"hamburger" soup

It's supposed to be summer.

It was supposed to start a few weeks ago.

Here in Vancouver, it's STILL RAINING.

To be clear, it rains close to 8 months a year here. Vancouver doesn't get a ton of snow, only on the mountains. It's not the snow barren, igloo palace one might think.

We've had maybe a few days of sunshine, the rest, rain.

Rain, rain, and more rain. I'm swimming in rain over here.

My strawberries are waterlogged. I'm waterlogged.

I made soup. I should not be making soup in June.

I should be eating salad and watermelon, wearing shorts, and working on my tan.

Not drinking tea, baking cookies, and wearing socks.

Anyways, I made hamburger soup, but without the hamburger. I made it with ground turkey. You can also make it with your favourite fake meat product, I like Yves ground round. If you are going to use fake meat, just add it towards the end of cooking.

"Hamburger" soup
[from Jen's mom]

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound ground turkey
1 onion, finely chopped
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 celery ribs, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 28oz can whole tomatoes
2 cups water
3 cups vegetable broth
1 can tomato soup
8 tablespoons barley


Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the ground turkey, onion, carrots, and celery, cook until turkey is no longer pink and the onions are translucent, about 10 - 15 minutes. Add the thyme and bay leaf, continue cooking for 1 minute.  Add can whole tomatoes, water, broth, and tomato soup, stir to combine thoroughly. Turn heat to high and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add the barley and turn down to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes, or until barley is tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

turkey burgers

After 40 straight minutes of Avery crying in her room, exhaustion finally took over and she fell asleep.

I turn to the husband and say, "Let's go downstairs and watch  movies we have on the PVR."

"Nah, let's just go to bed."

"It's 8 o'clock. Isn't that a little early?"

"No, we're parents now. Totally acceptable."

Pausing to think of a response to make him not sound correct I reply, "So what was  our excuse before?"

"We were lazy."

True facts.

By 8:35 pm, we were both in bed. And I have to say, it was glorious.

Of course we didn't sleep through the night, turn down the ridiculous. But it did feel nice to get that head start of sleep.

But before our early night, we enjoyed a warm weather favourite, turkey burgers. It was a balmy 21 degrees C yesterday (that's 69 F for my American friends), so the husband  cleaned up the barbecue and I made burgers.

I don't eat red meat and I encourage the husband not to, so we always have ground turkey in the house as a replacement. I loosely use my mom's recipe for homemade burgers, I just add a whole head of roasted garlic.

The garlic is very prevalent in the burgers, but not so much that it's unenjoyable. But if you are not a garlic fan, first off I'm sorry, second this is not for you.

Turkey burgers
Makes 4 patties.


1 lb lean ground turkey, preferably a 85/15 split
1 head roasted garlic
1 large egg
3 tablespoons fine bread crumbs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
dash of worcestershire sauce


In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix with hands until thoroughly combined. Using a spoon would work too, but your hand are much more fun.

Shape mixture into 4 equal sized patties. Place a on hot grill, about 375 - 400 degrees. Cook for 5 minutes, then flip.  Continue cooking for another 5 minutes or until juices run clear and the inside is no longer pink.

Serve on freshly baked kaiser rolls with your favourite toppings. Mine are mustard, pan fried mushrooms, pickles, lettuce and tomato.

a baker's dozen:coq au vin

I drool as I write this post because I am thinking about good this meal was.

It's chicken stewed in wine. Red wine to be exact. How could I not love it? Did I also mention it's cooked along with thick chunks of bacon, pearl onions and a mix of shitake and button mushrooms. Amazing.

Button mushrooms look like they should be in Super Mario Bros.

Now for you French cooking wonders out there, I know this is a shortened version of the original which takes hours upon hours to make, along with flambe-ing, marinating and butchering the chicken at home, etc etc.

Well I started that way, then things kind of went off track.

baked turkey meatballs

I have a confession to make.  I fed the husband Kraft dinner today.

Don't judge me.

It's not that I've abandoned my cooking, but I wanted meatballs. But with no pasta. I wanted salad with my meatballs. The husband did not. He wanted pasta.

Stuffed Peppers

Over the weekend my husband and I went to a charity event in Vancouver in support of a charity I have been volunteering at for years and is very near and dear to my heart. The event included a mock grocery store in which they sold all the groceries at 1940's prices. Imagine buying bananas at 5 cents a pound, meat at unbelievably cheap prices. The best part all of the money goes towards the children in BC that need our help.




In our loot, we bought a large bag of sweet bell peppers for $2. There were about 8 in the bag, far too many for us to eat and for the deal I would hate it if they went bad. In my continuous effort to not waste food, I decided to try my hand at stuffed peppers.

Most of my savoury recipes comes from my mom as she is my best memory of what real cooking should be. My mother would make and still makes as many homemade meals as possible. I guess that's where I learned it from. I believe what you create is from your heart and is made with love, no matter what it is or how it tastes. 


My mom, unfortunately did not have a recipe for stuffed peppers. So as per usual I surfed my regular blogs and google of course. All the recipes I ran across either were made with instant rice which a) I don't own b) don't know if I would ever own or they were made with ingredients that my acts-fussy-but-really-isn't husband won't eat. Crabapples.

I settled on one from Martha Stewart. That woman is amazing. I know, I know it's probably a team of chefs worked everyday to come up with these recipes, but Martha has yet to let me down. 

I made a couple changes to the original recipe, I used ground turkey instead of sausage and pepper jack cheese instead of monterey jack. These are also really good the next day and could be prepared ahead, just prepare beforehand then refrigerate and bake when ready.






Stuffed Peppers


[Adapted from Martha Stewart]

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound ground turkey

1 can (14 1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes

3/4 cup couscous

4 red bell peppers (about 2 pounds), halved lengthwise, seeds and ribs removed

1/2 cup shredded pepper Jack cheese (about 2 ounces)

                  Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, 1/2teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Cook until onion is translucent, about 3 minutes.

                   

                  Add ground turkey, and cook, breaking up with the back of a spoon, until lightly browned, about 4 minutes. Add tomatoes and 1 cup water; cook until slightly thickened, about 7 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in couscous.

Fill pepper halves with couscous mixture. Arrange peppers in a baking dish just large enough to hold them. Add 1/2 cup water. Cover with aluminum foil, and bake until peppers are tender, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove foil, and sprinkle with cheese. Return to oven and bake, uncovered, until cheese has melted and peppers are very tender, 10 to 15 minutes more.