I love balls.

After having pumpkin scones almost every day last week, I went back to an old standby – the bagel sammie!  1 small onion bagel (the only time I’ll do onion anything), 1/4 cup egg beaters, 1/2 ounce swiss cheese and 1 oz. deli ham.  A delicious 9 PointsPlus breakfast that kept me full for hours.

I actually got the idea for my zucchini meat balls from Rocco’s Now Eat This cookbook.  But the recipe called for charring a small eggplant, and then after the eggplant cooled, scraping out the seeds and then using only 1/4 cup of the eggplant flesh and reserving the rest for another use.  First of all, I hate eggplant, and second of all, the remainder of the eggplant had I used it would just be thrown out in 3 weeks the next time I deep clean my refrigerator.

Biz’s Zucchini Meat Balls

• 1 ball – 2 points, 2 balls – 5 points, 3 balls – 7 points

Ingredients:

• 1 zucchini (mine was 6 ounces)
• 8 ounces ground beef (I used 20% fat – nice!)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup egg beaters
• 1/4 cup fresh basil
• 6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper

I made the mistake of putting all these ingredients in my food processor, so the balls are not as firm as they should be.  Everyone likes firm balls, right? 😀  Next time I would process everything but the meat, and then mix the meat and zucchini/egg mixture together.

But the flavor was amazing – so I had 3 balls, a 1.5 ounce roll (I hollowed out some of the bread from the roll), 3/4 ounce of mozzarella cheese and homemade marinara sauce. 

I cooked the balls in about 1 teaspoon of olive oil and mostly Pam. 

Then I assembled my sammie at work.  I nuked the balls for 1 minutes.  Then put the balls on my roll, put the marinara over the top, and the cheese and put it in my office toaster oven on broil for about 5 minutes.

You guys have to try these balls.  I am sure they would be a bit less points with leaner meat, but these were so tender and delicious.  I did add crushed red pepper to half the ball mixture – I preferred those better. 😀

On the side I had watermelon and papaya.  Lunch comes in at 10 points.  But I learned a valuable lesson – papaya tastes like the bottom of a bird cage – ew!  Never buying that fruit again!

I did my 50 minute walk at lunch – turns out I walk a mile in 15 minutes – I am going to try to pick up the pace this week.  It was a gorgeous day – 75 degrees, sunny and breezy.

Over the weekend Tony and I grilled a marinated flank steak – our store marinated it and it was so good.  We had leftovers, and I morphed them into the best taquitos last night.  I had 3 corn tortillas, 2 ounces of chopped meat, .75 ounces of cheddar cheese, 3 tablespoons of refried beans.  I added 1 teaspoon of canola oil in my points because I deep fried these, but I’ve said it before, since our fryer holds the temperature well, nothing is really greasy.

On the bottom I had a romaine salad with cucumbers and just used my smoked salsa as a dressing – such a delicious 9 PointsPlus dinner. 😀

Stats for Monday:

• 29 points exactly, no wine 😀
• 50 minute walk at lunch
• 25 minute Shred at 8:45 last night because I said I was going to do it 😀
• average blood sugar 132

Biggest Loser finale tonight!   I hope either Hannah or Olivia wins. 😀 

Have a great Tuesday!