Mission: Meatball

The real title of this post should be “Mission: Meatball & Other Random Musings.”  Actually every post I write should include “and other random musings,” but by now you probably all know that without me saying it.  I’m glad we know each other so well.

It’s a somewhat crazy week for me.  Paper due Monday, paper due Tuesday and paper due Wednesday.  Yikes, that’s a lot of paper writing.  Remind me why I’m writing a blog post instead of writing paper #3.

Anyways, my point is: don’t be worried if I keep disappearing this week.  I’m off cranking out papers.  And eating SpaghettiOs.

Wait, what??

Let me begin with a story.  A story about a girl who grew up eating SpaghettiOs (with franks, mind you) and went off to college only to continue eating SpaghettiOs.  Only now it was with meatballs and the microwave and usually at 2 AM.  I swear, I don’t know who that girl was.  I only heard stories about her and the scar on her hand from a dangerous encounter with a piping hot microwaved meatball that escaped from the SpaghettiOs bowl.

Okay seriously, though I always loved SpaghettiOs and just because I’ve refined my tastes and understand that SpaghettiOs are basically just a can of junk doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes miss those soft noodles and creamy red sauce.

Solution: Isa’s “Spaghetti-Nos with Mini Lentil Meatballs”

Because I’m a sucker for re-making junk food I ate when I was younger.

I’m also on a mission to find the perfect meatless meatball, so this recipe was right up my alley. 

And then I let Joey do all the hard work.  I’ll say it’s because I was busy writing a paper, but let’s be honest, I probably wasn’t.  Just like right now…

These were the closest we came to SpaghettiO noodles and sadly they weren’t soft enough for my liking because someone was being impatient.  But the sauce was pretty dead on in taste and the meatballs, while not quite as sturdy, were nice and crispy on the outside and packed a flavorful punch.

I’m not even going to pretend I didn’t stand over the stove and scrape the crispy pieces of meatball that were stuck to the bottom of the pan off and repeatedly burn my tongue.  Actually, between hot oatmeal and fresh off the stove soup, I’m pretty sure my mouth in permanently burned.  When will I learn?

Am I the only one who wishes someone would invent a new packaging method for tomato paste??  I only use 1 tablespoon out of that jar and end up throwing it away.  Maybe I should invent a new method!

 

Overall, I’m not sure this meatball recipe was “perfect” but it was probably my favorite so far.  Just wait till I’m graduated and have lots of free time to spend making meatless meatballs.

In other news, my yoga attendance has significantly decreased as of late and nothing made this more obvious than my sore arms and tight hamstrings today after having gone yesterday.  I swore my arms were going to give out during every chaturanga, which is weird considering I’ve been making an effort to lift at least twice a week!

Funniest thing I heard all weekend?  Joey asking me “Do we have peanut butter?” while at the store on Sunday.  I just starred at him.  Does he know who he was talking to?  Oddly enough, I returned home to find a dwindling supply of nut butter in general.  Which I further depleted during lunch.

I think Joey and I are in agreement that celery is really just another device for nut butter eating.

The only good thing about “dwindling” nut butter supplies is the promise of oats in a jar random container.

I tried something new for breakfast.  A dough-y oat smoothie.  Aka blended overnight oats.

Creamy.

While I missed the chewiness of regular old overnight oats, this oatmeal-smoothie fusion was kind of fun. 

All I did was combine 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup almond milk, 1 tablespoon chia seeds, 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup, a splash of vanilla and a dash of cinnamon in the blender then stuck the whole thing in the fridge overnight, then in the morning I added another 1/2 cup of milk and blended it all together. 

Topped as usual.

Anything with the word smoothie immediately strikes fear to my heart because it usually doesn’t keep me full.  This worked just fine for me in terms of satiety. 

I’m off to write!