The Sylvesters: Turkey & Brown Rice Meatloaf

As I've mentioned in a previous post, Matt and I want to strive to live a healthy lifestyle so any recipes that can revamp a dish that is typically not very good for you and can make it nutritious and delicious at the same time is a winner in my book! A cookbook I've really enjoyed is Tosca Reno's "Eat Clean Diet Cookbook," and her Turkey-Brown Rice Meatloaf is soooo good, in fact, we've cooked this a lot for our dinner guests and they all seemed to really like it (at least they said they did:) This meatloaf is very easy to make, you can even prep it the night before or early on in the day, and then pop it right into the oven an hour before dinner time. I cooked this tonight for dinner and served it up with some baked sweet potato fries and oven roasted zucchini both tossed in some olive oil, sea salt, and fresh ground pepper. Try it!

- 1 pound lean ground turkey (or whatever other lean protein you'd like)

- 1 cup cooked brown rice

- 1 egg

- 3/4 cup plain, low-fat yogurt cheese *see note on bottom about this

- 1/2 cup chopped onion

- 1/2 cup chopped red, green, or yellow bell pepper

- 1/2 cup chopped celery

- 1 Tbs. low-sodium soy sauce

- 1 tsp. sea salt

fresh ground pepper

- 1 tsp. dried oregano

- 1 tsp. dried basil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. (I like to buy a box of those latex gloves so that I can use my hands to mix it up). Place in a loaf pan that has been lightly coated with nonstick spray. Bake for about an hour. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before cutting. Makes 6 servings.

*So what is yogurt cheese? It's basically strained yogurt. Just take a small colander or strainer, line it with a paper coffee filter and scoop yogurt into it and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight over a bowl - what you have the next day will be yogurt that has a consistency similar to ricotta cheese but with less fat. It's good!

Nutritional value per serving: 149 calories, 20 grams protein, 12 grams carbs, 1 gram fat.

So flavorful and so much better for you than the standard meatloaf recipe

Dinner is served!

As my dad, George Phan, would say: "So yum!"

And of course I've got to post some recent photos of the little Monkey - enjoy!

He's pulling on his hair with his other hand, even in his sleep. Poor kid, to be blessed with so much nice hair that his hands can't resist pulling on it, resulting in screams of pain.