Hamburgers

My husband loves hamburgers and french fries. When we go out to eat at a fancy restaurant to celebrate a special occasion, he orders hamburgers and french fries. I certainly will never be able to change him. But since it is not so healthy, when I make it at home I try to help out the meal a little bit without ruining it for him. So far what works is to buy the extra lean ground beef, mix it with an egg, some lemon pepper, and worcestershire sauce, and then form the patties. I make turkey burgers for myself, I just slap a frozen one on the grill. I don't love turkey burgers, but one day I looked at the nutrition information on a package of frozen hamburgers and compared it to the package of turkey burgers. I don't remember the exact numbers, but there was almost FIVE times as much fat in the hamburgers, of course a lot of it saturated. I definitely don't like hamburgers five times as much as turkey burgers, so I always opt for the turkey burger. I like them better than gardenburgers, but I'll eat gardenburgers before hamburgers.

So here's my conundrum. Since I don't do the frozen packaged hamburgers anymore, my version is somewhat healthier. Turkey burgers are processed, gardenburgers are processed, so if I make my own extra lean hamburgers, which is the healthiest? I'm getting less and less happy about meat, because unless you get grass-finished, free-range meat ("organic" is no guarantee) even unprocessed meat does not have the nutrients it should. I'm trying to figure out how to explain this briefly, but basically most meat you find at your neighborhood grocery store is from animals that do not have a healthy lifestyle, so their meat has more fat and less vitamins and minerals than animals that eat healthy and exercise normally. But it is extremely expensive to buy good meat, so not really an option in our family budget. Gardenburgers obviously don't have meat, but vegetables that are smooshed up into a perfect circle aren't exactly fresh picked, and of course need stuff added to keep their shape. My husband will never give up hamburgers, so I'll make his extra lean, but what should I eat? Maybe the answer is none of the above?

We didn't have fries tonight, but I'll just mention that I usually do the frozen kind. I at least make sure they're not made with hydrogenated oils, but there is not much healthy about fries. When I do make them, I like to make sweet potato fries for myself. You can buy sweet potatoes cut into fries (with nothing else added), but you can also just slice a sweet potato into coins and cook on a baking sheet at 400 for about 20 min, turning once halfway through the cooking time. You can also make your own oven-baked fries out of regular potatoes, but to my husband that is like a turkey burger--not the same thing.

Ratings:

Me: I did eat a turkey burger tonight. But I also ate some soup which I will post the recipe. I started to do it in this same post but it got too long when I started going off on the meat tangent...

Hubby: He ate THREE. I try to make them smallish for portion control, but what good is that when he eats three?

5YO: He is also a fan of hamburgers. He asked for one in his lunch tomorrow, too.

4YO: She asked for "a hamburger with just bread and ketchup." Maybe she and I should go vegetarian.

1YO: He ate some soup. When I offered him a bite of hamburger he just stared at it. He can go vegetarian with us.