turkey burgers

Before we begin, we here at Dumbass Gourmet HQ would like to issue a heartfelt apology to our respective parents: We are very, very sorry for spending our childhoods balking at eating vegetables. I don’t know about The Husband, but I have very vivid memories of sitting alone at the kitchen table staring down a plate of cold lima beans while everyone else was in the living room watching M*A*S*H or whatever. Our palates have apparently matured, because not only do The Husband and I both love a wide variety of vegetables, we planned tonight’s menu around — of all things — the spinach we had in the freezer. (And, funny enough, I have come to be a big fan of edamame, which is like the lima bean’s high-falutin’ cousin who summered in Japan while lima bean was playing the banjo on the farm.)

We were discussing spinach in the first place because I’m going to give blood tomorrow, and I need to load up on iron. Two weeks ago I got turned away because my iron levels were too low, so along with starting a multivitamin …

L-R: Orange elephant, cherry bear, grape monkey, orange lion.

… I’m trying to give our regular menu a healthy overhaul. (Being unemployed gives you lots of time to think about these things.) The Husband was thinking about turkey burgers, mostly because he picked up a great tip on Lifehacker that suggested putting a pound of ground whatever into a freezer bag, pounding it flat, then using a pencil or chopstick to draw lines in the meat:

Frozen turkey in repose.

That way, the turkey thaws faster once it’s out of the freezer, and you can bend the package along those lines to break off only what you need. He cracked off four patties and set them to thaw while preparing a mixture of finely-diced onions, garlic, and spinach, and by the time he was finished chopping the veggies the meat had thawed. Meanwhile, I was using the non-garlicky side of the cutting board (we only have one) to cut strawberries and oranges for a little salad, topped with a citrus/balsamic vinegar/garlic vinaigrette of our own invention. Other than forgetting the french fries and having to stall dinner for a few minutes so they could bake, everything went off without a hitch.

The patties are suddenly round because The Husband had to mash up the turkey to mix in the veggies.

We decided to make double turkey burgers with fancy cheese — mine was havarti, his was pepperjack — and good, old-fashioned, eight-months-expired Kroger ketchup, and photograph them as if we were on the Food Network:

The picture with the fries wouldn’t upload, so just imagine them in that bare spot.

The texture was a little strange — ground beef makes a more solid burger, while these kind of mushed together as soon as you took the first bite. Still, the flavor was excellent. I mostly tasted the garlic and turkey, but there was definitely a hint of the spinach too. As it turns out, spinach is high in iron but also in an acid that blocks your body from absorbing iron, so you’re supposed to eat it with foods like strawberries and oranges that counteract the acid. Stupid contradictory spinach is lucky we just happened to pick those two fruits for the salad or there would have been hell to pay at the Red Cross tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I’m making scrambled eggs with leftover spinach, cheese, onions, and garlic, plus leftover ham and potatoes from a dinner we had last week. And speaking of eating healthier, I got on the scale this morning to find I’d lost five pounds. Whether that’s from the good-for-me food or the running I’ve been doing lately, who knows — but I’ll take it!