Carey Burgers

This is Charlie. He belongs to my brother Carey and his wife Dana. He's super cute and amazing and I love his little face. He was watching us as I took pictures and I made Carey make me his famous stuffed bunless burgers, and I know he doesn't read this so I can say whatever I want! HA!

Carey was ever so kind as to show me how to make these puppies (omg puppies).

You just start with some basics;

Hamburger
Salsa
Mexican Cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste

Start by really working the meat into some nice patties. Carey made 2 huge patties for us cuz his wife was at work. Make a medium sized "hole" in the center to create a lil meat bowl.

Next put a few spoonfuls of salsa into it, and add cheese.

The next part is the "tricky part" as he calls it. Basically now you mold the meat around the cheese and salsa so its inside the patty. He warns to be careful to make no holes because everything will ooze out when you cook it if you do.

Cook them in a pan until nice and brown. We had homefries and corn as a side.

Top with more cheese and salsa and dig in.

The GM Diet Plan : DAY THREE

I lost another 2 lbs! For a total of 3lbs so far! :D

Yesterday was so much easier than day one, but today so far is my favorite!!

TMI though, I woke up with the WEIRDEST morning breath ever. I dunno if it has ANYTHING to do with this cleanse, but it was odd.

Anyway, I digress.

Day Three

A mixture of fruits and vegetables - all the salad that you can eat day! No bananas and no potatoes. Day Three prepares the system to start burning excess pounds.

So today started off with me finishing off all the fruit I had leftover from Day 1. It consisted of a lot of strawberries, cherries, an apricot and an apple.

For lunch we made a big huge greek salad. You can find my recipe here.


Obviously we omitted the copius amounts of feta cheese, and I was a little lighter on the olive oil, and added a bit more lemon, but it was basically the same.

Dinner was my favorite. I did another veggie stirfry, but this time I used a lot more vegetables.


This has virtually no fat! Mmmm! Onions, garlic, carrots, sugar snap peas, zuchinni, summer squash, and asparagus (fresh from my garden), lightly sauted in olive oil and a pat of butter, then seasoned with fresh cracked black pepper, and lightly salted.

We got better corn and boiled it this time, and it came out much better.


To make it this way, simply put corn into a pot of cold water, and let it come to a rolling boil. It should take about 10 minutes, but you could cook it for as long as 20. I didn't do it this time, but usually I will add a pinch of sugar to bring out the natural sweetness in the corn. DO NOT salt the water, it will make the corn tough.


So my dinner consisted of, leftover lunch salad, veggies and corn with spray butter and sriracha rooster hot sauce! Can I get an ON NOM NOM?

I am soooo not looking forward to tomorrow.

Taco Soup

Yet another suggestion from Brian and his family! The original un-tweaked recipe can be found here at RecipeZaar, but mine is a bit different.

When I first looked at the soup recipe and saw the calorie content in that sucker I was incredibly hesitant to try it. I ran down the list of ingredients and figured I could make a lower calorie version of this without much effort and decided to give it a go. My tweaked version can be found below.


Ingredients



* 1 1/2 lb ground turkey
* 1 white onion, diced
* 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can tomato sauce
* 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can corn
* 2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans ranch style beans
* 1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes
* 1 ounce taco seasoning
* 1 ounce powdered ranch dressing mix
* 1 tsp paprika
* 6 ounces diet cola, I used Coke Zero, but Diet Dr Pepper will also work
* 1 tsp garlic powder
* 4 cloves of garlic, smashed and added whole
* 1 tsp oregano
* 1 tsp cumin
* 1 tsp seasoning salt

I started off by browning the turkey with the onions. You can also opt to add the garlic at this point. The whole cloves were an after thought for me, so I didn't add them until later, but if when I do this recipe again, I would add them now.



The best way to dice onions is to cut in half, and then make long slits without going through the onion entirely. It makes it much easier to keep the onion from slipping around and you get a nice uniform cut.



While that cooked up, I added everything else into the crock pot, starting with the canned items. Beans, corn, tomato sauce and tomatoes, and then the special secret ingredient...



Yes! 8 ounces of soda. The original recipe called for regular Dr Pepper or Coke, which adds an extra 100 calories to the dish. If you don't like diet, or soda, you can also use beer, the alcohol will cook off I swear. I didn't even taste the diet soda in the soup honestly, but it did add a nice sweetness.

Next I measured out the spices in my little kitchen scale.



Below are my tweaks and additions to the soup; fresh garlic, oregano, seasoning salt, and cumin.



Next I drained the grease from the mean and onions (there wasn't much on the turkey, but I can imagine how much there is in the beef version), and added it to the soup, stirring and mixing it all in the crock pot.



I let it simmer for most of the day on low for about 6 hours, and served it with mini pepper jack quesadillas on the side, which are very easy to make and just require some cheese, and 2 corn tortillas. They were great for dipping.