Day 33: Meat balls!

This weekend I went home to visit my mom and I cooked for her, after which she remarked to me that I was "such a good cook". And you know what? I do love to cook... except I wouldn't call myself a good cook, as much as I'd like to. I basically use the same ingredients and flavors over and over in different combinations. So today, I started to learn how to cook with different ingredients, different flavors, and different methods of cooking.

I prepared by looking through a Weight Watchers recipe book... not for exact recipes to follow, but for inspiration and a little advice. I then went to the grocery store and bought a lot of fresh vegetables and various ingredients for some of the meals I wanted to try. Like my high heels practice, today I STARTED a learning process and hopefully I'll keep up different recipes that I particularly enjoy and tell you about them.

Tonight for dinner, I sauteed onions and green peppers until they were caramelized. Then, I added garlic and some kielbasa, cut up into bite size pieces, to the frying pan and cooked until the garlic was perfect and the kielbasa was brown on both sides. A little salt and pepper and it was done!

I know it sounds totally simple but it was absolutely DELICIOUS. The sweet, caramelized onions and peppers combined with the salty kielbasa was perfect.

I was so proud of myself I didn't want to quit learning new combinations and experimenting in the kitchen. I also decided to make some meatballs. I've seen my mom cook meatballs for years so I had an idea of what to do but I didn't use any recipe or guidelines and just added things that I thought would be good. I used:

- ground turkey
- cooked, minced garlic and onions
- italian seasoning
- bread crumbs
- parmesean cheese
- salt and pepper
- basil
- 1 egg

I know thats pretty standard, but I was proud of myself and they came out delicious! Something that is also exciting for me is that I am cooking for one and cooking in a way to count points and still be healthy with Weight Watchers. The peppers and onions meal I ate was only 6 points... 5 for the kielbasa and I added 1 for the oil I used to coat the pan. The meatballs I counted to be 5 points for 2 meatballs. Obviously, my cooking made a large amount of meatballs. I packed them up 2 per ziploc bag and froze most of them so in the future, I'll have delicious meatballs, in individual serving sizes, ready to defrost. Yum Yum!

Look forward to more recipes as I learn to cook with different ingredients, different flavors, and different methods, while still being healthy.