Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

I go through food phases. I know I’m not the only person who does this, but my phases seem pretty out there. I can eat the same thing (or vacillate between the same two things) for weeks on end. Right now it’s whole wheat pasta (preferably penne, rigatoni, or fusilli) with homemade sauce and meatballs (a la Denise).

The homemade sauce is a secret recipe from the Italian roommate I had in Boston. She was Italian, yes, but also a major health nut. She had taken her mom’s recipes and altered them. The sauce is mostly a filler of sauteed eggplant but also includes fresh Italian parsley and finely grated parmesan and is slow-cooked for at least 12 hours.

The meatballs are a mixture of ground turkey and low fat ground beef. She used to use breadcrumbs and the same parmesan with wild abandon. I substituted cooked cous cous for the breadcrumbs with really great results (although next time I think I will use uncooked couscous and see if the texture is dramatically different). Then, the meatballs are baked in a shallow foil-lined pan, rather than fried. She’d make huge batches of each recipe, freeze the bulk in small containers, and then just thaw a little at a time so it always tasted fresh. Man! I miss Denise!

I’m still in search of good recipes for: soy-sauce based drizzle or teriyaki sauce, a way to use the white beans and lentils that I cooked up, and other quick recipes with ingredients that are easily prepared ahead of time.