Every Day Paleo's Garden Fresh Meatballs

Todays Recipe. - Last night's meal Garden Fresh Meatballs came courtesy of Sarah at everydaypaleo.com.  Sarah is, as she puts it, "a busy mother of three, wife, CrossFit coach, and well – totally human." I like Sarah's approach to cooking because her recipes are, by definition, every-day type meals.  In essence, if you think you dont have time to cook paleo, you now have NO excuses!  Sarah's recipes are easy to make, inexpensive to purchase, are hella tasty and are even attractive to kids.  Being readily acceptable by kids is a big plus for me as I try to get my own kids on the path to eating healthily.  I dont think Ive made one Every Day Paleo that my kids didnt devour included the veggies.

It was about 9:30 last night before I finally got home from working out and grocery shopping.  I did make a commitment to make this recipe, however, so I buckled down and made it happen.  And boy am I glad that I did!  By 10:30 I was mowing down some down right tasty, albeit very hot, meatballs.

Ingredients - I had a bear of a time trying to track down some of these ingredients.  Not because they were super rare items or anything, but the first two places I went to didn't have Zucchinis!  WTH?!  How do you run out of Zucchini?  And then, at Stater Bros I finally did find them BUT, they had them listed as "Italian Squash."  I don't know why things always have to have complicated fancy names.  Cant we just stick with what EVERYONE already knows?!  Anywho, I got all of my meat, roasted peppers, and eggs at Trader Joe's and I got my veggies, and almond meal at Henry's.  Henry's is Southern California's "Farmers Market"  They have a lot of organic foods etc.  I get my raw milk from them as well.  You may have a Sprouts or Whole Foods in your area.  So, other than not being able to find the zucchin....I mean Italian Squash readily available, sourcing the ingredients went fairly easily.  The recipe said to salt and pepper to taste.  I probably used 2-3 teaspoons of salt but I wish I would have added a little bit more, or added another ingredient to spice it up a little.  Suggestions?

FitDay Calculations - I thought adding the macro-nutrient breakdown to the recipes that I post here would be helpful to me in the future. So, after plugging in all the ingredients to FitDay I got the following breakdown. 

Entire Recipe
Total Calories: 4,304
Fat: 258g
Carbs: 139.7g
Protein: 358.1g

Per Meatball (Total divided by 21):

Total Calories: 205
Fat: 12.3g
Carbs: 6.65g
Protein: 17g


Cost - The total cost for all of my ingredients came out to about 17 dollars.   Not bad for a meal that could feed the whole family. 

Preparation - This was another recipe that would be a fun one for the kids because, like the Meatza, you get to use your hands to mix all the meat and ingredients together.  It took me about 30 minutes to completely prepare this meal.  At least 10 minutes of that time was from me running around the kitchen trying to find all the right utensils, bowls, and cookware.  Having a food processor was a big time-saver on this one.  The yam and zucchini were shredded in no time, and mincing the rest of the vegetables was a breeze.  You will spend more time cleaning up the food processor than actually using it.  After all of my veggies were minced and in the bowl ready to be dropped into the meat, I thought there was a mistake.  The meat to veggie ratio seemed very skewed towards the veggies.  I started to think that it was too much, but I trust Sarah and dumped the bowl of veggies into the meat and egg mix.  In hindsight, these are Garden Fresh meatballs after all and the ratio of meat to veggies turned out to be perfect.  The flavors blended well.  That reminds me, I need to get my mom a new mixing container for her Cuisinart.  The safety has broken on it and you have to use a knife to push the safety switch down.  The entire lid can, of course, be left open!!!  Its super scary watching a yam get obliterated and knowing that it could just as easily be your finger!

Since the meat is a bit sticky when its ready to be placed into the cooking dishes I found that doing a sort of back and forth rolling and dropping from one hand to the other worked well in making nice round balls.  Basically, grab a chunk of the mix in your left hand, start rolling it between your hands until you can tilt your left hand sideways and the lump rolls off into your right hand.  Now raise your right hand above the left and tilt your right hand so the ball falls back into your left hand.  Increase the speed and the back and forth motion will continue to keep the lump in motion and form it into a perfect little ball!

Cooking - It took all of the 45 minutes suggested in the recipe to cook this dish.  I would have preferred to use one cooking dish here, I couldn't find one dish to fit all of my meatballs.  It was pretty late in the evening, and I didnt want to wake the house with all my banging and cursing, so I just grabbed two of the closest dishes I could find.

When I popped these into the oven I was dreading the 45 minute wait because I was tired.  10 rounds of 15x 135# deadlit and 15 pushups had me begging for a warm bed.  But, my sister, Ruby Rocker of the OC Roller Girls roller derby league, popped in and we talked derby and food making the time skate by like the lead jammer in a roller derby bout.  That is to say, that time went by rather quickly.

Eating, tasting - A word of caution before I get into how good this meal was.  Be careful removing the foil from the dishes!  It flippin hot in them there dishes and that steam is just looking for a finger or hand or face to scald!  Seeing as I didn't learn my lesson when I opened the first dish, I scalded my hand twice.  I had a plate of 6 of these tasty morsels and I felt adequately satisfied, but I'm kind of a big guy.  One or two of these would feed my kids just fine and would be perfect in their lunches!  As I said earlier, I could have done with a little extra salt to the recipe or some other spice.  I would love to hear a suggestion about that, though, as I never know what spice would go well with certain dishes.  As a complete meal, some kind of sauce would be quite delicious on these as well.  Just drizzle a little sauce over the top and mmmmmmmm.  I think some Parmesan cheese mixed would have been a nice touch too.  Once these were cooled off and say, in a lunch container, they would make good finger foods and would be very portable.


Verdict - I really enjoyed these meatballs (and will be enjoying them for lunch today).  They were quite painless to make, other than getting scalded by the steam, inexpensive, and would work well as a lunch for me or the kids.  I plan on making a few changes the next time I try them, more salt, cheese, etc.  But on their own, they were still delicious!  I also really like that each meatball packs in a bunch of veggies.  Maybe its not a huge variety, but its like a paleo version of the chips ahoy cookies, bet you cant take a bite without getting some veggies!

Thank you Sarah for a great recipe!

Sources -

Everyday Paleo
Garden Fresh Meatballs
OC Roller Girls Roller Derby League
FitDay Nutrition Calculations
Organic Pastures Raw Milk