Turkey Shmurkey!!

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” ~ Calvin Trillin

Okay, that’s not necessarily true about my mom! She absolutely hates left overs.  I, on the other hand, try to always make enough to have left overs. I’m not always successful, but alas, I try.

In the last few years I’ve been trying to eat and cook “cleaner” foods. There are a plethora of reasons why I personally try to, but that’s not what my blog is about today.  Just know that I’m not an absolute freak about it.  Unfortunately, you will sometimes see me inhaling a massive fast food char broiled burger and I wont even blink an eye.  Until about 20 minutes later, then I’m saying, “Why am I such a piggy?”  My love of food is more of a love/hate relationship.  I LOVE to cook.  And I don’t discriminate the type of food I LOVE to cook.  I enjoy anything from your baked chicken to spaghetti carbonara….and the way I make the carbonara is with heavy cream.  Yes, I said it.  CREAM.  If you look up the other ingredients, you will find it’s basically a heart attack waiting to happen.  And that’s one of the parts I hate…but love…but hate. Argh.

Anyway,  learning to cook “cleaner” foods actually proved to be a bit challenging for me….simply because the type of “clean” eating I’ve been trying to do is basically, not fried, no preservatives, without gluten, legumes, and corn.  Again…that’s another blog waiting to maybe happen.  But with a little research and more prep than I really like, I have found that it isn’t impossible to do.

So there I was the other day with this plan on getting back into my work out routine and loading up on protein. So I bought ground turkey.  Oh goodness….ground turkey has been just…soo….*Sigh* I don’t know…frustrating?  But I was willing to give it another try.  So I came across this recipe on another gal’s blog that I absolutely loved!  Of course, the only alterations I made to it was that rather than ketchup, I used Chili Sauce while mixing the ingredients and added sea salt. And I doubled the recipe.

I tell you what…those little suckers were ABSOLUTELY FAB!  Like, for real.  I enjoyed them even more so the next day for Leftovers!  The only thing that I would do is wait about 5 minutes after taking them out of the oven, because they solidify a bit better.

So without further ado, here is the recipe to “Not Yo Momma’s Meatloaf Muffins”

Recipe taken from Dahlias to Doxies: Not Yo Momma’s Meatloaf Muffin’s

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 cup onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup carrot, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey or extra lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup ketchup, plus more for topping
• 1 cup saltine crackers (about 20), finely crushed
• 2 tablespoons mustard
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 eggs
• cooking spray

DirectionsPreheat the oven to 350°. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrot, garlic, and oregano to the skillet and sauté a couple minutes. Set veggies aside to cool.

In a large bowl, combine beef, ketchup, crackers, mustard, Worcestershire, and pepper. Add the cooled veggie mixture and eggs, mix all together.

Coat 12 cup muffin pan with cooking spray. Divide meat mixture evenly among 12 cups. Top each muffin with a drizzle of ketchup (or BBQ sauce). Bake at 350° for 25 minutes or until a thermometer reaches 165°.

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• Meatloaf (dawnoffood.com)