Maple-Smoked Turkey Breast Fillet

May 20, 2012 by Rita

Yes, turkey breast again. BUT, this is a perfect ready-in-no-time, really easy, I’m-so-tired dinner recipe. Honestly. You can whip this up in about 10 minutes IF you have the ingredients on hand. When the grocery store has the turkey breast fillets on sale, I buy a couple and throw them in the fridge. You never know when you’ll need one. Here we go…

Maple-Smoked Turkey Breast Fillet

Ingredients

1 (8-ounce) smoked turkey breast fillet

2 tablespoons real maple syrup

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

Directions

Assemble the sauce ingredients. Whisk together the syrup, mustard and vinegar in a small mixing bowl. Place turkey breast in a preheated nonstick skillet. Brush one side with the maple sauce.

Once the turkey fillet has heated, turn and brush the other side. Heat for about 3-4 minutes and remove to serve.

I served our turkey fillet with steamed broccoli (because we could eat this every single night!), and black beans heated with taco sauce.  Be sure to rinse the canned black beans before heating in saucepan with taco sauce. Only takes a few minutes to heat up.

 

Nutrition Note: Smoked turkey breast is so very lean.  A 4-ounce serving – or half of the fillet – has a mere 100 calories, 2 grams total fat, 0 grams saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, and 20 grams protein. WOW! Those are great stats!

Twitt

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Turkey Breast Tacos

May 19, 2012 by Rita

Yes, Abby’s turkey slider recipe from the other day nudged me to buy ground turkey breast during my Friday night grocery shopping trip. It is so darn versatile. And after finding a box of hard shell tacos in the cupboard, I decided that my first recipe from the 1.25 lb. of ground turkey would be TACOS. Love tacos because you can add anything to them for a different taste each time.

Here is what I whipped up in about 10 minutes…..

Crumble the ground turkey breast in nonstick skillet. Since it is almost fat-free, you really will need a nonstick skillet.

Once browned on both sides, you can add desired dry taco seasoning mix and/or taco sauce, too. I added a splash of lime juice.

I topped our tacos with a leftover black bean-taco sauce mixture, and then shredded reduced-fat cheese. Pop them into the oven for a few minutes to heat the taco shells and melt the cheese. Serve with a huge veggie salad. Delish!!

 

Nutrition Note: This is why I love the ground turkey breast: 4 ounces = 140 calories, 3 g total fat, 1 g saturated fat, and 28 g protein. For ground beef, you can double the calories and fat content!  The protein is slightly less for the beef, since the higher fat content displaces the protein content.

These are the whole grain taco shells that I used:

One taco shell = 55 calories, 2.5 g total fat, 0.5 g saturated fat and 0 g trans fat. I just had one taco and Brian had two.

Twitt

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Turkey Sliders

May 18, 2012 by Abby

After my last attempt at a turkey burger fell flat, I’ve been seriously craving a burger.  It’s really the one thing I’ve been missing from our red-meat-free diet this year.  I even attempted a bean burger from my favorite burger joint…

 

Looks promising, right?  But sadly, a disappointment — goopy and too mushy… Sweet potato fries were phenomenal though :)

 

Anyway, I decided I needed to revisit the turkey burger, but add a few extras to make up for the naturally bland flavor of ground turkey.  So these were a bit more effort than your typical burger drive-through, but they were mighty tasty and definitely something I’d make again.

 

Ingredients

1 lb ground turkey breast 

1 heaping tbsp breadcrumbs (add more as needed for consistency)

1 heaping tbsp minced onion

1 egg white, lightly beaten

1 heaping tbsp parsley

1 clove garlic, minced

dash of s/p

 

Get your hands in there to mix all ingredients together, then form into cute little slider-sized patties.

 

Throw them on the skillet (or grill if you’re feeling summery!) over medium heat.  Flip once.  Cook till cooked.

 

Next we add the accouterments … caramelized onions (cooked over low heat for a looooong time), cheese (reduced fat), turkey bacon (nuked in the microwave), a little swirl of ketchup & mustard, all on the super cute slider bun.

 

Oh, and served with perfectly oven roasted potatoes (healthier and tastier than french fries!) and salad.  A HUGE hit in my house, and definitely no leftovers.  Mmmmmmm… I’m getting hungry just thinking about them again!

Twitt

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Walking Contra-chick-on

May 17, 2012 by Court

Haaaa get it? Contradiction…contra-chick-on…chick-fil-a?! Ok, you’ll see.

As I was walking out of the mall I looked down and saw this:

A huge bag of Victoria’s Secret goodies accompanied by a large bag of Chick-fil-a deliciousness. And yes, that’s my hand. Caught! I can’t deny that I laughed aloud to a parking lot full of people. Still chuckling a little.

You better believe in the bag there were steamy hot…waffle fries! See what I did there? Haha :) Please. Fries are a Chick-fil-a staple. To offset a little bit for the fries I opted for the grilled chicken sandwich on a whole wheat bun. Yum!

ta-da!

This is actually a preferred selection off the menu rather than a sacrifice. Topped with a little BBQ honey mustard sauce, this little baby slid right on down. To quench my thirst I admit to buying a meal and throwing in a soda, however..HOWEVER…I went with Diet Dr. Pepper. I also never have soda, so this was a treat. And I’m pretty sure the cup is still half full. Should have gotten a kids meal!

At 290 Calories, 3g Fiber, 28g Protein and only 4g Fat I felt totally satisfied after this tasty sandwich. Doesn’t really compensate for the fact the the waffle fries measure up to 390 Calories and 20g Fat. But come on, it definitely doesn’t happen everyday.
It’s fun to break the rules every now and then :)

 

Twitt

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Aspen’s Activities

May 16, 2012 by Rita

Back from a long and active weekend in Aspen, Colorado –  what a blast. Clear clean air. Gorgeous mountains to view and to hike. Yup, that’s snow that you see.

Every day included a hike somewhere…. maybe a long trek up a mountain.

And everywhere we had the beautiful aspen trees – for which Aspen is named.

Abby and Court enjoying the hike.

Sometimes it was a leisurely stroll through quaint downtown Aspen after enjoying a delicious meal at one of the local restaurants. And yes, from any point in town, you can see the mountains.

Springtime in Aspen.

 

Hiking  up a mountain certainly burns more calories than a stroll through town. Here is a nifty link through Self magazine that lets you plug-in your weight and choice of activity to see how many calories are burned per hour. No wonder we all had vigorous appetites – we burned 100s and 100s of calories each day. Check it out: http://www.self.com/calculatorsprograms/calculators/caloriesburned/hiking

This is the calorie difference for me: hiking up hills and/or mountain burns 386 calories per hour vs. walking at a moderate pace burns 170 calories per hour. What a huge difference!!!!

Twitt

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