sandwich

Turkey and Apple Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

September 26, 2016

You know what is an awesome, unexpected addition to a grilled cheese? Apples! A little random, I know, but it is apple season after all. I’m not totally sure what inspired this sandwich, other than the abundance of apples at the grocery store and the brie in my fridge. I was just going to eat the apples and brie on their own, but why not put them in between some bread.

I made one version of this sandwich with brie and another, for my husband, with cheddar. If you don’t like brie or cheddar (um, you are crazy!), you can make this sandwich with any cheese that pairs well with cheese (Munster, white cheddar, Gouda, blue cheese).

The key to a good grilled cheese sandwich is butter. I like to make sure that my pan is heavily coated in butter before toasting the bread. I’m already eating a grilled cheese sandwich, why should I be worried about a few extra calories.

Once the bread is nice and warm, I layer on the cheese and other toppings, in this case apples and turkey. When the cheese starts so get a bit melted, I put the two sides together. To help the cheese along, I will sometimes cover the pan until the cheese starts to ooze out the sides.

This sandwich would also be excellent as a panini! Just be careful if you make it with brie, because that brie will be melted all over the place. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

So if you are looking to mix up your grilled cheese sandwich, add a few slices of apple. It adds a little bit of a crunch and some sweetness to balance the salty from the cheese. At the very least, I am pretty sure adding apple slices qualifies this sandwich as health food. That’s how it works right?

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:79]

Smokey Sloppy Joes

September 7, 2016

Does anyone else have fond memories of eating sloppy Joes when they were a kid? Is it just me? I loved sloppy joe day in elementary school. It was probably the only good food that came out of our cafeteria.

It’s been a while since I have had a sloppy joe, although I have definitely had one since elementary school. And for some reason I just got a hankering for them the other week. But instead of making your basic, Wednesday-lunch-special sloppy joe, I made a smokey and slightly spicy sloppy joe that any adult would enjoy.

To get that smokiness, I relied on my old friend, bacon. I diced up a couple strips of bacon and mixed it in with the ground beef. Because of the extra fat from the bacon, I made sure I used lean ground beef to balance it out.

But what makes a sloppy joe sloppy is the tomato paste and spices. A typical sloppy joe is spiced with chili powder, garlic, onion, mustard. I also added some minced chipotle peppers which adds it’s own smokey flavor. It also makes it a bit spicy, so if you don’t like a lot of spicy, you can reduce or eliminate the chipotle.

What I love about these is that they are easy to make and more or less fool proof. I pretty much just toss everything into a skillet, mix everything up a bit, then once the beef is completely cooked it’s good to go.

And it was the perfect way to use the hamburger buns! Even though most of the sloppy joe ends up on the plate and not in the bun. That’s what a sloppy joe is all about!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:75]

Paleo BLT Lettuce Wraps

May 11, 2016

I actually debated whether I should post this recipe at all. I mean, BLT lettuce wraps aren’t all that scientific. Bacon. Lettuce. Tomato. That’s all it is. Doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out. I am sure you didn’t need me telling you how to put this one together.

Despite their simplicity, I was delighted by how good these were. Maybe I just haven’t had a BLT in so long I forgot what a good sandwich it is, but even without the bread, these lettuce wraps were a hit with me and my bread-loving husband.

So humor me here as I go through the extremely elementary details of these super simple BLT lettuce wraps. It would probably help if you read this with the same sarcastic tone that I am writing this in.

It all starts with some freshly washed romaine lettuce hearts. I like romaine hearts because of their boat like shape that cradles the tomato and bacon perfectly. I then topped each leaf of lettuce with a couple slices of tomato and one big slice of crispy bacon.

I did add a smear of mayonnaise to some of the lettuce to add a little something else to make it feel more like a sandwich. If I had had a ripe avocado on hand, I would have smeared on some mashed avocado in it’s place. And you know what else would be good, using some Ranch Dressing instead! Has anyone put Ranch on a BLT before? I bet it’s delicious!

Once the smear was on, I just piled everything together into a nice little wrap. We ate these with a side of homemade sweet potato chips that were so good, it was almost like were were eating a BLT sandwich with a side of fries.

And the fact that they were so easy to make, basically taking as long as it would to cook bacon, they will be a staple in our house for quick weekend (and even weekday) meals!

[amd-yrecipe-recipe:29]

Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey Ideas

November 25, 2015

I have a feeling that most of us will have plenty of leftover Thanksgiving turkey on our hands tomorrow. Even if you aren’t hosting or roasting a bird yourself, you will probably be sent home with enough turkey to make a hearty sandwich.

We just make so much turkey, it is inevitable that we have so much left over that we can make a whole other meal with it. Well that is exactly what I have rounded up. What to do with all that leftover Thanksgiving turkey! Sure you could make a turkey sandwich every day for the rest of this week AND next. But there are so many more creative ideas out there.

Because there are so many, I have broken them up into sections. If you are just looking for a delicious sandwich recipe, well I’ve got a handful of those. But if will have family around for the next couple days and want a to use the turkey for a whole other meal, I’ve found lots of those, too.

SANDWICHES

Grilled Turkey Florentine Sandwich via Love Grows Wild

Turkey and Brie Panini via The Brewer and the Baker

Turkey Apple Brie Panini via Nutmeg Nanny

Green Goddess Roasted Turkey Sandwich via Noming Thru Life

The Gobbler via Buns in My Oven

Avocado Pistachio Chicken Salad via Follow the Ruels

SOUPS

I should point out that some of these recipes may be call for chicken instead of turkey, but you can easily substitute turkey in these recipes.

White Bean and Chicken Chili via Hip Foodie Mom

Light Turkey Corn Chowder via Cookin’ in Canuck

Turkey Pot Pie Soup via Handle the Heat

Turkey Barley Soup via The Food Charlatan

Chicken Chili Verde via Follow the Ruels

Chicken Enchilada Soup via Follow the Ruels

Leftover Turkey Noodle Soup via Jo Cooks

ENTREES

French Onion Turkey Casserole via Nancy Creative

Chicken Enchiladas with White Sauce via Raining Hot Coupons

Leftover Thanksgiving Wedge Pies via All Recipes

Turkey Enchiladas via Le Creme de la Crumb

Turkey Noodle Casserole via Creole Contessa

Turkey Tetrazinni via She Wears Many Hats

Turkey Stuffing Bake via Betty Crocker

Turkey Pot Pie via Roth Cheese

Turkey Hash via Creole Contessa

Chicken Pot Pie Turnovers via Spicy Southern Kitchen

Leftover Turkey Pizza via Baked by Rachel

Turkey Tikka Masala via the Delicious Cook

Also, check out all these recipes and more on my Thanksgiving Pinterest board!

Follow Lindsey’s board Thanksgiving on Pinterest.

Five Chicken Salad Recipes

November 9, 2015

After discovering that you can easily substitute Greek yogurt for mayonnaise in a chicken salad recipe, chicken salad has become one of my favorite things to make with left over chicken. It is so easy and you can make so many different variations of it. Lately, my husband and I have been randomly coming up with chicken salad flavors we wanted to try. For instance, after ordering buffalo wings at bar the other day, I asked him, “do you think a Buffalo chicken salad would be good?”. From there the wheels kept turning until we had a list of five flavors to try.

For each of the chicken salads, we started with a rotisserie chicken and Greek yogurt. But that is were the similarities ended. Each recipe used different ingredients and spices.

The first one we tried was the aforementioned Buffalo chicken salad. This one was really easy! To the chicken and yogurt, we added chopped celery, buffalo sauce, and a little blue cheese. If you like really spicy Buffalo wings, you can also add in some extra hot sauce. I would also recommend mixing in a bit of the skin from the chicken, if you use a rotisserie chicken. That is sort of the best part of a chicken wing, right?

The next flavor we tried was one we had made before, so we kind of cheated. But it is one of our favorites! We substituted part of the yogurt with a mashed avocado and added pico de gallo (drained) and taco seasoning. We served this one like a taco in a tortilla. It would also be excellent to be served on top of tortilla chips.

This harvest chicken salad is as close to a classic chicken salad as you will get. Instead of grapes we used apples for the sweetness and the crunch. We also added in chopped celery (partly because we already had it on hand) and some almonds. We just seasoned this with a little bit of salt and pepper and it was delicious. Possibly my husbands favorite.

One of our favorite restaurants in town is a place that serves, almost exclusively, chicken salad. This is a flavor that they have on their menu and it might be my favorite of theirs. In addition to the pesto sauce, I mixed in a little red onion for crunch, olives for saltiness, and sun-dried tomatoes for tang. We served this flavor in a pita pocket to keep the Mediterranean theme going. I also love this salad served on a bed of lettuce.

This last flavor was really out there for me, since I don’t eat a lot of Indian food, but I can honest say that is might have been my favorite of the 5. I made a big batch of tikka masala seasoning to be used later and just used a small portion of it. I also mixed in a bit of tomato paste into the Greek yogurt to get the creamy tomato taste that chicken tikka masala has. For some extra crunch I mixed in some chopped cashews and served it with some chopped cilantro.

We also realized after we made all of these recipes that we really represented a lot of different cuisines. We have American, Mexican, Italian, and Indian. Who knew chicken salad could be so International.

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