Today was a fairly typical full-time-mommy-mode day. After walking to school with the kids to drop off the older one, we came home. While the little guy entertained himself with his ever-expanding collection of Thomas the Tank Engine trains, I re-heated some leftover seasoned ground beef, garlic cauliflower puree and mixed veggies.
After scarfing down my breakfast, the two of us went to the park and synthesized some vitamin D while we goofed around on the swings and jungle gym. At lunchtime, we swung by the school to pick up the kindergartner and then headed home to eat.
For my lunch, I made a salad with a bunch of items I’d prepared yesterday, including mixed greens, roasted bell peppers, roasted beets, a hard-boiled egg, sous vide pork chop, cucumbers, and shredded carrots.
It’s a snap to whip together a meal when your ingredients are ready to eat. I gotta keep this in mind the next time I’m feeling too lazy for meal prep.
By the time lunch was done, I was already thinking about dinner.
The Food Lover’s Primal Palate just posted a tantalizing recipe for Paleo spaghetti and meatballs on their blog – and that’s EXACTLY what my older son has been nagging me to make this past week. (Okay, he didn’t specify that it had to be Paleo. Whatever.) So after I put the three-year-old down for a nap, the six-year-old and I began making Paleo meatballs for dinner.
We gathered up the ingredients…
…and set to work.
My kiddo helped blitz the onions – though his itchy trigger finger lingered a bit too long on the “pulse” button, which just about liquefied the onions.
Another unwanted side effect: The whirring of the mini-prep woke up the napping rugrat (sigh), who then decided to groggily join our kitchen antics.
See his bed head? He gets that from his dad.
After we incorporated the onions and other ingredients into the meat and formed the raw meatballs, we stowed ‘em in the fridge and drove off to the big kid’s kung fu class.
When we got home, I began making dinner in earnest by preheating the oven to 350 F and grabbing the meatballs out of the fridge. After sitting in the refrigerator for three hours, the slushy wetness of the too-finely-minced onions had combined with the meat to produce some brown ooze which pooled around the balls o’ meat. The stuff congealed as the meatballs baked. Not pretty. Next time, I’ll make sure the onions aren’t pulverized to death, and if they are, I’ll just add a little coconut flour to absorb the moisture.
While the meatballs browned in the oven, I sautéed some sliced mushrooms…
…and added half a jar of store-bought sauce.
Sorry folks, but I’m too lazy to make my own marinara sauce. I love Rao’s but Cucina Antica is tasty, Paleo-compliant, and cheaper to boot.
I simmered the sauce and mushrooms for a few minutes and set it aside until the meatballs were finished.
Then, I cooked up some green beans to go with the meatballs. I don’t really like the texture of spaghetti squash and I wasn’t gonna go out and buy one.
Since the meatballs weren’t super browned at the 25-minute mark (due to the excess moisture), I cranked on my broiler and blasted them for an additional 4 minutes. When I took them out…
…I scraped off the aforementioned goo around the meatballs…
…and tossed the meatballs in the sauce.
I plated the meatballs with some green beans and we dug in.
These meatballs were really easy and yummy – my favorite combination! (I mean, who in their right mind wants difficult and gross?) I can’t wait to revisit this dish and rectify the minor mistakes we made today. My older son was beaming with pride over the meatballs he made AND he wolfed down two helpings. Of course, the younger one didn’t like it at all (he covered his mouth with the crook of his arm and refused a second bite) but that’s another story entirely. He’s one stubborn mo-fo. We’re just relieved that he’s willing to eat scrambled eggs now, albeit reluctantly.
Thanks Bill and Hayley for another great kid-friendly recipe!
