Enjoy Life Crunchy Flax is quite honestly probably one of my most favorite cereals. It has a nutty and crunchy flavor. I'm so grateful that Savorfull included it in their January box. I think it's very cool that Savorfull includes recipes to try along with the items in the box, but I wasn't really feeling either of the recipes that they included. So I wandered over to the Enjoy Life page to see if they had any tasty recipes. They had a recipe for Greek meatballs that looked good, but I'm also on Week 1 of the Curves Complete plan, so I modified the recipe so that I could make it fit my diet. So here's the recipe that I followed, using lean ground beef from the Whaley Farm in Byron, MI who happen to be friends of ours from church.
(This is for 2 servings)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup or 41 grams of Enjoy Life Crunchy Flax Cereal, ground in a food processor.
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 onion(s) - medium
10 oz beef - ground (95% lean)
1/2 cup(s) egg substitute
1 cup(s) sauce - tomato (meatless)
1 cup(s) vegetables - mixed, fresh
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Crumble bread into bread crumbs. Dice onions. Gently combine ground beef, cereal crumbs, egg substitute, and diced onions. Wet your hands and form into meatballs. Brown the meatballs on the stove, and finish cooking in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the meatballs are cooked through and reach an internal temperature of 165°F.
2. Place a steamer insert in a saucepan and fill with water to just below the bottom of the steamer. Cover and bring water to a boil. Place mixed vegetables in steamer insert and cover. Steam for about 5 minutes or until tender.
3. Top meatballs with warmed tomato sauce and serve with steamed mixed vegetables.
4. Tip:
1/4 whole = 1/4 cup chopped onion
So first, I measure my cereal using my scale in grams. Why 41 grams of cereal? A serving of starch, or an exchange, generally contains 15 grams of carbohydrates and 80 calories. 41 grams of cereal is 150 calories. Plus, this cereal has 5.25 grams of PROTEIN in this half of cup of cereal and 3.75 grams of fiber. Super healthy. Then, taking from the Enjoy Life Greek Meatball recipe, I combined the spices with the ground up cereal. I was able to make 8 meatballs with this, weighing in at 2 oz. per meatball BEFORE cooking. I used my handy-dandy thermometer that I mentioned in my earlier post, and they cooked much faster than 20 minutes, so I'm glad I had my Taylor thermometer.
For the sauce, I simply opened an 8 oz. can of plain tomato sauce. Men have more muscle mass than women do,so on any diet they need to consume 500 more calories than women do, so my husband needed an extra 200 calories with his dinner. So I toasted two pieces of bread and placed two meatballs on each of HIS slices of bread, covered them in sauce, and a little Parmesan cheese. I also had warmed up a bag of frozen broccoli, cauliflower and carrots to have on the side. He absolutely loved it! HE said it tasted like a meatball sub and said that he wanted the leftovers for lunch the next day, Unfortunately, there weren't any leftovers. :(
So score one for Enjoy Life Crunchy Flax Cereal! Labels: In the kitchen
