A BLT Egg Salad with Cucumber and Sausage

One morning I woke up and all I wanted was MEAT!! Now, meat and I have a weird history. When I was 7 years old I watched an ABC 20/20 (whatever show Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer were on) show about the link between red meat and heart disease. At 7, I probably did not have the cognitive abilities to understand what that meant, but the words disease and death were brought up enough times that I decided I didn't want either of those. So I made a decision to never year red meat...until now :) I've also had periods of  vegetarianism, pescatarianism, poultrytarianism ( I know this is not a word), but red meat was never on list. About 6 months ago, I went on a date with a guy who convinced me to try these Kobe beef sliders at Lucky's near the Seaport area in Boston. Now, these were fantastic! One of these days I will go back and take lots and lots of pictures of those delicious burgers that piqued my interest in red meat.

Back to the morning. So, after having this meat craving, I asked my roommate's boyfriend to go and get some sausage and bacon from the corner grocery store. As I was cooking the bacon and sausage, I remembered watching Ina Garten from the food network make the perfect fried eggs. So I went at is, using bacon fat instead of oil (so sinfully delicious) and made the eggs. After looking at the greasy deliciousness on my plates, I realized I should get some lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers out to counterbalance the meatiness. Here was the final product...

The best part of making a salad like this, you do not need any dressing. Once you cut through the egg, the yolk becomes the dressing for the salad and it's amazing how delicious it can be.

Link to frying the perfect egg: How To Fry Eggs

Hummus Nachos

The Sunroom Cafe in Madison, Wisconsin has these delicious nachos that I have never heard of anywhere else. Like all other nachos, there is cheese, salsa, and some spice. But the best part of these nachos is the hummus. Yes, there is HUMMUS on these nachos...and it's DELISH! If you don't believe me, look at the pic.

The best part is, they are super easy to make! I kind of cheated while making it. I would typically make my own pico de gallo, but the pico/salsa from Trader Joe's is amazing and perfectly spicy.

Ingredients:

• Blue Corn Chips
• Garlic Hummus (I prefer the garlic, but regular or other flavors would be fine as well)
• Mozarella Cheese
• Trader Joe's salsa (I can't remember the exact name of it)

Assembly: I usually put the chips, then hummus, then cheese on top of each other on a plate and put it in the microwave for 30 second intervals (Cheese should be melted just enough but not burned) until done. I have never perfected the timing on this, blah. Then add the salsa on top!

Spinach and Goat Cheese Chicken Sausage

For the past year I have been trying to cut the "evil" carbs out of my diet. I know they are not evil, but  my body does not appear to like them very much anymore. I've done the two week induction phase for the South Beach diet which is helpful and gets me on track.  But the problem with eating this way is figuring out how to make it apart of your lifestyle and sustain it. It takes a lot of creativity to make sure you don't fall off the wagon. The hardest part of a low-carb lifestyle is figuring out what to eat for breakfast. There are only so many variations of egg dishes you can make before you want to scream bloody murder. So, this morning I decided to make some chicken sausage using ingredients I had around the house. Here is how they turned out

They were filling, the melted goat cheese was like a little treat when you bit into it, and best of all, a good alternative to eggs for breakfast. In keeping with the low carb theme, I didn't add any bread crumbs. In my opinion, ground chicken and turkey dry out so fast that I typically stay away from bread crumbs in order to keep patties moist. Here is how it was done.

Ingredients:

1lb Ground Chicken
1oz Goat Cheese
1/2 bag (6 oz?) of frozen spinach thawed and drained
1 tablespoon of Pizza Seasoning ( I use Penzys Spices)
1 Egg
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F
2. Take a sheet pan, line it with foil, and oil it slightly.
3. In a large bowl, I put the ground chicken, goat cheese, spinach, and seasoning. In a separate I beat the egg. Then I mixed everything together with my hands, making sure not to over mix the ingredients.
4. This recipe created about 8 patties. So I evenly divided the mixture into 8 sections and gently rolled and flattened the patties onto the sheet pan.
5. Bake in the oven for approximately 20 minutes, flipping the patties half way through.