Gas prices and turkey veggie meatballs

As you can see, the price of gasoline dropped in the last couple of days. Roseburg gas is running a good ten cents per gallon CHEAPER but then it is a 90 mile drive one way for that way cheap gas. And of course I could take my gas discount coupon from the Safeway here, drive 20 miles to Coos Bay for a savings of what was that, 3 cents?




I have been jonesing for some home made meatballs. Yesterday I jacked a recipe from the net and made 80 beef meatballs consisting of 3 lbs ground beef, 1/2 cup shredded Parm, 2 eggs, 1 cup bread crumbs, 1/2 cup chopped carrots, 1/2 cup chopped zucchini, 1/2 cup chopped green onions, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 2 tbsp garlic, shape into 1 1/2 inch size balls bake in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes.

Today, since I had LOTS of left over carrots, onion and zucchini, I purchased an additional three pounds of ground turkey and made another 80 meatballs, same recipe. Texture is a bit more bouncy and not quite as flavorful as the beef meatballs but they will do in a pinch with pasta and spaghetti sauce.

Oh yeah, PRODUCT REVIEW; I have a very nice heavy duty stand mixer for which numerous attachments can be purchased to make pasta, sausages etc. I purchased a food grinder attachment. I read the directions printed in three languages on how to attach the thing.

I plugged it in and manfully ground up the rest of my carrots. Good god what a mess! First of all there is no way to drain off all the juice created unless you tip the whole 15 pound thing out over the sink. I had itty bitty pieces of carrot EVERY damn where. I was worse than when my blender came apart after having blended a gallon of ingredients for flan. Yuck! Ick! Did that stop me?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo.....I tried grinding the zucchini, then the onion and then some MORE carrots! I finally had to stop, take the thing apart and disassemble in order to get the remainder of the ground carrots out of the thing.

True, I did have a nice handy several cups full of ground veggies to use in my meatball recipe. But it was a firetruckin' mess. I am stained orange in places that I would not ordinarily be stained.

I have concluded that it would have been much quicker to drag out the blender, toss in a cup of water, blend the carrots, drain the water, voila done in 45 seconds.

I have written myself instructions on the inside lid of the mixer attachment box, in three languages just in case!!

Oh wait... why didn't I use the food processor? I do have a mini one and I did grind up the first zucchini successfully and after that it refused to work any more...which is why I rather smugly assembled the mixer attachment, see paragraph four. I shall note the same directions in three languages for the mini food processor as well.