Carolina Cooks: Great balls of cheesy meat

Holy crap. Holycrapholycrapholycrap. I just had the most amazing balls ever.

Stop it.

I'm talking meat balls, kids.

A few factors combined to create this life-altering moment of bliss.

1. My mother has a serious, potentially dangerous addiction to Costco and consequently, brought over 4 pounds of ground turkey meat to store in my freezer.
2. I've become obsessed with reading recipes on Pioneer Woman because she has lots of gorgeous pictures of food that I drool over.
3. Chris is gone all week and he did not hire a ladysitter to cook my meals.

So tonight I decided to do something about all that meat. A tub of blue cheese in the fridge beckoning to me. Called my name.

"Zina. Carolina. eat me. eat me"

And you just can't ever go wrong with meat + cheese. A quick google search led me to this recipe:

Tantalizing Turkey and Blue Cheese Meatballs

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic

1/2 onion, cut into chunks

2 jalapeno peppers, halved and seeded

1 pound ground turkey

3 tablespoons blue cheese

1/2 cup bread crumbs

3 egg whites

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon dried parsley

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon chili powder


Directions
1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.

2.  Pulse garlic cloves in a food processor until minced. Add onion and jalapeno, and pulse until minced again. Scrape the onion mixture into a large bowl along with the turkey, blue cheese, bread crumbs, egg whites, and olive oil. Season with soy sauce, dried parsley, Italian seasoning, pepper, and chili powder. Mix well.

3.  Roll the mixture into 2 inch balls, and place onto prepared baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven until golden brown, and no longer pink in the center, about 25 minutes.

Substitutions: Instead of soy sauce, I used salt and instead of parsley I used basil. I also don't have a food processor (hint, hint Santa) so I just chopped the garlic, onion and jalapeno.

Note: Some of the cheese will ooze out while baking but it still maintains that earthy blue cheesy flavor.

Meatballs with a side of wild rice

I hoped they would be good but oh my God. OH MY GOD. Tantalizing is an understatement. The flavors of the jalapeno, blue cheese and other seasonings combined to create this incredible burst of flavor.  MmmmmmmMmmmmmmMmmmmMmmMmm.

Okay fine I'll stop now. Just make them, for my sake.

Come home Chris, this is getting out of hand.

Carolina Cooks: Dinner Improv

Chris had a bad day on Monday. I didn't anticipate quite how bad it would be but I knew he'd be exhausted and starving by the time he got home so I wanted to make a tasty meal for him.

A quick scan of the mostly empty fridge and pantry revealed that my options were meager. I knew I'd have to improvise. I remembered seeing a half empty jar of pizza sauce which kickstarted a pizza craving.

A tiny lightbulb went off when I remembered we had some frozen naan in the freezer.

And a block of cheddar cheese that I could shred.

5 minutes later I had gathered all the ingredients and was dicing the vegetables. Your pantry and fridge will determine what you put on your pizza but here is what I used:

2 pieces of naan (could also use english muffins)

Cheddar cheese - shredded

A few tablespoons tomato sauce

Half a jalapeno pepper - diced

1 clove garlic - minced

One slice of red onion - diced

4 pieces of large pepperoni

A few sprinkles of blue cheese

Prep

Preheat your oven to 350. Scatter about a tablespoon of pizza sauce onto naan ovals. Top with whatever you want. Sprinkle with cheese.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until naan is crispy on bottom and cheese is bubbling. Sprinkle with seasonings (oregano, red pepper flake etc.) if you'd like. Easy peeazy.

For the side, I also made a box of rice and beans. All in all it took 25 minutes start to finish and Chris loved it. A little bit of improv goes a long way.

This website will even do the improvising for you. Just list the ingredients that you have at home and it churns out recipes that can be made with them. It's helped me make many a casserole.

Carolina Cooks: From the kitchen

I have the good fortune of living with a cooking fanatic. Chris loves to brainstorm what our next meal should be and how he can make it as delicious as possible. And I love to eat it. 

I've gotten hundreds, maybe thousands of letters from fans of my blog asking me to post pictures of what delightful dishes he's been cooking lately. Who am I to go against popular demand?

Chicken nachos

Yellow curry, rice and naan

Fish sticks and buffalo fries

Chicken chili

BBQ chicken and bacon pizza (with homemade bbq sauce)

Shepherd's pie

Carolina style: BBQ chicken, Baked beans, Cole slaw and Corn bread

Buffalo chicken pizza

Thin crust BBQ chicken and bacon pizza

Bacon, cheese and bison burger with spicy roasted potatoes