Bean Balls!

No Meat Monday has come early! I've been thinking since watching "Fork Over Knives" and have realized a couple of things. I rarely ate meat in college or grad school. College consisted mainly of oatmeal, cereal, soup and grilled cheese. When I lived with Grandma for a semester in grad school dinner normally had meat but she's super healthy and it was always a balanced meal (and always a yummy salad!). When I lived by myself I didn't eat a lot of meat because I was poor/I was just cooking for me/totally going to die from food poisoning. Now that I live with the boy, I cook a lot of meat and there is just generally more food. Time to start working on that.

Fresh out of the oven Bean Balls!

I've been craving spaghetti and meatballs or lasagna lately so I figured this would be a good place to start. There are several recipes for vegetarian meatballs or bean balls I found on the internet, all of them are very similar. So I took bits and pieces and combined it with my meatball recipe. It came out pretty good! The texture is very soft but flavor wise it was good (especially once it was in the sauce). I tried one right out of the oven an it reminded me of falafel or red pepper hummus. I might be able to sneak these by as a super soft turkey meatball since we had some very delicious soft meatballs at Christmas. I'll tell Mr. Lawyer eventually, I just want to see if he'll notice!

Bean Balls!

(adapted from the internet)

Ingredients:
2 cans of beans, rinsed and roughly mashed (I used cannellini but saw recipes for black, pinto, garbanzo, etc)
1 roasted red pepper, minced (or raw or carrots! so many different recipes)
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
1/3 cup onion, finely chopped
1 egg
1/2 to 1 cup panko bread crumbs (I had to use 1 cup because my mixture was so wet)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Italian herbs (or fresh)
Sauce and Pasta
Directions:
1. Mix together all ingredients. Do not over mix or puree the beans, you want there to be some texture!
2. Form into "meatballs" and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
3. Add to sauce and bring to simmer. Serve with pasta.