Slow Cooker Asian Five Spice Meatballs

Slow Cooker Asian Five Spice Meatballs

It's the second week of school and I am already sick. I woke up this morning with a nasty cold, which only got worse as the day went on. My oldest had to miss school today as well. I love how I'm not sick all summer and then as soon as my oldest goes back to school, bam. I also am not a fan of the fact that I always getter sicker than anyone else in the house. My kids are sick for a couple of days, I get pneumonia, strep throat, you name it. Plus it's never a little bit of pneumonia, it's a hospital stay, or weeks of strep throat that doesn't want to go away. I seem not to be able to do anything part way, it's all or nothing. When I'm not feeling my best, I rely on my slow cooker. Slow cooker meals take little prep and are great when I don't have the time or energy to make a big involving meal. Tonight I tried a new recipe for Asian Five Spice Meatballs from Family Circle magazine.

Memorial Fountain Marshall University Huntington, WV

This recipe has 13 ingredients. It takes 6 hours and 20 minutes of total time, 20 minutes of which is active and makes 6 servings. I did make a number of changes to the original recipe. First since I eat gluten free I used gluten free bread crumbs. I did not have low sodium soy sauce on hand, so I just used the regular that I already had. Veal is very hard to find near me, so I substituted ground Angus beef. I used 1/2 pound 93 percent lean beef, 1/2 pound ground Angus and a 1/2 ground pork. In total I ended up with 13 meatballs.

Memorial Fountain Front View Marshall University Huntington, WV

Changing recipes to gluten free can always be hit or miss. This recipe turned out perfectly. The meatballs stayed moist and the flavor was delicious. Since there wasn't enough sauce after the meatballs were done I made my own. I used 3/4 part grape jelly and 1/4 part sriracha. It had a nice spicy sweet flavor and was perfect to drizzle on top of the meatballs. Plus it pays tribute to West Virginia, since grape and hot pepper jelly with meatballs is an appetizer staple.

For the recipe go to Asian Five Spice Meatballs. (registration required)

Slow Cooker Asian Five Spice Meatballs

Recipe Type: Main

Summary:

A flavorful slow cooker recipe for Asian Style Meatballs made with 5 spice powder. Only 20 minutes of active time.

Preparation Time: 0h, 20m

Cooking Time: 6h, 0m

Total Time: 6h, 20m

Yield: Serves 6

Don't Buy Overpriced Take-Out, Make it at Home: Asian Chicken Thighs Recipe

Asian Chicken Thighs

My oldest is apparently afraid of trains. This morning in a stroke of genius I came up with the idea of purchasing one way train tickets for my two kids and I to go over the mountains to visit my in-laws. The price would be low and it would only take a couple of hours. I was all excited about the idea, until I told my oldest after he woke up. He looked at me and walked away. My husband tried reasoning with him this evening, and he is somewhat willing. We will see. I am biased since my dad worked for the rail road before I was born and starting from the time I was 10 I took the train over the mountains in Washington State to visit my grandmother and aunt. Apparently you have to have an adult with you now, or that was just the 80's and things were very different. Hopefully he will eventually change his mind and love taking the train as much as I do. One thing my son does love is to cook with me. From the time he could crawl he has been more than willing to help in the kitchen. Tonight he helped me to make a new recipe for Asian Chicken Thighs from the June/July issue of Taste of Home magazine.

This recipe has 15 ingredients. It takes 65 minutes of total time, 30 minutes of which is active and makes 5 servings. As I normally do I made a few changes to the original recipe. First, I only used 4 chicken thighs since the ones I found were very large. Secondly, I used fresh squeezed orange juice. It is much cheaper to buy one orange than a whole container of orange juice, plus the taste is better and it is all natural. I was out of reduced sodium soy sauce so I used regular. Finally, to thicken the sauce I removed the chicken thighs and reduced the sauce and then poured it into a gravy boat to pour over each serving at the table.

The sauce in this recipe was delicious. It was great with the chicken or just by itself with rice. The chicken was very tender and fell off the bone. With 25 grams of protein per serving this is a nice protein rich meal. In addition to being delicious it is also child friendly, my two boys loved the recipe.

For the recipe go to Asian Chicken Thighs. 

Redbook Sweet and Spicy Cashews

The last few months have been up and down with my health. I realized after being in the hospital for the second time a couple of weeks ago that I needed to start taking better care of myself. I always try to cook from scratch, but I tended to grab the baked goods that I made rather than protein snacks. So in the last couple of weeks I have re-done my snack routine. Gone are the cookies and sweets that I would love to be able to enjoy all the time. I've realized that I've finally got my potassium back up and I would like to keep it that way. Therefore I have started eating more fruit and having protein with all my snacks. It has been a learning curve for sure, I would love to say that I enjoy bananas and milk, but it's a struggle. I do love nuts, peanut butter, and cheese, so increasing my protein has been relatively easy. Recently, Redbook Magazine had a recipe for Sweet and Spicy Cashews, which looked easy and full of flavor.

This recipe has 5 ingredients. It takes 10 minutes of prep and 40 minutes of cook time and makes 3 cups of nuts. With only 5 ingredients I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store and made no modifications. I did find that I had to turn the nuts more than the once suggested by the recipe, otherwise they would have burned. Additionally, I found that the temp was too high to put the nuts in for 40 minutes. I either suggest turning the oven down to 275 degrees or lessening the cooking time. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

Nuts are a great source of protein, but plain roasted nuts can get boring. This recipe was a great break from my normal roasted almonds routine I liked that the Chinese-five-spice and cayenne gave the recipe a slightly spicy taste, while the sugar made the cashews sweet. Overall, a very simple nut recipe that's full of flavor.

For the recipe go to Sweet and Spicy Cashews.