After watching last nights The Biggest Loser I was inspired to use the recipe that Michael used to make turkey meatballs. I've had The Biggest Loser Cookbook for several months but have yet to cook from it. Mostly because I never plan ahead when I go food shopping. I always head to the store and buy what's on sale and what I crave. So bad! I need to pick a recipe from the cook book and then buy what I need to make it. That is what I did today. Well I printed the recipe off the internet at jennieo.com and headed to the store on the way home from work. So now I have the goods to cook right from The Biggest Loser and have my Ziploc containers to freeze the extra food. That is one lesson I did learn by watching The Biggest Loser. I would cook pasta with turkey meat sauce or stuffed peppers on Sunday and freeze the rest. That way at the end of the day I had fast home cooked healthy food.
You can view more The Biggest Loser Jennie-O recipes online at jennieo.com. I'll be cooking these tonight! Here is the recipe for The Biggest Loser Jennie-O Turkey Meatballs:
Ingredients
1 – 1.25 lb package of JENNIE-O TURKEY STORE extra lean ground turkey
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1/2 tablespoon pepper
1 cup Garbanzo beans, pureed
1/2 cup egg substitute (such as Egg Beaters)
Non-stick cooking spray
1 – 14 oz can low sodium tomato sauce
1 medium fresh tomato, chopped
2 cloves chopped garlic
Additional pepper to taste
3 cups uncooked whole wheat pasta
Directions
Preheat oven to 375. Spray a cookie tray or jelly roll pan lightly with non-stick cooking spray.
In a large bowl, mix by hand or with a spoon the ground turkey, parsley, pepper, pureed garbanzo beans, and egg substitute. Roll the ground turkey mixture into small meatballs and place on prepared pan.
BAKE meatballs in the oven at 375 for 20 minutes or till no longer pink inside. Meat should reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees.
While the meatballs are cooking, heat tomato sauce, fresh chopped tomato and garlic in a pot on the stovetop, season with pepper to taste. Once the meatballs are finished cooking in the oven, add them to the sauce.
Cook pasta according to package directions, drain. Divide pasta into six servings and top with the meatballs and sauce.
This recipe is Biggest Loser approved.
I went to my local super market and stuck with store brands. The extra lean Jeanie-O wasn't on sale while the lean was but I stuck with the extra lean. Total cost of the meal was $16.54. The Egg Beaters were on sale and I'll use them in other recipes so gotta keep that in mind. Same with the pasta. It's going to feed me for more then one meal so it's pretty cheap. The bad part is that Jennie-O doesn't give a calorie count on the meatballs. Hmm...not good! The Biggest Loser Cookbook has a different recipe that is next up on my list of things to cook.
Putting it all together. I wished I read more then just the ingredient list. Since I came home from work the first thing I did was fire up the DVR to catch up on some tv. With that said I put all the ingredients together. Doh! So it started off as a soupy mess. Sorry guys, well sorry to me! Since I had breadcrumbs in the panty I added some in. After I checked the calorie count. Holy S*%t! Who knew bread crumbs were pure evil! It's all empty useless calories.
So now I'm done cooking and have started to eat. Gotta admit even with my f'ing up the recipe they are still yummy! I'll have to try it again. Speaking of again I've resolved to cook one recipe a week out of The Biggest Loser Cookbook. So I'll be posting a weekly Healthy Cooking post. I figure cooking one recipe once a week will give me several days of meals since I'm cooking for one! It is so hard to cook for one while trying to eat healthy. It's easier to buy those precooked calorie busting foods at the market and go home. But I'm going to start cooking healthy and just do it!
Hit the jump for my step by step photos of me attempting to cook The Biggest Loser Turkey Meatballs and Pasta!
So at least I started out right. I got the ingredients!
The annoying thing was that the recipe called for 14 oz can of low sodium tomato sauce and I could only find 8oz cans of no sodium. So I bought two. I came home and started to prepare everything. Before reading anything. Doh!
Making meat balls isn't easy or pretty! Being a single guy I don't own a food processor. So to puree something is a foreign concept. I used the blender with mixed results. Now comes the DOH! moment.
The tomato sauce, tomato and garlic are for the sauce and not the meatballs. DOH! I've cooked before really! My old meatball was made up of meat that had been soaked in cheap red wine, butter and lots of it, breadcrumbs, garlic, some tomato sauce and whole eggs. Not healthy at all. But keeping my old recipe in mind I tossed all the ingredients into the bowl.
We are making soup right? Oh no! So luckily I had some bread crumbs and added them in to thicken it up. I so need a redo for this recipe.
Into the oven my pretties! Yours will not look like this unless you F%#K up like I did. Mine were are a light shade of pink. Hey, I like pink!
Hmm...hockey pucks. I was hungry in a hurry so I just tossed them into a shape and put them in the oven. Next time I'll try to make meat "balls" and not meat "pucks". So how many meals did I get out of tonights attempt at cooking? Well that is a toss up.
Since I messed up the recipe I did have to dip into some store bought jar sauce I had kicking around. The calories in that was a bit much. So how many meals did I get? Well the bowl was tonights dinner. So I had about a cup or so of pasta to create 3 more full meals. Plus meatballs for 2 more meals. So I made 6 healthy meals for $16.54 or $2.75 a meal. Super Size That!
I gotta admit that I never looked at cooking by judging calories and cost per meal. It's an interesting experiment and an eye opening one. Now gotta decide what to cook next. The California Bacon Burger sounds Yummy!
