I wanted to serve BBQ turkey burgers with pineapple and cheese.  However, I wanted to create a homemade BBQ sauce that was low in sugar.  I found a bunch of recipes and modified accordingly. 

Above is my arsenal of ingredients. 

I wasn’t totally pleased with the outcome, so I’m not going to post the recipe.  I am going to tweak this some more until I end up with something worth sharing. After I made the BBQ sauce, I simply combined it with ground turkey, caramelized onions, and garlic.  I shaped them into four patties, and put in the fridge overnight.

I got to work on setting the table and making a salad to serve with the burgers.

I settled on a spinach salad, because I thought the fruits would compliment the sweet burgers nicely.  This salad was simple but unexpected.  Ready?

Strawberry & Spinach Salad

• spinach
• 1 pint of strawberries
• scallions, chopped
• 1-2 cans of mandarin oranges, drained
• pine nuts
• dressing of choice (I recommend a raspberry vinaigrette)

Start with a bed of spinach.

Top with sliced berries.

Add chopped scallions.

Kick it up a notch in the color department with the oranges.

Finish with some over-priced pine nuts.

And DEVOUR!  (With or without dressing!)

This salad would be budget friendly if pine-nuts weren’t so expensive. 

Does anyone know why that is?!!?

Meanwhile, Lloyd was getting to work on the grill.  It’s the only “cooking” he’s capable of.

I told him instructed him to grill this pineapple on both sides.

Toast some whole wheat buns…

Add the burgers, top with Swiss cheese…

And serve us our food, dammit!

Oh, yum!

We always have trouble keeping turkey meat together.  It always seems to crumble on the grill- any suggestions?!

I put out additional BBQ sauce for topping, in a margarita glass:

This was pretty good!  The burgers took on more of a “sloppy joe” taste and texture than I was going for, but not bad for my first try!

The salad was a great side for this summer meal.