Clean Eating Turkey Meatballs

Today I was craving spaghetti and meatballs. I decided to make the healthy version!

Ingredients:

1lb lean ground turkey

1/3 cup greek yogurt

2 cloves garlic 

1/2 cup onion

handful of spinach 

1/4 cup parsley

5 fresh basil leaves

3 sprigs of Thyme 

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

4 1/2 cups tomato sauce of your choice 

This is an easy recipe. It follows the same theory of my turkey burgers, in regards to incorporating greek yogurt to make the meatballs more moist. 

Preheat your over to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Prepare a baking sheet, lined with foil and greased with olive oil.  Put all of your ingredients except the turkey, greek yogurt, salt and pepper into a food processor. Pulse until the ingredients are finely chopped. Once your seasoning is chopped, place all of the ingredients into a mixing bowl, and mix together until it becomes one uniform mixture. Take an ice cream scoop or a spoonful of the turkey mixture into your hands and form a ball. Place on the baking sheet. Repeat this until you've used all of the mixture. Place the meatballs in the oven for 20 minutes. 2 minutes before they're done, put your tomato sauce into a sauce pan on low heat (you don't want it to boil) so the sauce is warm when the meatballs are done. Once you take them out of the oven, get a frying pan and drizzle some olive oil into in on medium high heat. Place the meatballs in there, and cook for 2 minutes on each side. Once the meatballs are seared, place them into the sauce pot for about 10 minutes. 

I served my meatballs over Ezekiel pasta. Ezekiel pasta is a sprouted grain product that is low on the glycemic index, and high in protein. Just one serving of the pasta has 9 grams of protein. It's a better alternative than whole wheat. 

Banana-Coconut Chocolate Chip Waffles

Sunday morning is definitely a time when I crave some delicious breakfast food. I love waffles, french toast, pancakes, you name it - what I don't love is feeling sick after I eat them because of the grease, and processed ingredients. This morning, I fixed that problem. These are the best waffles I have ever had, and they are so good for you.


This recipe makes about 4 belgian style waffles.
Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup oat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup melted coconut oil
1 banana
1 3/4 cups skim milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg whites
handful of ghiradelli dark chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat your waffle maker before you get started. I sprayed mine with some coconut oil to prevent the waffle from getting stuck to it.

Put the whole wheat flour, oat flour, and baking soda into a large mixing bowl. Mix them together until they are uniformly combined.

Next you'll want to mash up the banana in a separate bowl. Add the coconut oil, milk, egg whites and vanilla to the mashed up banana. Mix them together and add that to the dry ingredient bowl.

Mix the wet and dry ingredients until most of the large lumps are gone. This batter will be a bit more lumpy than normal waffle batter because of the banana. Once it is all mixed together, add the chocolate chips if desired. Let the batter sit for 3 minutes before continuing.

Pour some of the batter onto your waffle maker and let it cook until it stops steaming.

I added some of my almond butter, and some raspberries and strawberries to my waffles. This was a great balance between the sweetness of the fruit and the waffle, and some savory from the almond butter. These waffles are an great source of healthy fats, protein, carbs, and fiber. I strongly urge you health conscious breakfast lovers to try this recipe, you won't regret it!

So you like pizza, huh?

Today I really, really wanted pizza. I was having a thousand italian food cravings - #1 on my list was a slice of deep dish pizza from Umberto's of New Hyde Park (those of you who've had it can back me up). It isn't time for my cheat meal yet though, it's too early in the week to waste my favorite meal on a silly craving. I have made a couple of alternatives to the typical greasy, processed dough pizza before, such as whole wheat pizza. It's very good, but I wanted to try something even healthier. I came across the idea of cauliflower crust pizza, and tonight I tried out the recipe. I found this recipe on www.gosupersisters.com and it turned out well.

In their recipe they use cauliflower, 1 egg white, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, garlic, coconut flour, light mozzarella and sauce. They basically tell you to put the cauliflower into the food processor until it turns into a rice consistency. Then, you nuke it in the microwave for about 5 minutes, and once it's cool squeeze all of the water out in a kitchen towel. Once that is done, you add all of the ingredients, except the mozzarella and sauce, to the cauliflower and make it into a ball. You press it onto a baking sheet and stick it in the oven for about 25 minutes total, including flipping it and putting the topping on. This was a good recipe but there are some things I would change. The flavor of the parmesan was very potent, along with the garlic, salt, pepper etc. I would have probably halved all of the seasoning ingredients, because once you add the toppings it is too much flavor. I would have preferred a more plain crust. Overall, this is a good recipe, but I do recommend being cautious with the amount of seasoning that they suggest, and maybe lessen it. Definitely try this recipe out, and check out the GoSuperSister's website.

Go Super Sister's Cauliflower Crust



I also made roasted asparagus with my dinner. I took the asparagus, put it in a ziploc bag and added some salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil (sparingly), fresh garlic and a little parmesan. I roasted it in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. The sweet and savory combination in this recipe really makes for a tasty dish. This is a great vegetarian meal, and an awesome alternative to your typical dinner!