Turkey/ Chicken Meatballs

Meatballs are very versatile, and are a fallback-on-food when they have been made ahead of time. I buy 5lbs ground turkey at Sam's for around9.99. That's 1.99/lb (about half the price per pound at the grocery store). I make about 3 lbs of meatballs at a time and freeze them. During my dairy-free, soy-free days, I omitted the cheese and used soy free crushed pita chips in place of the bread crumbs. The changes were hardly recognizable.
A kitchen gadget that I use often right now is a cookie dough scoop. I use it to make evenly portioned meatballs. It also speeds up the prep time!

Meatballs:
Turkey/ Chicken Meatballs

1 LB ground Turkey or Chicken
¼ cup bread crumbs
10 sprigs of Italian Parsley chopped (optional)
1 TBSP ketchup
1/2 c grated Romano Cheese
1/4 tsp garlic powder
2 eggs
pinch of salt (especially if not using Romano cheese)

Mix all ingredients together. Spoon out onto a wax-paper lined cookie sheet. Use a cookie dough scoop for evenly sized meatballs or form by hand to desired size. Freeze on cookie sheet 4 hours- overnight. Remove and place in a large freezer Ziploc bag. Label and use within 3 months.
When cooking, remove from freezer, place in a skillet over medium heat with a little olive oil, cook until browned. Remember to turn the meatballs over often until evenly cooked which is about 15 minutes.
-OR-
Steam them in the oven. Preheat oven 400 degrees. Take a jelly roll pan or other baking sheet with high side and fill with 1/4 inch or less of water. Pull 20-30 meatballs from the freezer and place in a single layer on the watered baking sheet. Cover with foil and tuck side over the pan. Cook/steam meatballs for 30 minutes or until cooked all the way through.



Uses for Meatballs:

Meatball sandwich-cut open a hoagie, toast hoagie to desired crispiness, remove, add marinara sauce and mozzarella or provolone cheese slices, return to oven and toast until bubbles form on top.

Stroganoff-Dice 1 sm-med onion. Brown in a skillet in olive or vegetable oil. Add meatballs, 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, ½ tsp of garlic powder, 1 can of drained mushrooms (I leave out mushrooms). Add 2/3 can of water and stir. Simmer uncovered 15 min. Add a large dollop of sour cream (maybe 1/3 c). serve over egg noodles

Make an Asian-inspired Sweet and Sour soup broth. Add browned meatballs in 10 min before serving.

Italian Wedding soup

Italian Wedding Soup

This recipe was such a fun find during my months on the soy-free dairy-free diet. It was something I could eat and serve to my family for dinner. If you have a gluten-free guest or family member, you can cook their special pasta in another dish, while still enjoying the gluten pasta if you wish to do so. It has served a purpose in many a complicated diet moment.
More recently, a stomach bug has been passed around our house, so I thought this would be filling and delicate on a sensitive tummy. Illness or not, this soup is easy and low cal too.
One helpful hint that I learned this past year is not to add the pasta to a soup until you are serving it in the bowl. In the past, I would enjoy a soup and put the leftovers into 1 dish and returned the next day, only to discover that the soup was generally good, but that the pasta was mushy. The solution: cook the pasta it in a separate pan, drain and set aside until ready to serve AND store it in a different container than the soup/broth. Mix the 2 just before reheating in the microwave. Viola, almost as good as the night before and NOOO mushiness!

Italian Wedding Soup

2-3 TBSP olive oil
1 cup minced yellow onion
5 large carrots peeled and thinly sliced
2-3 stalks of celery thinly sliced (optional)
2 (32 oz each) cartons of chicken broth, maybe more
1 (6-10 oz) bag of baby spinach washed
pinch of salt
pinch of garlic powder

1 recipe of meatballs steamed

1/3-1/2 lb of Ditalini pasta cooked al dente according to the box. Drain and return to pan.



For meatballs: Preheat oven 400 degrees. Take a jelly roll pan or other baking sheet with high side and fill with 1/4 inch or less of water. Pull 20-30 meatballs from the freezer and place in a single layer on the watered baking sheet. Cover with foil and tuck side over the pan. Cook/steam meatballs for 30 minutes or until cooked al the way through.

For Soup: Heat a large non-stick dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions and celery. Cook 7-8 minutes or until translucent. Add carrots, broth, salt and garlic powder. Cook 12 minutes. Taste carrots to see if they have cooked to desired tenderness. Add steamed meatballs and bag of spinach. Stir 1 minute and take it to the table and serve. Add the desired amount of pasta to each person's bowl.

Biscotti

Everyone has their own way of saying it. Around our house, different family members call it scootie bootie, biss cootie or dunkers. You may know it as biscotti. Grandma likes hers without a topping and dunks it in her morning coffee. I like mine topped with a few zig zags of semi-sweet chocolate and a glass of cold milk. My husband prefers his topped with chocolate. Our 4 year-old eats it anyway, anywhere, and at anytime. Tonight some slices received a few zig zags of chocolate and for the first time, were topped with sprinkles!
He was such an enthusiastic helper. We made the dough this afternoon, wrapped it up, chilled it during nap time, and then baked it after dinner. I'm not sure if he was hungry or motivated by the biscotti, but he ate all of his vegetables at the dinner table without complaining. He helped pat the chilled dough into 2 loafs, watched it go into the oven, did a few silly dances and waited for it to be pulled out of the oven so that he could have his fair share.
Now it is 11PM and everyone has gone to sleep. I am left with a messy kitchen. One corner looks like it was dusted with snow (little bit's work area). No matter the mess, it was well worth the memories made and the tasty little cookies we produced.


This is actually a family recipe that I received many years ago from my sassy Sicilian Great Aunt. She passed away in 1999, but I think about her and my Grandma every time I use the recipe. I've looked up biscotti recipes online and my "family recipe" is similar to the other ones found. There are no secret ingredients in my recipe, just a few helpful hints on how long to bake it. Above are pictures of the process.
Buono Appetito!

Biscotti
2 1 /2 c all purpose flour
1 c sugar
1/4 c butter (slightly softened or at room temp)
chopped almonds
2 tsp double acting baking powder
1 tsp almond flavor
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/4 c sliced almonds (optional)

Start at least 2 1/2 hours before you plan to serve it or up to a week ahead of time.

Into a large bowl, measure 1 1/2 c flour and remaining ingredients. With mixer at low sped, beat ingredients until just mixed; increase speed to medium and beat 3 minutes, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. With sturdy spoon, stir in remaining flour until mixed. Add sliced almonds at his point if you wish. Wrap dough tightly in waxed paper; refrigerate 1 hour or until firm.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Divide dough in half. On a well-floured surface, with hands, shape each half into a 12" by 2" loaf; place both on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper spaced 2 inches apart. Bake 15 minutes for not so crumby texture or as long as 20 min.
Remove from oven. Using 2 sturdy metal spatulas, transfer each loaf to a wood cutting board and slice each loaf crosswise into 1 inch bars. Raise oven temp to 390. Turn bars on their sides, making sure they do not touch each other. Return to oven and bake 10 minutes (barely any golden) or up to 15 minutes, but not brown. Remove and place on a cooling rack. Store in tightly covered container or ziploc bag up to 1 week.

***I made this dairy free during the summer by using soy free and dairy free earth balance butter flavor spread. It was almost as good and did not negatively effect the texture. Using a digital scale, I weighed out the amount of the spread according to what 1/4 c of butter weighed. I didn't write it down though.

Dairy Free Soy Free

PHOTO: Thai Rice Paper wraps with leftover pork loin-also a great way to "reuse" leftover pork. All items including the sauce are soy/dairy free.

When my baby was 3 weeks old, she was diagnosed with an allergy to cow’s milk. Apparently, the proteins found in my breast milk (from Cow’s milk) irritated her little tummy. Shocked, but knowing that the health benefits outweighed the sacrifices, I was determined to continue nursing her. It is interesting to learn that there are many babies that have this issue, but grow out of it by their first birthday. My hope is that she will, too.

I thought that goat’s milk and goat’s milk cheese might be an alternative, but after doing some research, I discovered that a child may have a negative reaction to that as well, and she had a 50-60% chance of being allergic to soy. The only known alternative is Rice milk or “Almond drink.” Yes, both products are about as appealing as they sound.

My eating habits were turned upside down. For 2 weeks after her diagnosis, my breakfast consisted of oatmeal or cheerios with Rice milk. Lunch and dinner were not much more adventurous. Homemade meatloaf, steamed veggies or a salad (with oil and vinegar) was about all I would allow myself to eat. Nothing went into my mouth without checking the package to make certain the product does not contain a dairy or soy ingredient.

Over the next few days, I did extended grocery store visits to look at packaging. My desire was to make a list of items for my pantry that were dairy and soy free and then incorporate them into my family's nightly meals. I am blessed to live in the suburbs of Nashville, TN, so I have many great options. I feel for the moms who live further out where dairy or soy free alternatives may not be available. I was greatly encouraged by what I found at Kroger, Publix, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's. They had Canola oil mayo, coconut milk ice cream, coconut yogurt, and a dairy free soy free imitation butter spread. I began thinking that I may make it at this elimination stint.

Probably the most difficult task was eating at other people’s homes, traveling over the weekend, or being away from home all day long. On such occasions, I prepared ahead of time with cold meals for the cooler or grabbed an apple or natural cereal bar. I had to constantly turn down food at friends' houses. On one occasion at a playmate's house, my little 3 year-old said no to a cookie. When I asked why, he said, "I can't have soy." He could, but must have been imitating my usual response to people.

This elimination diet was terribly time-consuming and greatly increased our grocery budget. Each week, I discovered a few new items or how to manipulate a recipe that I could add to the list. In a nutshell, the food I consumed was mostly fresh items with very few processed foods.

Our sweet little girl continued to have tummy troubles and although she never had blood tests to confirm additional allergies, the doctors told us that she may have a wheat, nut, egg or shellfish allergy. After learning this, I decided I would not do further eliminations from my diet, but would put her on formula until age 1. I may need to experiment with more recipes next year after she has been tested.

I lasted 3 months and 10 days on the dairy free, soy free diet. The one instance that I ate out was for my birthday at a Nashville restaurant named Miel. They specialize in organic food and inquired if I had any allergy concerns. It was a little pricey, but a very satisfying meal.

*******My personal product list from below was conducted in the Winter and Spring of 2010. Be sure to check packages before consuming, as some items may have changed.*******

Publix:
Kangaroo Pita chips-sea salt
Wholey Guacamole
Baguette-----Make your own bread crumbs

Kroger Marketplace
Rice milk,
Coconut yogurt
Coconut milk ice cream
Canola mayo
Tropical frozen fruit (for Smoothies)
Organic beans
Delallo Olive Bruschetta
Earth Balance brand soy and dairy free butter flavor spread
Breakfast bars (strawberry was best)

Whole Foods
Organic baguette
Soy free/Dairy free ice cream (Purely Decadent brand)
butternut squash-filled ravioli in freezer area
soy and dairy free buns ($4)


Meal ideas:
Salad with self-made dressing
BLT
Broccoli soup with chicken broth
Crepes made with rice milk topped with fruit or syrup
mac, egg and oil soup
Eggplant with pasta and sauce
Fried rice egg, rice, peas, carrots, few onions, BACON
Frittata (NO Cheese, but sautéed veggies, sausage, ditalini, zucchini)
Jerk Chicken and mango salsa
Meatloaf (grated carrots and pita chips)
Spaghetti / Pasta and red sauce
stuffed peppers
Whole Baked chicken with olive oil
Thai rice paper wraps with leftover pork
grilled veggies
Stuffed tomatoes (with tuna salad
Orzo salad (minus the feta)
Meatballs-open face sandwich w/ pizza sauce
Polenta (Organic @ Trader Joe’s)
Northern white beans
--California rolls (egg, cucumber, carrot, faux crab mixed w/ mayo)

Muffeleta sandwich with Organic baguette and Delallo Olive Bruschetta-Kroger $5.99
& salami
Melissa Barron bean salad
Roast, potatoes and carrots

Fish Tacos
Beef/ turkey tacos
Gumbo and rice
Split pea soup
Pot of 15 bean soup
Homemade egg rolls with Pepper jelly
Homemade Pot stickers
P.F.Chang’s style chicken wraps-made at home
Fajitas (with fautoyah wrap)
Quesadilla (corn, chili beans, salsa, chicken) Fautoyah wrap

Tuna medallions
Beouf bourguignon
Chicken salad
Tuna Salad

Crab legs
Sweet and sour pork chops over rice
Pork loin
Potato salad
Baked beans
Black beans with 2 scoops of fresh salsa (side dish)
Black eyed peas
Salmon cakes


Soups:
Italian wedding soup
Chili
Chicken broth or beef base soup
Leek and potato
Tortilla soup

Snacks:
Guacamole
Hummus with carrots and peppers and pita chips
Fresh fruit-banana, cantaloupe, strawberries, apples, grapes, watermelon


Salads
-Brianna’s Home style “the New American” (creamy balsamic)
-Paula Deen’s Peach (Wal-mart)-I didn't like this one
-Brianna’s Home Style Blush Wine Vinaigrette,
-homemade thousand island,
-homemade French (mustard base),
-home made Asian

Salad carrots, boiled eggs, nuts, craisins, raisins, can corn, tomato, pita chip crumbs (instead of crutons)
grilled chicken, deli oven roasted turkey breast, low- sodium ham
Brushetta / tomatoes in olive oil and basil w/ pinch of salt
Sliced cucumbers in red wine vinegar, salt and pepper



Dessert:
biscotti
Popsicle
Sorbet
Smoothie with coconut yogurt
Chocolate purely Decadent Coconut milk ice cream
Lemon icebox cookies
Jello fluff recipe
Rice crispy Treats


Breakfast:
Oatmeal (trader Joe’s instant apple and cin or Kroger brand)
Eggs
Omelet (ham, salsa)
Rice milk pancakes from scratch w/ Scharffen Berger Chocolate
French toast with
Cheerios with Rice milk