Friday, June 14, 2013

Daring to do it: Meatballs

This month was a ton of fun in the Kitchen.  It was a great example of how something basic, like the meatball, can be turned into something fun and creative!

The June Daring Cooks’ challenge sure kept us rolling – meatballs, that is! Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.

Oh yeah - it was also fun because my sister and I got to host it!

When we were trying to decide what our challenge would be, Auntie Twin, a.k.a. CMomCook, a.k.a. Shelley, and I kept coming back to basics.  I was hesitant about meatballs because, well, the name says it: meatballs.  What would us vegetarians do?  Then she decided to give the challenge the working title of "roundish ground stuff," and I got over my hesitation.  This was going to be fun.

If you want to read the whole post and recipes, check it out here.

For now, I will just share with you what I made in preparing for the challenge.

First were the Florentine cannellini bean and spinach balls:
These were baked first, then simmered in tomato sauce.  I think these might have been my favorite.

Next were quinoa and spinach balls:
These were pan fried, which I had never done before. 

I did make one type of actual meatball, since I was visiting my parents' home.  These are sweet and sour meatballs using a combination of beef and turkey:

Vegan tofu balls:
I used flax seed egg replacer to make these truly vegan.  This was also the first time I had ever had a meatball sub of any kind, and I really loved it!

Thank you to Shelley for all of your hard work this month. And thank you to all of the amazing Daring Cooks who participated!!  Check out what they did here!

7 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for hosting the challenge. I love it and enjoyed it alot :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for hosting this month - it was fun. I went off the beaten path and made "lentil" balls...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you so much for hosting this amazing challenge!
    it was loads of fun and I learned so much! I never knew good old meatballs could be so interesting and versatile

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ruth, I am totally awed by the organization, focus and hours of work you and Shelley put into this fun challenge. Thanks for your energy!! Now I can't wait to try your cannellini and spinach meatballs.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A great challenge Ruth, thanks to both you and Shelly. So many lovely recipes to choose from.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ruth thanks for hosting this amazing challenge. I wish I had had the time to make more variations for the challenge, but meatballs will certainly appear more frequently in my kitchen!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for hosting this month, Ruth! You guys always put on such great challenges. :) I had been planning to make a veggieball version myself, but didn't manage to in the end - those quinoa spinach balls are going straight on the list though. YUM!

    ReplyDelete