Pesto Turkey Burgers

My first recipe post and I forgot to take a picture of the end result...always room for improvement. So, for this time, the recipe alone will have to do.

A co-worker passed this one along compliments of Cub Foods and TCF Bank. I have not had much success with ground turkey in the past. It always seems too dry or flavorless. Not the case with this recipe! I even could have gone with the 4% fat turkey instead of the 7%. These will definitely make an encore appearance in our kitchen.

We ate them bunless with a side of hashbrowns - for lack of fries. It was plenty of food!

Pesto Turkey Burgers
1¼ lbs lean ground turkey
2 tbsp. basil pesto
1 tsp. minced garlic
½ c. crumbled feta cheese
1½ tsp. seasoned salt
½ c. bread crumbs

Preheat an outdoor grill for medium-high heat. (I cooked them in a skillet on the stove tonight.) Mix together the ground turkey, pesto, garlic, feta cheese, seasoned salt and bread crumbs in a bowl until evenly blended. Form into 4 patties. (I think 5 would have been better, especially if you're putting them on a bun.) Grill peto burgers until no longer pink in the center, about 5 minutes per side.

Scherzo...

–noun, Music. a movement or passage of light or playful character, esp. as the second or third movement of a sonata or a symphony.



Here is the last of my LNS purchases - Threadworx Chili Peppers and coordinating 28-count Jobelan. It's been fun to watch the pattern grow amongst the randomness of the varigated floss. (I am still perfecting my photography technique, as you can see.)

My First Trip to the LNS

Last Saturday I made my first venture to the best LNS in our area (that I know of). It is a 45-minute drive to the other side of town to get there, which is what took me so long to plan a trip out there in the first place. It was a cross stitch candyland.

I already owned five patterns from Whispered by the Wind (Canon, Rondo, Largo, Adagio, and Scherzo). My plan was to buy supplies to make two of them. As you can see, I got a little more than that. I picked colors other than those recommended by the pattern and ended up with Threadworx Pastel Bouquet, Dust to Dust, Society Life, and Mosaic. I picked coordinating 28 count Jobelan for each pattern. The fifth pattern with threads and fabric will show up soon in a WIP post.

I made two additional impulse purchased while there...a small pattern called Looner Night and a Pine Mountain Pillow Kit. I became the owner of a sewing machine at Christmas last year and still have only gotten as far as admiring all the non-framing finishes displayed on other blogs. In the meantime, the Pine Mountain kit will serve as my alternative finishing method.

October's Book Collection (so far)

This month, as usual, my TBR pile has grown much faster than my finished books pile. First, from the library, I have accumulated and already once renewed 5 books:

1. The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories, which I thought would be a fun way to get in the Halloween spirit.
2. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I have never read anything by Margaret Atwood and I figured it was about time.
3. Affinity by Sarah Waters. I read Fingersmith earlier in the year and really liked it. I have less than 100 pages left to go in this one, but it is due after Edgar Sawtelle, so it's on the back burner for the moment.
4. Oracle Night by Paul Auster. I read The New York Trilogy in August and my enjoyment of it grew with each installment. I've read elsewhere that some believe Oracle Night is the best introduction to Auster, so I thought it would be a good second foray into his work.
5. Cooking Among Friends. I love the convenience of cooking once and ending up with several different meals in the freezer. This is a cookbook that contains freezer meal recipes to make in large quantities and share among households. I will have a chance to test some of them out next weekend. Review to come!
   
   
   In addition to the library pile, I have accumulated some books without a due date at very little cost:

1. Faith of My Fathers by John McCain. This has much less to do with my political leaning than it does with my interest in the experiences that have led him to this point in life.
2. The Wednesday Letters by Jason Wright. A $1 find at the library book sale.
3. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. $2 at a charity garage sale, and I've never read it.
4. Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu My first mooch from Bookmooch!
5. Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat Zinn. Another $2 find a the charity garage sale.
6. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I saw the movie but have yet to read the book. Another $1 library sale find.
7. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears. My final $1 library book sale find.
   
   After a 3-day work trip, I'm 200 pages in to the Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I've been able to read about 50 pages at a time without falling asleep...rare for me!

First Appearance of the Tuesday Thingers

As I have learned from reading other blogs, Marie at The Boston Bibliophile asks a book-related question each week...on Tuesday, if that wasn't obvious :-)

Today's question: Series. Do you collect any series? Do you read series books? Fantasy? Mystery? Science fiction? Religious? Other genre? Do you use the series feature in LT to help you find new books or figure out what you might be missing from a series?

The only series I have collected are those that hold fond childhood memories. These are series that have been reprinted several times, but when I buy them, they must be the editions I read when I was young. I own the complete Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder- the ones with the yellow-bordered covers. I actually never got past "Little House in the Big Woods" when I was young, but I LOVED the tv series. Someday I will actually read the books that inspired it.

I also own most of the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. Now these are books I read multiple times. A few years ago I learned that there was a new addition to the series, "Ramona's World," that didn't exist when I was actively following them. I checked it out from the library and read the whole thing in an hour or two. I remember spending multiple days on one of these as an elementary student! I must admit the last installment did not live up to my memories of the earlier ones, but the memories are comforting and maybe, one day, my not-yet-existent daughter will Ramona's escapades as entertaining as I once did.

I cannot think of any current series I have collected. All the Harry Potter books I've read have come from the library, as have most of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta mysteries. Somehow it's easiest to justify spending the money on the tangible reminders of days passed.

As for LibraryThing, I am new to it and haven't used many of the features yet.

Latest Start

I had read about "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" on other blogs and added it to my library request list before it was announced as an Oprah selection. This weekend a copy became available for me, and I picked it up yesterday. (Three books followed me home from the library book sale too.) Twenty pages in and already a mix of emotions are at play. I'll take this as a good sign.

The real challenge will be finishing it in the two weeks I have before it's due. I must find a place to read other than in bed...and find the will power to ignore the new stitching project in the name of reading deadlines. Pictures of that to come whenever we find the charger for the camera battery :-(

The Fly on the Wall

For a few years now, I have been the a fly on the blogosphere's wall. I've been enjoying your book reviews, WIPs, recipes, and expanding my own reading, cooking, crafting worlds because of them. Now, after much internal debating about whether or not I would be disciplined enough to regularly update my own blog, I'm giving it a shot. At the very least it will serve as my personal hobby journal and thank you note to those who continuously share their great ideas, and, at best, I will become an active part of the blog community.

Cozy and Content will be focused on those things that make me so during my alone time. Mostly books, cross stitch, cooking, and my pets....all usually accompanied by a cup of coffee.

If you've found me at this early stage in my blogging life, welcome! Please bear with me as I personalize the layout and learn all the blog perfecting techniques you likely have been using for years now.