I swear I’m still among the living — albeit with a hectic schedule and a computer on the fritz (fingers crossed it’s not a hard-drive issue…). It helped that the two recipes I tried last week weren’t really worth writing home about (or more literally, writing a blog post about). This week was a different story.
The next best thing to a crockpot recipe on a busy night is one that I can prep prior to going to the gym. Monday night I got to do just that with this chicken burger recipe made with spinach. It took probably 20 minutes to prep (primarily because it required bringing out my food processor, though I don’t know that that’s a must) before being refrigerated for two hours. I think refrigerating it makes all the difference, not just in terms of flavor, but because it helps the burger keep it’s form a bit better.
Once I got home from spin class, it took literally 20 minutes to whip it up with the salad and all. I used the middle’s approach to making her heavenly grilled cheese — slow and steady. I cooked the burgers on medium heat and covered them at the end to make the cheddar cheese melt a bit better. So delicious and full of flavor!
The next night I went for comfort (in part since our weather has been more fall-like than spring) with a cheeseburger soup recipe. I tried a similar recipe back in November but with the crockpot.
I can honestly say this one blew that out of the water, I think because it was a lot thicker. It almost had the consistency of chili or beef stew. Plus I hadn’t thought about topping it with croutons (although it even says on the crouton bag that you can put it on top of soup…) and that made it even better. I did throw pickles just into my bowl to see if I still liked it (and the answer is yes).
I’m happy to report on day 3 of chicken burgers and day 2 of soup, I’m still loving both recipes. And on day 5 of computer issues, I’m finally not freezing and stalling every two minutes. Major progress this week!
Life After School 