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp butter

¾ cup chopped onion

¾ cup chopped scallions

½ cup chopped carrot

¼ cup chopped celery

¼ cup chopped red pepper

¼ cup chopped green pepper

2 tsp minced garlic

Salt, to taste

1 tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp ground white pepper

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp cumin

½ tsp nutmeg

3 eggs, well beaten

½ cup ketchup

½ cup half and half

2 pounds lean ground beef chuck

12 oz sausage meat (not fennel flavored)

¾ cup fresh breadcrumbs

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Melt the butter in a heavy skillet and add the onion, scallions, carrots, celery, peppers and garlic. Cook, stirring often, until the moisture from the vegetables has evaporated, about ten minutes. Set aside to cool; then refrigerate, covered, until chilled, at least 1 hour.

Combine the salt, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, cumin, nutmeg and eggs in a bowl, and beat well. Add the ketchup and half and half. Blend thoroughly.

Add the chuck, sausage, and breadcrumbs to the egg mixture. Then add the chilled vegetables and mix thoroughly with you hands, kneading for five minutes.

With damp hand, form the mixture into an oval approximately 17 x 4 x 1, resembling a long loaf of bread.

Place the meatloaf in a baking dish and place the dish inside a larger pan. Pour boiling water into the larger pan until it reaches halfway up the sides of the baking dish. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes. Remove the baking dish front the water bath, and let the meat loaf sit for 20 minutes before slicing and serving.

Makes 8-10 portions.

Note: As I mentioned above I have cooked the meat loaf both times without using the water bath.