Alright so today we ventured out of the office and went on a mission to find a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka, since Halloween is just around the corner we need the right vodka in the office to set the mood… Ok sorry let me get back to the point.  While we were out we decided to go ahead and grab lunch at the local Bubba Burger Grill and since we have all been waiting for this place to open we figured today was as good a day as any…

First, let me give you a little back story, this location was once the home of my favorite burger joint in town and that burger joint was bought out by Bubba Burger and we had to wait over a year and a half for them to change the place and reopen as Bubba Burger Grill… So all of the anticipation had me salivating from the moment we pulled into the parking lot.

Now, since we all eat a little healthy, my first task was to jump out of the car and make sure that they have a wheat bun, and to my surprise they totally have several bun options and wheat was one… SCORE FOR BUBBA BURGER GRILL… Alright now we can go in and enjoy a meal.  Or so I thought… (dun, dun, dun…)

The old restaurant was a full service restaurant, you walk it, they seat you at a table, you get a server, you place your order, and they bring you your food and all of this seems like a simple thing… Well that’s not how it’s done at Bubba Burger Grill, oh no, you have to walk up to a counter, pick a bun, type of burger, condiments, side, and drink choice, pay and then go sit down to eat.  This place is huge, it’s not a fast food joint, this is a big ol’ restaurant with a dang bar!  Not to mention this huge place only has 3 TV’s so forget about going to enjoy any sporting event at this place.

Ok, you have the point of how to place your order, well my meal consisted of a double jalepeno burger on a wheat bun, no onion, sweet potato fries, and for the table I got fried green beans as a starter… Before the green beans my meal was $13.80… HOLY CRAP! Fourteen Bucks for a burger for lunch?  Oh well, we’ve already started this ride so we might as well finish it…

We sat and waited, and waited, and waited, much like you would at any slow service restaurant and the burger was finally brought to the table and I couldn’t believe it… They really are actually serving Bubba Burgers!  C’mon man, at least change the shape and pretend like you are serving something other than the exact burger that I can get in the freezer section at my local grocery store!  And I didn’t get to say how I wanted my burger prepared so it was a little overdone but still tasted ok because of the jalapenos and pickles I guess…

Now, my point is that I can go to the grocery store, buy the actual jalapeno bubba burgers that were served to me and get 6 of them for $6.99, buy a pack of whole wheat hamburger buns for $2.49, and get enough condiments for a ton of burgers and make this exact burger at home and feed the whole family plus a couple of friends for less than it cost me to eat at this crappy restaurant.  I’m a little let down that this place has gone from my favorite burger joint EVER to being a place that I will never go back to again and I will actually never recommend that anyone go there.  If you would like to enjoy a bubba burger, swing by the house, I’ll feed you one and won’t charge you a dime!

Now that you have the back story I now have to share with you one of the most amazing meals that I think I have ever had (and it wasn’t even prepared by me lol).  Well she totally surprised me one night with this dinner and I was totally blown away and have been craving it ever since… Soooo last night she made it for me again and this time I got a picture.

Ok let me share the recipe with you, hopefully just the sound of the ingredient list will make you drool as much as it does me.

Ingredients

4 boneless chicken breasts
12 strips of bacon cooked and drained
4 slices of baby swiss cheese
1/2 cup favorite BBQ sauce
garlic salt
black pepper

Directions

So since the ingredients state that the bacon should be cooked I am going to assume that you know that you need to cook the bacon and hopefully you know how to do that.  By the way, just in case you were not aware this chicken has BACON!  Season the chicken with the garlic salt and black pepper and place on the grill on high heat or directly over your coals for just a couple of minutes.  We want to get a little char on the chicken, then brush each breast with BBQ sauce and turn.  Once turned lower the heat or move to a cool spot on the grill and top each breast with 3 strips of bacon and cover that with a slice of swiss cheese (the benefit of swiss is that it melts but doesn’t run all over the place, plus it tastes great).

Continue to cook on low heat until chicken is done (usually about an additional 15 minutes) then brush the top with a little more BBQ sauce and remove from the grill.  Allow this to set for just a minute so that the juices stay in the chicken when you start to eat it… I mean this makes for some very tender, juicy and amazing chicken.

To plate you simply need to place the chicken over your favorite green vegetable, on this night we had green beans and it was a great match.

Give it a shot, it’s a super quick and easy meal that your family will absolutely love.  I mean who doesn’t love BACON?

Well I really have been working very hard at changing how I eat, how I cook and how I think about food.  I’ve been much more focused on the science behind foods and how your body processes the foods that we eat.  (By the way this was all brought about by stupid Diabetes)  But since I have started to focus on different ways to eat I have learned that no many places offer healthy choices for a diabetic that are also tasty although there are a few exceptions.  The other night my girlfriend and I met up with some friends for dinner and my buddy recommended the fire grilled chicken and yams, now that may not be the absolute best option but was surely headed in the right direction so I tried it and HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME!

Now I later found out that they do add sugar in a few areas so it’s not the most diabetic friendly meals but was much better than pasta or white bread…  But me being me decided that I would just make my own recipe that is diabetic friendly and incorporates everything that I wanted in a meal.  So the next day it was off to the grocery store with a specific list of items and here is what I ended up doing!  Oh by the way, even the kiddos enjoyed it so get ready to blow everybody’s mind even the youngins’!

Ingredients

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 sweet potatoes
1 cup pecans
1/4 cup melted butter
2 tblsp sugar free maple syrup
2 tblsp Splenda brown sugar
2 tblsp Granulated Splenda
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp cinnamon
Cayenne pepper
Garlic Salt
Cajun seasoning
Black Pepper

First things first: Candied Pecans

If you have ever had yams or sweet potato souffle then you know that it’s usually topped with candied pecans, well those are always covered with sugar but I still wanted them.  So, I mixed half of my melted butter, the sugar free maple syrup, splenda brown sugar and vanilla extract into a bowl.  I then added the pecans and mixed until each pecan was fully coated, and poured onto a baking sheet.  Don’t forget to add your non stick spray to this pan or you will be forever trying to remove candied candy stuff from the pan.  I then put the pan in the oven at 350 for about 25 minutes and then let cool.  These things came out as a delicious snack all by themselves but that’s not why I made them.

Sweet Potatoes:

I wrapped each of the potatoes in foil and placed on the grill on low heat for about an hour until very soft to the touch.  Once removed I sliced them open and used a spoon to remove all of the sweet potato pulp and place into a nice big bowl.  I then added the cinnamon, granulated splenda, and the rest of the melted butter to the potatoes and mixed until fully blended and then covered to cool a bit.  (As a side note, I think this also may be the way you make LAVA because the inside of these things were so hot that I think it would have melted a hole to the core of the earth had any of it touched the ground.)

Grilled Chicken:

This was the easy part of the meal… I just added garlic salt, cajun seasoning, black pepper, and cayenne pepper and fully covered both sides with this mix.  You can pretty much season the chicken any way you want but I have found that the spicy chicken works best with this meal.  I think grilled the chicken over direct heat until done, it took about 20 minutes.

Once everything was done, I plated it all up and crushed a few of the candies pecans and put them over the sweet potatoes with the spicy chicken on the side.  All in all there were very few simple carbs in this meal and the complex carbohydrates and fiber make it a very healthy and diabetic friendly meal, not to mention that it was absolutely delicious to boot.  I’m pretty sure this dish will end up being a regular thing around our house!

First, I had to clarify “vegetarian” from “vegan” and this person was a “vegetarian” so wasn’t an extremist.  She stated that I could use dairy products like ricotta cheese and could even use eggs if needed so it seems that my life was going to be pretty easy.  Well, as I tend to do, I had to take it a few steps further which I will explain a little later.

So, I left work, rushed to the store, and began shopping for what I figured was actually going to be a somewhat good lasagna… Words can not even express my surprise with the final result but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In this particular post, I’m not really trying to provide a recipe, I’m only giving you the basis for what I did while telling you about my experience.  This post might just serve as a really strong foundation for anyone interested in making a veggie lasagna at home.

Being the person that I am I couldn’t resist throwing the veggies on the grill, since I wasn’t going to have any meat I needed to at least have a familiar taste haha.  So I began with the tomatos, garlic, and onions and grilled them just long enough to start to sweat and get some of that grilled flavor.

Believe it or not I was ready to eat every one of these veggies directly off the grill but managed to maintain my composure to finish the task at hand…

It was now time to start the sauce, I added the tomatos, garlic and onion to the blender with a little balsamic vinegar and water to get a nice puree.  Not only did the grilled veggies smell amazing I was starting to feel like this was really going to work out.

Silly me, by this time the drinking had begun and I neglected to take pictures of the full sauce process so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  I added this to a sauce pan with a little red wine, oregano, salt, pepper, and a few other herbs that I had laying around and brought it to a boil.  I then reduced the heat, covered the sauce, and let it simmer for a couple of hours, stirring fairly often.

Now, here’s where I decided to get crazy, I figured instead of noodles I would go ahead and break out the mandolin and use zucchini instead…  Again, needed some grilled flavor so here we go with grilling the “noodles”,

Because I was able to use dairy and eggs I made my normal cheese filling which you can read about on my Amazingly Bad for you Lasagna recipe post…  I also filled each layer of lasagna with mushrooms, baby spinach, and boca crumbles just to give it a little texture.  In the end, I couldn’t believe how good this lasagna turned out… It’s quite possible that I may like this even better than my orgina… wait no, that’s just stupid to even say but it was really good.   Don’t believe me?  Try it for yourself.

A while back I made a cajun brisket which turned out to be absolutely perfect, it was tender and delicious.  Well, after I sent half of the brisket to my Dad he decided that he wanted to give brisket a try and I have to admit, I think my Pops has some freakin skill!  This brisket turned out to be really good for a first shot at brisket and after chilling over night would make a fine meal the next day.

So, all of that being said, this is the crazy plate of doom that I created this morning and it was all I could have hoped for.  This was just going to be brisket and mushrooms but I just kept adding stuff and it turned out to be really awesome.

I’m not gonna show the whole brisket process, I’ll save that for another post, just keep in mind if ya ever have brisket the next morning it’s great with eggs or even like this.

Here’s what ya need:

3 cups cooked brown rice (diabetes demands it be brown for me)

A few ounces of  brisket sliced (I didn’t weigh it I just started slicing)

1 large tablespoon of “fake” butter (trying to be somewhat healthy here)

1 can sliced mushrooms

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can cream of mushroom soup with roasted garlic

1 cup water

And what to do:

Melt the fake butter in a sautee pan, and add the brisket, all we are doing here is getting it warmed through since it should be all smoked up.  The upside to doing this first is that it releases some of the flavor from the brisket into the butter, mmmmmmm.  Ok, now add the mushrooms, tomatos, can of cream of mushroom soup, and water and bring to boil uncovered.  Once boiling reduce heat and let simmer for 20 minutes which will help to thicken up the sauce around the brisket.

Place a healthy heaping over some rice and enjoy.  If you use enough brisket this should actually feed 3-4 people if they are all focused on healthy portions like I have been forced to be haha.

There I admitted the face that this is not the prettiest meal in the world so can we get past the picture now?

Ok, now that we are beyond the looks of my horrible photo we can talk about the flavor.  By far this is now one of my favorite simple, delicious meals.

For some reason I just had a craving for pork, pasta, and cheese and came up with this.

The key to this dish was the boneless chops which were fantastic.  I took the chops and threw em on the grill since I thought I needed some grilled flavor with this dish.

This meal should serve 4 normal people or 1 HankBob and 1 Ogre…

What you need!

4 Boneless pork chops

1 lb spaghetti noodles cooked al dente

Your favorite pasta sauce about 16 oz.

1 can Rotel Tomatoes with Green Chilis

Shredded Mozzarella and Parmesan Cheese

What to do!

Get the grill hot and throw the chops on until fully cooked.

Take the chops off the grill and place into a roasting pan, cover with pasta sauce, and tomatoes.  Sprinkle the cheese over the top.  Cover the pan and you can either add the pan back to the grill or put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes.

While the chops are in the oven or on the grill go ahead and boil up the noodles.

After 35 minutes just scoop ya a chop out of the sauce and place it on your pasta.  Add a little more sauce if you want and enjoy.

I had mine with a Caesar Salad and Garlic Cheesy Ciabatta bread

The upside is that this thing might become a staple of breakfast foods for all those who visit me out on the farm.  Imagine, waking up to the wonderful aroma of breakfast being cooked, walk into the dining area and sit down to this huge, tasty, breakfast sandwich.

Trust me, after this breakfast you will either have enough energy to work all day or you will have to immediately take a nap.  Either way it’s totally worth having every once in a while on the weekend.

The idea started a couple of weeks ago when I got a craving for waffles, all I could think about were some good home made waffles and fried chicken.  Man, even right now that sounds fantastic.  Well, needless to say I didn’t get home made waffles or fried chicken but I did manage to pick up some waffles from my grocers freezer and thus began the epic journey to this sandwich.

Now you know I started by toasting a couple of waffles which could have made a great breakfast by itself but wasn’t going to be good enough for me.

I had some ground sausage left over from the last trip to the butcher so I figured it was time to patty that stuff out.  So I made a few sausage patties added a little more salt and pepper and pan fried those bad boys up.

I put two of the patties on one of the waffles and topped that with a slice of american cheese and some shredded cheddar cheese. (because breakfast ain’t the same without cheese)

Well, I had some awesome grease in the pan from the sausage so it was time to add a couple of eggs.  In my mind having a little yolk left soft is going to add some tremendous flavor to this sandwich so I fried em up and left the yolk a little runny.  Then I put the eggs on top of the cheese just so it gets a little melty while I work on the rest of this thing.

I decided to add a couple of slices of ham to the pan and fry it up a little, once it got a good and hot I put the ham slices on the eggs.

Ok, call me crazy but I needed a familiar flavor so I added some Big Butz Original BBQ sauce and poured it over the top of the ham.

Next, it was time to add a thick slice of tomato and then top it off with the other waffle.  Man this looks fantastic but as if this wasn’t enough I drizzled a little honey over the top of the whole thing.

This was such a decadent sweet and savory breakfast that I almost lost control of myself.

The only thing that saved me was the serving of cheese grits that I served it up with.

Call me crazy but this was marvelous.

One of the aisles that I have the most trouble with is the huge wall of sauces and marinades.  I can never just pass by grab a bottle of something in motion and continue on.  No, not me, I have to spend about 45 minutes scouring over the wall of deliciousness until I find something that I have never tried before.

In all honesty this just doesn’t happen very often and I end up just grabbing something plain and leaving.  Not on this day, as I stood there looking up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start, I saw a light shining down as if it was a ray of light shining from the heavens.

It could have been a rainbow but I’m pretty sure it was just a beam of light… Sorry, that’s not the point, the point is that I saw West Indies Spice Co.  Just the name itself had me intrigued so I picked it up and low and behold I had found the treasure.  Pirates Gold Inferno Hot Marinade was now in my hand and was going to be used on these awesome London Broils.

I just couldn’t wait to get my new find to the house and start up a nice marinade with it but first…To the Beer!

I figured this was going to be a Caribbean style steak so I grabbed beer with “lime” in it and a bottle of Pineapple Soda to add to the marinade.  Now, I might get a little sweet and spicy out of this deal.

Grabbed some potatoes and mushrooms, and a few ears of corn and headed to the checkout.

As soon as I got the groceries in the house I opened the bottle of Pirates Gold, dipped my finger in it and tasted it immediately… HOLY CRAP MY FACE IS ON FIRE!!!!  That marinade is not kidding, just a little bit on the tongue and I could immediately feel the heat.  They say on the bottle the longer you soak in it the hotter it’s gonna get so I figured to make the marinade immediately and let it soak for 7 hours.  That should be plenty hot.

I mixed up the marinade, added the steaks, placed in the fridge and started playin Rock Band to pass the time.

After finally grilling the steaks I just have to say that these things were delicious.  The flavors were subtle enough that you could tastes them but could also still taste the steak.  It had a bit of heat on the back-end which was a really nice touch.

All in all if you can find this marinade I really recommend trying it out but using it as a base for a full marinade is the only way to go in my mind.

To Make the Marinade

You just want to make enough to cover your meat completely so play with the amounts until you get it the way you want it.

Pirates Gold Inferno Hot Marinade

Pineapple Soda

Lime Flavored Beer

Garlic Powder

Onion Powder

Salt

Black pepper

Mix all ingredients well until you have a nice flavored liquid.  Add the meat and marinate in the fridge for a few hours, best results would be overnight.

Throw it on the grill and enjoy!