I know I totally flaked out on you last week…so week 3 will be the last August menu and we’ll jump into September next week.Tonight’s bonus recipe is Veggie-Meatballs in Fire Roasted Tomato Basil Sauce is below.
This week takes advantage of the late-summer/early fall harvest. Patty pan squash, nectarines, plums, peppers and tomatoes.
Click here for the menus PDF: August Week 3 Menus
Click here for this week’s shopping list: August Week 3 Shopping List
JeffreyW has some nice looking tomatoes, mine are still green on the vine. I’m prepared to survive any frost so they have time to ripen.
Bonus recipe:
Most of the recipes I looked at used Italian Breadcrumbs. But I really feel these need fresh breadcrumbs, so I’ve included instructions for making your own. I didn’t season mine because I didn’t want them to overpower the delicate flavors of the cheeses. Fresh breadcrumbs absorb flavors and moisture more than packaged ones, so I thought it gave the whole meatball a better, lighter texture. I added a bit of garlic powder (fresh garlic did not work with this, it was overpowering and a touch bitter), basil, oregano and fennel. The fennel really took it up a notch. I think next time I might add a bit of red pepper flake.
Spinach and Ricotta Vegetarian Meatballs
- 1-1/2 to 2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (instructions below)
- 1 cup ricotta cheese
- 1 cup grated Parmesan, asiago, romano cheese mix
- 1-1/2 cups fresh spinach, chopped
- 1 tbsp fresh oregano or 2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
- 2 tsp fresh basil or 1/2 tsp dried basil, crushed
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder (not salt)
- 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
- Salt and pepper
- 4 eggs, beaten
=======
- 1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan, asiago, romano cheese
- Olive oil
Breadcrumbs: this took a full 1-lb loaf of day-old Italian or French bread. I bought it from the day-old rack for cheap. I tore it into small pieces, spread out on a baking sheet and dried it in a 200 degree F oven for about 30 minutes. I didn’t want them toasted or seasoned because I thought it would overpower the delicate flavors of these meatballs. Once they were dried, I ran them through the blender. I reserved 1/4 cup for rolling the balls in before cooking.
Meatballs: Mix together ricotta, grated cheeses, spinach and spices. Add the eggs and mix well. Then add the breadcrumbs, 1/2 cup at a time. You want it to come together to form soft balls, but you don’t want it to be dry. Once you can form a soft ball with some structure, you don’t need to add more breadcrumbs.
Scoop up a heaping tablespoon (I used my cookie dough scoop) and roll the mixture into balls.
Mix together 1/4 cup breadcrumbs and 1/4 cup grated cheeses in a bowl and roll each meatball in the mixture, coating on all sides.
You can bake or pan fry these. I chose to pan fry, it used a bit of oil, but it gave them a nice flavor. Baking them would be my option if I was doubling the recipe.
To fry: heat olive oil in a skillet on medium and add the meatballs, leaving enough space between them to easily turn them. They are soft, so it’s a delicate process. The good news is, if you really want them round (instead of kind of flattened) you can reshape them after they come out of the pan. Turn them until they are golden brown on all sides.
To bake: place them on a well oiled baking sheet or use parchment paper. Brush them with a bit of oil if desired. Leave space around each one so they brown evenly and bake at 375 degrees F for 30-40 minutes until golden brown. You can turn them halfway through if desired.
Fire Roasted Tomato and Basil Sauce
- 28 oz fire roasted crushed tomatoes or better yet, click here to make your own.
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tsp crushed garlic
- 2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
- 1 tsp dried oregano (or 1 tbsp fresh chopped)
Add ingredients in saucepan, bring to a low boil, reduce to low and let simmer while prepping meatballs.
Serve sauce and meatballs over your favorite pasta.
That’s it for this week. What do you have cooking as you wrap up another weekend?
eclare
That sounds wonderful! And I have some grape tomatoes on hand, impulse on-sale buy…..
Phylllis
Recipe for those fab-looking tomatoes: Slather quality bread with Duke’s mayo, place mater slices on bread, sprinkle with sea salt & freshly ground pepper as it suits you, then eat.
SiubhanDuinne
Love that photo of the squashes.
Major Major Major Major
Those meatballs look delicious!
Ella in New Mexico
These look delicious and all but alas…none of us can consider tomatoes or squash as healthy anymore. According to the latest money-grubbing diet doctor in town, they’re full of a plant poison called “lectins” that will perf your gut like gasoline and make you fat, gassy, and rape your immune system.
Lucky enough that you haven’t heard of Steven Gundry and his new book “The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain”? Why, not only does he have a new book out describing in detail the now even more narrowed range of foods we all can eat, he’s selling a ton of dietary supplements to help you deal with your lectin problem…
Sorry, no one’s stopping me from eating my heirlooms and my spaghetti squash.
Laura
The crock pot is on hour 6 of a barbacoa/ropa Viejo because I’ve been Jones in since last Sunday’s offering.
A pureed and lightly strained gazpacho is bottled and chilling and I made my mom’s internationally-famous rice salad. Kale’s been stripped and ready for salad making with grated beets, carrots and a lemon maple vinegarette. Farmers marketed for a stir fry and left over egg foo yung over the week.
The last of the barbecued chicken and corn on the cob are doing there thing for tonight’s dinner.
It is going to be in the above 100’s all week, so almost all the cooking is done and the fridge is stocked with 1/2 made or prepped stuff. Sun teas are cooling on the counter.
It was a good day, in and around the kitchen with some music and a weinie dog. Centering and bracing for a week and trying to make the best of what little I can pretend I control. As soon as I hit the button, it’s time for a icy beer and finish climbing laundry mountain.
Nicole
Oh, awesome! The 7-year-old has decided he is now a pescatarian, and we are trying to be supportive of this at home, so I’m always on the lookout for meat substitute ideas. Totally going to try the meatballs.
opiejeanne
@Ella in New Mexico: Seriously. I always think of the Four Horsemen in Pratchett & Gaiman’s “Good Omens”, the one replacing Famine is a diet guru who convinces people they can live on air and sunshine.
raven
I just came back from the low country boil I did. They seemed to like it.
opiejeanne
@Nicole: My youngest child decided she was a vegetarian when she was 11. I made sure she had a healthy diet without eating meat and it worked. I can’t remember if she ate fish or not. She had a tough time on a visit to Disneyland until we discovered a place that had a veggie burger on the menu, in Bear Country. It was kind of nothing but ketchup helped a lot.
She lasted three months, until Thanksgiving.
debbie
@Phylllis:
Substitute Hellmans for Dukes for a true mater sammich! ?
eclare
@raven: Yum!
glaukopis
@Laura: I’ve had good luck with Ropa Vieja in my newish instant pot. Takes about an hour and very tender.
Nicole
@opiejeanne: In all fairness to the kid, it’s not like he would eat much meat before. He’d eat the breading off chicken fingers and leave the chicken. At least with the vegetarian versions, he’ll eat the whole nugget.
I was a really picky eater at his age, so I can’t hold it against him.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Disneyland has a LOT more vegetarian choices now, and they mark them on the map so you can find them ahead of time. My vegan/veggie friend swears by the vegetarian stew they have in Bear Country. Plus, of course, it’s easy to make Mexican food vegetarian.
Mnemosyne
So I was finally able to get my FODMAPs recipes from the dietician and have been using them this week. I’m getting ready to make some stuffed peppers for dinner, and will then spend the remainder of the evening pre-making some mini frittatas to have for breakfast throughout the week. I have the ingredients to make a strawberry frozen yogurt, but haven’t decided yet if I feel like doing that tonight.
Marguerite Hill
@raven: Looks totally yummy! Now I will have to pander to my tummy and make a low country boil Tuesday or Wednesday!
rikyrah
Everything looks delicious ???
opiejeanne
@Nicole: I understand. I was called a picky eater but it was just an aversion to casseroles because they contained things like onions and I thought I didn’t like onions back then. I hated tomatoes because the ones we grew were very acidic and had very big hard cores and the ones in the stores were a bland version of his. I realized as an adult that I have a mild allergy to tomatoes. The ones we grow are delicious but after eating them for a week or so I start having a reaction: the roof of my mouth gets itchy and my sinuses start to run. Very annoying. Casseroles were places where Mom could hide things that small children might not want to eat, then cover it with cheese or tomato sauce or gravy.
My dad and sister thought she was a good cook and she made excellent pies and fried chicken and pot roast, but after I left home I discovered that vegetables didn’t have to be gray and cooked to death. I discovered the joy of fresh garlic and came to appreciate onions and zucchinis are a joy,
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I figured they had a lot more now. It must have been 1989 or 1990 and they probably already had more options; we just didn’t find them.
satby
I made a tomato-mushroom-basil-spinach sort of quiche with ricotta cheese to use up some of the garden bounty. So good I made it the following week too.
Jeffro
Making Hawaiian Sloppy Joes and Shenandoah Valley-Style Barbecue Chicken later this week. Not for the same meal! I also have a hankering for homemade pimiento cheese and might whip up a batch of that too.
Mnemosyne
I was able to find the recipe for what I made tonight on the dietician’s blog:
Stuffed Bell Peppers
It’s low-FODMAPs and made a pretty ridiculously big batch of food. I had to cook them in 2 batches because I only have one 11×17 pan, but I looks like I will be able to freeze some of the extra.
The low-FODMAPs marinara sauce I used was Rao’s Homemade Sensitive, which I found at Whole Foods.
opiejeanne
that@Mnemosyne: I’m glad you’re finding ways to feed yourself. My middle kid did that and has found that she’s sensitive to a lot of foods she never suspected before.
Rolf KH Boettger
If there’s no meat in the balls, don’t call them meatballs.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Doing the FODMAPs thing is a pain in the ass because it’s completely unintuitive and you have to make almost everything from scratch because it turns out that almost EVERY prepared food has some kind of FODMAP in it, but hopefully it will help. I’m just starting the second week and I had several times this week where I was forced to eat out, so I haven’t seen a whole lot of improvement yet.
And if Darkrose is lurking, Stephanie Clairmont is the dietician whose online program is the one I’m currently doing. Between her and Kate Scarlata (the other dietician who stays plugged into Monash U’s research), I tend to like Stephanie’s recipes better.
TaMara (HFG)
@Rolf KH Boettger: Thank you for dropping all your important works today in order to stop by and add this profound comment to our recipe thread. I don’t know how we could get by without you.
Mart
As a 22 year cheesatarian, those spinach and ricotta non-meatballs are one of the three best fake meats I have ever consumed. The mouthfeel is very close to a hamburger meatball. Highly recommended if you want to take your fiirst step to meatless Monday.