Spinach burgers with green bean casserole

I have new toys :D  I was gifted a new cookbook for Christmas that I've already marked about 2 dozen recipes in called Fresh from the Farmers Market.  It's a nice mix of single-ingredient and convenience-food recipes and many include directions for freeze-ahead and prep-ahead cooking.  Keep tuned for a possible giveaway of this book and more recipes from it ;) 

Tonight's dinner consists of two recipes from this book...spinach-ified burgers and Emmitt Smith's Green Beans.  I'm tweaking (as usual) to suit ingredients on hand and to create less work (most notably the grilled turkey burgers are baked pork burgers tonight).  Both are prep-ahead friendly; the burgers are freezer-friendly.  Together, the recipes come in under 500 calories per serving (yes, we are counting calories as a New Year's resolution...sigh). 

My husband declared these burgers his "favorite ever", and the green beans could totally sub in for a lower-calorie (but still very rich tasting) version of the usual holiday green bean casserole.

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Brown Sugar Double Apple Jam

Of all the sandwich spreads, jam is my favorite (to eat and make LOL).  I'm thinking about entering this one at next year's State Fair.  It's apple pie-y and slightly caramel-y from the unusual addition of brown sugar.  It's a "double" apple jam recipe b/c I use apple cider instead of water, the same way I do for applesauce.  I think I may play with the spice combination a bit, but as is, it's a delicious twist on regular apple jam.

I've tried a variety of chopping methods to make apple spreads, and the best IMHO is putting the apples through the coarse grating plate of my food processor.  The pieces come out uniformly and it's so much faster than hand-dicing.  The apples do seem to brown a bit faster when they're mechanically cut vs. handcutting (I guess b/c the plates aren't quite as sharp as my knives, and "tear" the apple flesh more, creating more surface area to oxidize?) but since you're using brown sugar anyway, color matters a little less.  You can toss the grated apples into some lemon-infused water if you want, but I think that just makes them wetter than you want for jam-making.

By the by, when you see butter called for in a jam or jelly recipe, it's to cut down on the foaming that occurs once the protein-heavy pectin is added to the pot. 

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