This week I decided to make my own jam, and I made a bunch of beef meatballs for dinner. Cooking the meatballs in advance was a nice change from making them every day because it helped me get dinner ready much faster after they were all cooked.
Here's my strawberry jam bubbling away on the stove. It's 1 lb strawberries that I hulled, quartered, and froze back in April. I let them thaw and then cooked them down with 1/2 c sugar and 2 tb lemon juice. After the juices started to get really thick I pureed the mixture with a stick blender. It made 8 oz of jam.
Mmmmm tasty jam. Pureeing it after cooking makes for a thinner set. If you'd like thicker jam, puree the berries before cooking. This recipe comes out at 34 calories per tablespoon.
For breakfast, I couldn't convince myself to drink tomato juice. I always think it tastes like watery pasta sauce and it grosses me out a bit. Instead I've added butter to my toast and jam to make breakfast a bit more hearty. This looks and feels like an extremely tiny breakfast, but it was necessary to fit in my calorie dense dinner.
Toast with 1/2 tb butter and 1 tb strawberry jam, coffee & sugar - 197 calories.
Here's lunch. I don't think I've ever had a veal and butter sandwich, so instead I decided to go with ham and use up the rest of the swiss cheese from last week. I tucked some baby arugula in there instead of plain small lettuce leaves. Served with a pickle and some fresh cherries because they looked delicious at the market so I got them.
Sandwich, pickle, and 5 oz cherries - 390 calories
For dinner the menu suggested hamburgers, but I had a request to make meatballs. Home made meatballs are one of my favorite things to make, so I obliged. Unfortunately they don't photograph all that well, but I promise you there are meatballs in that sauce.
To make the meatballs, I mixed 3 lbs of ground beef with 1 cup panko bread crumbs, 1 tb worcestershire sauce, 2 eggs, and a few tb of a spice blend I made. The spice blend is equal parts cayenne, paprika, oregano, thyme, caraway seed, garlic powder, and onion powder, mixed with two parts red pepper flakes, salt, and black pepper. Total it made 64 meatballs, and I have 5 with my meal. Each meatball is about 60 calories.
I baked them at 350 F for about 15 minutes, bagged up individual portions, and then boiled what I needed each night in the pasta sauce, in a very small pot with a lid, before serving.
The pasta is a Barilla spaghetti, the sauce is Classico Four Cheese, and the cheese on top is Tilamook's Farmstyle Italian blend. I went ahead and had a whole serving of pasta most nights (2 oz) but to make this lower calorie I think next time I'd have less pasta, fewer meatballs (or turkey instead of beef because that's what I usually make), and a veggie side dish like the menu suggested.
Pasta with sauce, meatballs, & cheese - 640 calories.
Total day's calories - 1227.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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