Macaroni and Meatballs

Just finished a DELICIOUS dinner. I had 1 lb of ground turkey leftover in my freezer so I decided to make my 2nd batch of turkey meatballs. I chopped up 1/3 of a white onion, garlic, a small jalapeno, and mixed it with the turkey. Added salt, pepper, paprika, chili flakes, soya sauce, and the secret ingredient: one egg. The egg helps the lean turkey become juicy on the inside since there's not much fat to start off with.

Formed them into 1 inch diameter meatballs and powdered them off with potato starch for a nicer crust when you fry them. Turned my stove on high and pan fried the meatballs, flipping them onto uncooked sides every so often. Added Classico spinach and cheese sauce along with some canned diced tomato and simmered the whole thing for another 5-10 minutes until no longer pink inside. 

Voila.

It was DELICIOUS. 1 pound of turkey made 15 meatballs, of which I've only devoured 5, so lots of yummy leftovers :)

Here's the recipe:

Meatballs:

1 pound of turkey

1/3 white onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 small jalapeno

1 egg

salt

pepper

paprika

chili flakes

potato starch

Sauce:

Classico spinach and cheese tomato sauce

1 cup of canned diced tomatoes (including juice)

Directions:

1. Combine meatball ingredients together, season to taste (though don't eat any of the raw turkey, duh)

2. Pan fry meatballs on high, adjust to med-high if needed

3. Turn meatballs once each side is browned

- the pan frying should take 6-8 minutes

4. Once all sides are browned, add sauce (to prevent burning) and turn heat down to medium

5. Cover with a lid and cook until done (another 6-8 min...I just cut them open to check for non-pinkiness)

Enjoy.

Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey Menu

So I FINALLY got back to posting food, after a hectic midterm season (which still runs this week but I can't study right now). I promised to post some meals I made with leftover turkey from Thanksgiving so here they are! It's been so long since I've made these so I'll try to recollect as best I can, although the pictures do speak for themselves :)

First up looks like a salad I made with spinach, cilantro, onions, cherry tomatoes and turkey! I also had cranberry sauce leftover that was packed for me so that turned out to be my dressing for the salad. I thought it was a pretty neat idea (since the only other salad dressing I had was ranch...which wouldn't have paired with these ingredients as well).

Here we have a turkey omelette wrap (which are much healthier than sandwiches since sandwiches are pretty much 2/3rds carbs). I think I've got cilantro, maybe spinach in the egg, tomatoes, onions, and white cheddar in that wrap. I always overstuff my wraps because I underestimate how small the pita is when it wraps up haha...I don't particularly enjoy chewing on 50% wrap when I reach the end anyways (if you fold the bottom in).

For one dinner, I heated up some ratatouille (store-bought) and put turkey with leftover gravy on top. I was at  a potluck where I made meat chili but had some vegetarian friends there too, so I bought them ratatouille. Interestingly, they didn't really eat it so I brought it back home. It was delicious actually, so it was their loss haha.

Finally I had another "Deconstructed Sandwich", which was open-faced and so I mixed and matched layering of tomato/cucumber/white cheddar. You can't really see the olive bread underneath but I toasted three small slices to hold everything.

Next post: Potluck chili!

It's good to be writing again :)