Messy Meatballs

The other day, I saw a picture of some breakfast meatballs on the ever changing Book Of Face. I frequently eat leftovers for breakfast, so the idea of breakfast meatballs appealed to me. If you think about it, meatballs have the potential to be the perfect eat at your desk finger food. Since I already had breakfast, I set about to make these lunch meatballs. During my lunch hour, too. Perfect. The original recipe called for shredding and then re-shredding the sweet potato in your food processor, followed by the onion, followed by the mushrooms... Ain't nobody got time for that. I'd be starving until next week. I remembered what the demo guy at Costco said about using a Vitamix to finely chop veggies (You add a lot of water, blend them, then drain), so I tried it. It worked really well. To a point. I really should have drained the veggies longer. The mixture was really moist (I hate that word) so I added in two whisked eggs as binder. Hmm. Still to wet. What absorbs liquids. Ding ding ding. Chia seeds. So I have extra goodness in the form of chia. And they tasted really good, too. Win-win-win.

Messy Yummy Meatballs

1 sweet potato, finely grated
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup mushrooms, finely chopped
2 cups baby spinach, blended
3 Italian sausage links (mine were mild), removed from casings
1/2 pound lean ground pork
6 slices of bacon, cooked very crisp, crumbled
2 eggs, whisked
1/4 cup of chia seeds
1 T garlic powder
1 T Worcestershire Sauce

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cook the bacon strips until they're super crisp. Crumble and set aside.

Next, shred-chop-blend the peeled sweet potato, onion, mushrooms and spinach. I blend-chopped and drained the peeled sweet potato, the onion, the mushrooms and the spinach, then combined them in a large bowl.

Next, add in the sausage and the ground pork, mixing well. Whisk the eggs and work in to the sausage and veggie mixture. Mix in the chia seeds, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce and the bacon crumbles.  

Form in to 1 1/2 inch meatballs and place on a foil covered baking sheet. You may like to spray with non-stick cooking spray to make removal easier.  Bake the little yummies for 30 minutes. 

I didn't bake up the entire mixture, but I plugged the recipe in to my My Fitness Pal account so that I could track lunch. Estimating that the entire batch would make 8 servings, the per-serving nutrition comes out to 261 calories, 12 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of fat, 16 grams of protein, 390 grams of sodium, and 4 grams of fiber.


Enjoy!

Good morning!

These past couple of weeks I've been working on the whole "healthy breakfast" thing because of the Fabulous Fatties Challenge. I didn't used to be much of a breakfast eater, but I've gotten much better. The Aussie can switch between oatmeal and Kashi waffles every other day and be happy. Not me. I want variety for breakfast. And thank you, but no. The idea of scrambled egg whites doesn't do a thing for me.

I recently picked up a cookbook that had a recipe for breakfast cups that sounded interesting. I made it, I liked it, The Aussie liked it (once I assured him it didn't contain tofu), the dogs liked it. Hmmm. Now that I know everyone likes it, let's see how I can completely change it!

One veggie I love is spinach. There are actually very few veggies I don't like. Eggplant and the awful little turnips I made for Easter lunch are pretty much it. (Our guests for that lunch very graciously ate them, even though I said they really didn't have to. I knew they were icky.) But I digress. Spinach. It's good in quiche. It will be good in little eggy cup thingys with cheese.

Florentine Quiche Cups (serves 3)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup Egg Beaters

2+ cups baby spinach (will yield 1 cup cooked spinach)

2 Jimmy Dean turkey sausage patties

1 Laughing Cow garlic and herb wedge

2 T fat free cream cheese

6 wonton wrappers - the small squares

olive oil cooking spray

Heat the oven to 350.

Give each of the wontons a quick spray of cooking spray. With your finger, spread the spray to coat one side of the wonton wrapper. Turn over and put one wrapper in each muffin cup. Bake for 10 minutes or until light brown. Remove from oven.

While wontons are baking, wash spinach and sautee in non-stick pan until cooked down. Remove from pan and chop.

Heat turkey sausage (pan or microwave is fine). Chop into small 1/4" dice.

In a small bowl, combine the fat free cream cheese and the wedge of Laughing Cow. Microwave for 30 seconds. Stir together.

In non-stick skillet, scramble the egg beaters until soft. Add in the spinach, sausage and cheese mixture. Stir well to combine the ingredients. Cook for a couple of minutes more, or until done to how you like your eggs. Spoon into wonton cups and serve. These are good hot or cold. (As you can see from the first picture, I didn't wait to eat one before snapping the picture!)