Recipe: French Onion Soup Burger!

Hey everyone!
I fell like it has been awhile since I have posted a recipe. And what's better than a healthy, juice, tasty burger....maybe a fresh batch of cookies! Yum! But back to the burger. I created this recipe because I love French Onion Soup and I wanted to take those flavors and put it into a burger. I made this burger with ground turkey, but you can used whatever ground meat of your choice, chicken or beef would be great here.

French Onion Soup Burger w/ Roasted Sweet Potatoes

It turned out better than I expected! My boyfriend Travis even called it "A Fan Favorite". LOL He's one of my biggest fans. He even suggested that we start doing burger nights, which sounds like fun to me. Next time tho, I will let the onions cook a little bit longer because I wanted them to be more caramelized.  

The Ingredients

Ingredients:

2- large sweet onions (sliced)

2- garlic cloves (chopped)

1- packet of onion soup mix

1-tbsp of dried thyme

1/2- chicken bouillon cube

1-tbsp of organic tomato paste (optional and not pictured)

1-pound of extra lean ground turkey

Non stick cooking spray

2- slices of reduced fat swiss cheese

*2-slices of reduced fat pepper jack cheese (not pictured)

**1- extra large sweet potato

salt and pepper to taste 

This recipe yields 4 servings

* Travis requested to have his burger with pepper jack cheese. It's his favorite. But you can just stick to the Swiss because it is traditional to onion soups. Well Gruyere cheese is a type of Swiss...right?

** I happened to have an extra large sweet potatoes on hand. Use two regular sized potatoes if that is what you have.

Directions/ Step by step photos:

Step One: slice up your onions. Heat a saute pan and spray with cooking spray. Add the onions, the thyme, and some salt and pepper. 

Step Two: Now cut your sweet potato into cubes.Place in a sprayed pyrex pan, add salt and pepper. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 20- 25 minutes.

I did spray the pan with cooking spray, but I suggest also using foil to line the pan also. It was not easy getting these suckers off of the pan!

Step Three: Now prepare your onion soup mix by adding 1/4 cup of water to your packet.

Step Four: Now add the ground turkey into a large mixing bowl. Also add in your onion soup mixture, and the chopped garlic.

Step Five: Now mix that all together, and form into four patties. Cook the burgers on your indoor grill or outdoor grill if you have one.

Just a tip! Make a dimple in the middle of your burger. So that when it cooks and plumps up in the middle, you won't get a bulgy burger. Learned that one from Rachael Ray =)

Remember we are cooking poultry, so no medium rare here. Make sure your meat is well done!

Step Six: By now your onions should have started to get nice and wilted. Now its time to add in the 1/2 chicken bouillon cubed and 1/4 cup of water.

 Step Seven: Now add your cheese, kill the heat to your grill, and let things melt.

Step Eight: At this point I added some organic tomato paste to my onions to add color. You don't have to do this, but I did because I didn't want to wait for the onions to caramelize. I was really hungry by this point.

It should look something like this.

Step Nine: Add your burger patty to the bun of your choice. Whole wheat is best, but whatever you have on hand is fine. Top your burger with your onions and serve roasted sweet potatoes along side of it.

Voila! Looks De-Lish! (Another Rachael Ray reference)

I hope you give this recipe a try! Enjoy!

To Health, Love, and Happiness,

First Post- Baby Workout!

Hey everyone!
So today I received the green light from my doctor to start exercising! YAY! So of course immediately after that I got to work. I have found the most awesome blog that is geared primarily towards Pilates workouts. So I decided on a short 13 min beginner (because my little one does not take long naps) Pilates routine that I saw on there.
If you are at all interested, here is the link to the exact workout that I did.
I don't know if you know this blogger but her name is Casey Ho, and you can check out her blog here. She focuses on POP Pilates and even has a community of POPster's on there. It's a very awesome blog and I am glad I found it. I hope to get my old figure back, and this blogger can help out another, Me!
Since I am just getting back into the swing of working out...I will be taking it slowly. It has been over a year since I've have done any type of exercise. But once I start feeling a little bit stronger, I will be adding extra cardio to these Pilates routine. Anyway, I just thought I'd give you all an update on whats going on. And I hope you join me in my journey...and let me know if any of you mom's out there are just getting back into working out. And what was your weapon of choice?

To Health, Love, and Happiness,

A Quckie Update!

Hey everyone. So I promised you that I would let you know how my new eating habits have worked out for me this past week. Well I didn't lose any weight...but that's alright. I do feel better energy wise now that I have been eating more often. Which is a win in my book. I will be sticking to this method because I know it does work. (I've seen it work for others) Just got to take it one step at a time!
Anyway, sorry for the super short post. But I've got to tend to my mommy duties!

To Health, Love, and Happiness,

New Month and New Eating habits.

It's November!!! My third favorite month of the year. April and January being the first and second favorites, because of some important birthdays. (You know who you are out there <3) November is filled with yummy food, tons of family time, and the weather starts to change here in Florida....all good things. Anyway this is kinda my confession post! I haven't been doing too well with my weight loss. I lost a pound and a half but I've been stuck there for the past two weeks. Which is kinda upsetting. But I'm going to be honest with you all, I haven't been sticking to my plans as well as I should be.
So to get re-motivated and gain a little bit of advice, I talked to my sister Ashley about it. You can check out her blog here...she is my weight loss hero, since she lost over 95 pounds just through diet and exercise. While I was talking to her, she told me that I should be eating a light meal every 3 hours. Ahh! Every 3 hours seems like a ton of food to me. Ashley reassured me that eating this way will kick start my metabolism and make it easier for me too lose weight. She also suggested that I stop eating carbs around bedtime. The reason for this is based off the fact that carbs are used as energy for your body. And if I'm about to go to sleep then the carbs will not be used for energy, instead it will be stored as fat. Yikes! I don't want that.
So I just applied these changes to my diet yesterday, and I hope it helps. I will post about my weight loss progress next week, and we will see if these new eating habits make a difference.

To Health, Love, and Happiness,