Healthy Turkey Meatballs

Even though it's summer time sometimes all I want is a BIG bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. If you go to some Italian places they will give you a delicious HUGE portion floating with oil... If you come to my house you'll get a delicious flavorful bowl of YUM! I'll have to write another day about making pasta, it is much easier then you think but definitely takes some time. I didn't have that kind of time this weekend so I used some box whole wheat spaghetti for this recipe. Nice quick and healthy! The meatballs come from my Aunt Carols recipe. Aunt Carol makes AMAZING food! I'm always trying to steal recipes from her. Since John doesn't eat red meat so I've adapted her recipe a bit to use lean 99% fat free turkey meat but keep the nice juicy flavors and textures. Onto the turkey meatballs!! Italian

Turkey Meatballs (adapted from Aunt Carols recipe)
1 lb. ground 99% fat free turkey (Aunt Carol uses... beef or a combination of beef, veal and pork)
1/2 cup grated cheese (Parmesan, Romano or a combination of these) (I used part skim)
1/2 cup Italian flavored breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 medium onion, chopped or diced fine
3 or 4 good size garlic cloves,put through a garlic press or diced very fine
1 rounded tablespoon (about) finely minced parsley
Salt, pepper and Italian seasoning to taste
(Taste the mixture before adding salt. The cheese and breadcrumbs contain salt)
1/2 cup chopped fresh mushrooms (I added these to keep the moisture level up since we got rid of a lot of the fat by using the lean turkey)

Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly. If mixture is a little dry, add some water, a little at a time, until proper consistency is reached. Roll into meatballs, fry lightly on each side in a small amount of olive oil (I used olive oil in a mister spray bottle). When almost all the way cooked through, add spaghetti sauce and cover to steam cook them until done.

Note from Aunt Carol: You can double, triple, etc. this recipe. Also, I find that the beef, veal and pork combination make a softer meatball. Hope you like them!

I cheated and used boxed whole wheat pasta (I like Ronzoni) and Wegmans Diavola sauce, it's an amazing spicy sauce and if you have Wegmans near you TOTALLY GET SOME!!!! (Don't however get Wegmans whole wheat pasta... kinda tastes like cardboard haha) Super fast healthy turkey meatballs, enjoy!

How to make fresh homemade pasta will come another day...

Chow!

john's version with shredded mozzerella and parmasian on top

You can also use this recipe and add it as a meat layer in lasagna! YUM!