Veggie Turkey Muffins

Ugh. Okay you guys, I will admit it to you all right now. I fucked up. Sorry for the language, but it's kinda true. I'm starting to really hit some bumps in the road kind of like I did back during the holidays. Summertime is like the warmer version of the holiday season. The 4th of July, barbecues, camping, festivals, there are so many fun summer activities that make it super hard to stay disciplined sometimes! And I will admit that even though I told myself I'd only cheat on special occasions, I definitely haven't been sticking to that. I tried to think of what it was that is making it so difficult for me to stick to my plan, and I realized that I haven't gone grocery shopping in probably 2 weeks. Uh..that's a problem. When I'm not prepared, I eat whatever is available, which tends to be something half-assed and thrown together, which leads to boredom which leads to CHEATING!

Alright, so I figured out the root of my problem. I need to start being better prepared. The biggest part of eating healthy is realizing that you are going to have to do some things that you don't necessarily want to do. Like eat a salad when you want a cheeseburger. Or go grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon when everyone and their mom thinks its a good idea to do so as well. But being prepared is absolutely essential if you want any chance of succeeding when it comes to losing weight. You just have to do it. If you are lazy (like I've been the last few weeks) there is no way in hell you are going to be able to stay consistent and continue on your plan. No way. I'm proof of this people. Suck it up and go grocery shopping and figure out what you're going to eat every week. It might be a little annoying but its the only way you're gonna be able to succeed. TRUST. ME.

So I decided that I wanted to try something new this week. Thanks to my BFF, Pinterest, I found a cool recipe for egg white muffins that this girl posted to her blog. I went to her page and saw she had a few other recipes posted, one of them being turkey muffins. They looked BOMB, for reals. I thought it might be fun to try something like this since I haven't cooked with turkey in awhile. My one problem with extra lean turkey is I find it sometimes to be kind of dry since it doesn't have any of that good juicy fat. After doing some research, I decided to combine 3 recipes into one for this. WHOA, Alexa's getting all creative and shit! Watch out! I did this though because I realized that by adding certain things to the turkey, it will help it stay moist. So I kinda pulled from all 3 of these recipes in hopes that SOMETHING might work to make these things less dry.

So here is MY tweaked version of this recipe for y'all to try out. Its kind of a lot of prep work but it was also pretty fun! I like mushing stuff up with my hands, and if you put on some Chromeo Pandora, the time will just fly by. Here are the ingredients I used for my turkey muffins:

- two 1.25 lb packages of Extra Lean ground turkey

- one onion, finely chopped

- one red bell pepper, finely chopped

- one zucchini, shredded then finely chopped

- one cup mushrooms, finely chopped

- 2 celery stalks, finely chopped

- 1/3 cup fresh parsley

- 1/2 tsp thyme

- 1/2 tsp cumin

- 2 tsp black pepper

- 2 tsp dry mustard

- 2 tbsp minced garlic (I added more than this actually because I'm a garlic fiend)

- 2 tsp chipotle chile pepper

- 4 tbsp tomato paste

- 3 egg whites

- 4 tbsp ground flaxseed

So you want to start off by chopping up your veggies pretty fine. For me personally, I just wanted to make sure that that everything was mixed really well because I didn't want it to be like turkey and big ol' chunks of veggies. My grandma actually gave me this hand chopper which worked awesome to get them pretty much minced. So ask your grandma if she has one, or go get one at the store, because it will save you a ton of time instead of trying to chop all the veggies with a knife.

When I was doing my research on how to make these more moist, multiple people said that adding more veggies will give the turkey more moisture, which is why I have so many in this recipe! Seriously, its like VeggieTown, USA. The original didn't ask for zucchini or mushrooms, but one of the recipes I took from said that these are both great for adding moisture so I threw them in there. I think there is probably equal, if not more veggies than meat in these, which is great because it doesn't taste like it! This also makes them really filling. The third recipe I borrowed from added in the tomato paste and flaxseed. Flaxseed is great for adding fiber, but the recipe said it is also great for keeping the turkey moist. Don't know how true that is but figured I'd try it anyways!

So the rest is pretty simple...mix it all together with your hands. Not rocket science. Make sure not to overmix it otherwise the meat will get tough! No bueno. After everything is mixed, spray muffin tins with Pam, form them into balls and just plop them in. Because of the added veggies, this batch made me 15 turkey muffins. You could try and squeeze them into 12 though if you're determined I'm sure! I had to get the ghetto disposable muffin tins because I left my muffin pan at my friend's house when we had our Christmas party. Clearly I have missed it so much. Anyways, once you've got them in the muffin tins, you're gonna bake them for 40 minutes at 375. So go watch a couple episodes of Workaholics or something like I did. Its ridiculously hilarious if you've never seen it.

You can eat these hot or cold, or with a little marinara sauce if you want. I was very pleased with these because (cue drum roll please) they were actually moist and not dry! HALLELUJAH! I really liked all of the different flavors from the spices. You can obviously add more that you like, or take out the ones you don't like. This is a very tweakable recipe. Is that a word?? Probably not but whatever. These also freeze really well so I'm excited because I have a ton of them and won't have to worry about them going bad. HOLLA!

So moral of the story here people is that preparation is key. Try out new recipes to keep yourself challenged and NOT bored. It will require you getting off your ass and doing something, which is difficult, I know. And I'm not being sarcastic right now...I understand how hard it is sometimes to be a productive member of society. But do it and you will thank yourself later. Trust me, I sometimes know what I'm talking about :)

If you have any questions about my weight loss journey, comment below or email me at alexaeatsclean@gmail.com! I'm a health and fitness coach and would love to get you started working towards your goals :)

#maindish