For a red white and blue dessert stunner to top off our fourth festivities we adapted the Summer Berry Crisp recipe from PARADE magazine.  Our new improved pie cut out a huge amount of sugar, berries are sweet already, remember? The berry mixture we chose for our recipe was based on what we had in the fridge—feel free to experiment with different fruit and amounts. Our pie turned out so fantastic the pie pan was licked clean by the end of the night.  We topped the pie off with some 1/2 yogurt 1/2 heavy cream whipped cream made from scratch.

Berry Crisp with Yogurt/Whipped Cream

Servings: 10

Yield: 1 pie

Serving Size: Small scoopful

Pie filling:

3 cups strawberries

2 cups blueberries

1 cup raspberries

3 T sugar

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 t cinnamon

Crisp topping:

1 cup rolled oats

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 t cinnamon

pinch of salt

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter cut into chunks

Whipped Cream

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup Fage 0% Greek Yogurt

1/4 t vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Pam a 9-inch glass pie plate
2. In a large bowl, stir filling ingredients together.  Pour into pie plate.
3. In another bowl, combine oats, sugar, cinnamon and salt.  Use a pastry blender or 2 knives to mix the butter in until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
4. Place the pie plate on a baking sheet.  Bake in the center of the oven until fruit is bubbling and the topping is golden brown, approx 1 hour.
5. Remove crisp from the oven and place on rack to cool.
6. Put cold whipping cream into electric mixer and mix until it forms soft peaks. Carefully fold cold yogurt and vanilla extract into the whipped cream being careful not to collapse the whipped cream.
7. Serve pie with dollop of whipped cream.

Nutrition Facts

Old recipe (with serving of regular whipped cream): 362 calories; 18.9g fat; 11.4g saturated fat; 3.3g protein; and 3.9g dietary fiber

New recipe (with yogurt/whipped cream): 290 calories; 14.7g fat; 8.7g saturated fat; 4.1g protein; and 3.9g dietary fiber.

At our party last weekend, we knew one thing was a non-negotiable: BURGERS. Just in case you’ve been living on McDonald’s and aren’t up on the health news, burgers are often linked with clogging up the ol’ pipes and keeping you refilling your Prevacid Rx.  So, how did we succeed so intensely at making burgers that didn’t taste like a weird amalgamation of tire rubber and wheat grass, without tipping the calorie scale? BUFFALO MEAT.  Yes, you heard correct. b-u-f-f-a-l-o.  

Buffalo meat is like the holy grail of grilling—tender, juicy, red meat that is super lean. And oh my god so so good.  Their smell alone was so good in fact, that little old “I’ve been a vegetarian for 7 years” me, broke down and had to try a bite. (I’m sure I’ll be hearing an earful from PETA tomorrow.)  Also, don’t worry, we did not leave the more pious vegetarian’s adrift, I made the BEST veggie burgers of my life, hands down, and promise to share that mind-altering recipe tomorrow.

Anyway, back to meat.  The best part about buffalo, it’s NOT expensive. It was only $1 more a pound than the hamburger at Whole Foods, so you have no excuse to avoid it. And because Jackie and I are cheap and health conscious, we made smaller burgers for our guests.  I promise you, you do not need a monster sized burger to satisfy!

I basically don’t have a recipe to share with you, because we just seasoned our burgers with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes and plopped them on our grill pan with a little Pam. We served our burgers sandwiched between 100-cal multigrain english muffins and offered our guests some lettuce, tomato, onions, ketchup, dijon, and BBQ sauce to top their little pieces of burger heaven. 

Here is a comparison though of the nutrition facts of a 2.6 oz bison burger with an english muffin vs a 2.6 oz 17% fat hamburger with a regular bun. 

Buffalo Burger: 204 calories; 4g fat; 1.2g saturated fat; 21.2g protein; and 8.4g fiber

Hamburger Burger: 290 calories; 14.2g fat; 5.4g saturated fat; 17.7g protein; and 0.9g fiber.

yum yum yum yum 

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On a side note about food safety…

We quickly discovered that cooking burgers indoors can be a safety hazard. As our apartment filled completely with smoke, the whole hacking party was forced to run for their lives…

Hmm kind of odd our fire alarm never went off…!  

Lessons learned:

A.) Baking burgers might be a better plan than using the grill pan indoors. Meat + Heat = Smoke. Or, if you are one of the few lucky New Yorkers that has a backyard, go ahead and grill those burgers as god and our country intended.  Just remember that buffalo has less fat to protect it from heat, so it shouldn’t be cooked directly on the flame at such an intense temp.

B.) Check your fire alarm batteries, please.  You don’t want to kill yourself and your neighbors in pursuit of a low-fat burger.

C.) With a little booze, and a lot of fan power…the raging never stops!

Since we all are way too popular (which is obvious by the sheer number of times my roomie, see hottie above in the USA cap, appears in my photos to compensate for my lack of friends) and therefore too busy to throw a Fourth of July party on the real holiday—this week we decided to celebrate our country a little bit early.  No Fourth of July party would be complete without burgers, potato salad, corn on the cob, and huge slabs of berry pie…so here we go, we are fixing up America’s stable foods to fit your party lifestyle! Check back all this week for new recipes and photos so you can be prepared when you throw an even more baller party this weekend!

Chugging margaritas, stuffing your face with tacos and playing a round of drunken Big Buck Hunter at the dive bar nearby may seem like a one way ticket to chubbsville and regrettable hipster hookups.  But we refuse to give up any of the above pleasures. So here we go, revamping your taco night to include plenty of good stuff while still keeping the fiesta alive…