OneMileOneMeal

Healthier Burger: Grass Fed Bison Burger With Side of Sweet Potato Hash And Tuscan Kale

Burgers are an American past time and I believe you can have your burgers and skinny jeans too! Here is one of my favorite healthier burger options which I get at True Food Kitchen, one of my fave restaurants in Phoenix : Grass fed bison with arugula, grilled umami mushrooms and onions on a flax seed bun.

As a side option, True Food serves their signature Tuscan Kale salad or a sweet potato mash, or a combo of the two which I always get because kale and sweet potatoes are two of my favorite foods, and kale is a nutrient packed food. Consider a veggie as a side versus french fries the next time you get a burger.

Here's some of the health benefits of bison meat. The big thing to point out is that bison meat is a healthier option over beef mainly because bison is much lower in fat. For example, for a 3oz cut, bison has 2.4g of fat and lean beef has 10g of fat...significant difference! And bison burgers taste good. For me, I almost cannot tell the difference.

Meatless Monday: Sweet Potato and Avocado Salad With Asian Dressing and Three Bean Chili

If you live in Phoenix or come to visit, Nourish is a place we highly recommend especially for those with food allergies and intolerances, or those with specific food needs you normally won't find in restaurants because at Nourish they pretty much have good coverage for all the 8 major food allergens. There is plenty to eat there if you're like me with food allergies.

And better yet, those who can eat anything will find plenty to enjoy as well. Nourish serves some vibrant and very healthy foods. Say Hi to owner Kirsten! She is one of the friendliest people you'll ever meet.

On Saturday, for a special Gluten-Free luncheon organized by @SustainableKen, I noshed on my favorite sweet potato and avocado salad with their special Asian dressing which is soy and gluten free. You could easily make a simialr dish at home. Just cut up some avocados and a sweet potato that was boiled so it's slightly soft, and then mix in one of your favorite bottled Asian dressings.

Paired with the salad, I got the Three Bean chili made with black, red, and white beans. I enjoy the tomatoey flavor in this chili. The cool thing about Nourish's chili is that you can add on cheese and ground beef for those who want that. Gotta love multi-purpose foods!

My Box Lunch at Urban Picnic

 
I just had to post a photo of my box lunch today at Urban Picnic...more later about my sammich on Monday. I'm having too much fun with my new iPhone4 and the apps!

And here is one of the walls in the place. Love the grass mural.

Happy Find: Raw, Gluten-Free, Vegan Power Bar In A Coffee Place

One of my favorite coffee hangouts in Phoenix metro is @EchoCoffeeAZ (which is actually in Scottsdale).

They have a new chef and one of the latest creations is this raw, gluten-free, and vegan power bar which has figs, cocount, cacao, raspberries, and I believe cashews in the crust. You almost never see this kind of stuff at a coffee place.

Can you tell I'm excited!

Roach Coach Tales: Organic Vegan Dish From a Filipino Food Truck. Yes Joe!

There is a Filipino Food Truck here in Phoenix called Hey Joe Truck which I have been wanting to try for ages and recently I got the chance when they were parked at the Wednesday night open market held at the Phoenix Public Market downtown.

What I didn't expect was to find something organic OR vegan on their menu because well Filipino food is not really geared towards vegan options. In fact, often the vegetable dishes call for patis which is fish sauce, so technically that makes the dish pesco vegetarian.

This is their Mung or Mungo beans (as many Filipinos call it with the O) with spinach and coconut milk vegan dish on top of white rice. When my mom makes mungo beans she uses patis and pork, so definitely not vegetarian but mighty tasty.

I liked Hey Joe's vegan version. Yes Joe! Impressed I was...to be Yoda.

What's fantastic about this dish is that it opens up people's perception of what vegan foods can be, and that we can get global here, it's not all Americanized. Open up the palate I say!

Over at Yummy, I found a recipe that uses chard versus spinach, but you can just swap that out. As well, mung beans are gluten-free, and if you use a gluten-free soy sauce, this dish can also be made gluten-free...more win!

Follow @HeyJoeTruck on Twitter

Foodspotting: Fresh Asparagus and Tomato Pizza Sheet

Watching sheets of pizza coming out of the oven at Whole Foods is a wonderful thing. Doesn't this asaparagus and tomato pizza look luscious? This is my kind of window shopping!

Meatless Monday: First Watch Vegan Veggie Wrap with Side of Greens and Fresh Fruit

This weekend, friend @elizabethhannan introduced me to a new place in Phoenix called First Watch. Nationally they have 86 restaurants in 12 states.

What I love about this place besides it being a chain day restaurant with a healthy flare is that on their website, they have a nice allergen list of egg, milk, wheat, soy, and nuts for each dish, and they list all the nutritional info down to calories. Big thumbs up in my book, and I wish more restaurants did something similar.

For lunch, I got the Not Guilty Your Honor which is a wheat tortilla filled with cucumber, spinach leaves, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, tomato slices and instead of feta cheese, I got avocado. A side of hummus is served on the side, and I liked that because I could add as much or little as I want. I got fruit, and a green romain salad on the side.

Their house salad dressing is really delicious, unique. It even has chunks of tomato and cucumber in the dressing. I'd buy a bottle of this dressing if they sold it.

You can get a side of potatoes with your dish but it's cooked in butter, not good for allergy girl here. Olive oil would be fine. The side of fruit is delicious because I get some sweet fiber.

How To Quickly Eliminate 290 Calories From Your Chipotle Burrito

Everyone loves Chioptle, right? I do, but after doing the math on the Chipotle nutrition calculator, it can get down right horrifying. My previous favorite burrito choice was a whopping 1220 calories!

That burrito choice included chicken, beans, rice, cheese, sour cream, tomato, corn salsa, lettuce, and guacamole...in the days before I discovered I had cow milk allergies.

Did you know that if you order the Burrito Bowl versus the regular Burrito with the 13" tortilla, you can knock out 290 calories, 9g of fat and a whopping 44g of carbs. Without the tortilla, the "burrito" also becomes gluten-free.

Yeah, that simple tortilla is packing!

Today, I usually get the Burrito Bowl with Steak, Chicken, or I do Vegan...with the black beans versus the pinto beans because they do use some bacon fat in the pinto beans. I also get rice, tomatoes, corn salsa, and gucamole.

I eat half and then save the other half for lunch or dinner the next day.

Meet My Cousin Hill: Tapas, Sangria and Cub Training

Everyone say hi to my cousin Hill! He's 25 and the 2nd youngest of us 40 grandchildren. My mom was 1 of 10. Hill was in town visiting to watch Spring Training games, and for Day 17, he was my guinea pig guest for One Meal today.

I mention his age only because it relates to what we chatted at dinner which I'll get to, but first...

Hill was in the mood for tapas and sangria, so I took him to one of my favorite restaurants in Scottsdale called Tapas Papa Frita. What I enjoy most about this place is that they make Spanish tapas and make a point to showcase dishes from many regions of Spain.

We got a pitcher of white sangria and as you can see in my glass, there was plenty of fruit. It tasted like fruit punch actually. I got some fruit in with my booze...healthy, Si? FTW :-D

Tapas are wonderful for meal time because they are small plates meant to share. I like to call tapas fun portion control because not only are the plates small but you can order several and feel like you get to try a buffet of things without stuffing yourself.

We got this wonderful Pimiento Piquillo con Centollo tapa ~Crab stuffed peppers in saffron sauce inspired from the Rioja region.

For our main course, we got the Valenciana, a paella made with saffron rice, clams, mussels, shrimp, chicken, txistorra, peppers, onions, tomatoes and peas. This paella was packed with seafood, and I really enjoyed how they added some sausage.

I can't remember the last time I've had this much seafood, and it's awesome because we're getting good Omega oils.

One thought

Hill is one of my funniest cousins, and I always enjoy hanging out with him. Over dinner he shared with me some of his dating experiences and I as his older and more experienced cousin {ahem} offered him plenty of advice about dating and women which I refer to as cub training...yes me playing the teacher cougar role.

My way of helping make the world a more date friendly place :-D