How lucky am I that Tony made me breakfast three days in a row!  Yesterday morning he made me pancakes with dried cranberries – so delicious we didn’t even need any pancake syrup (never mind the fact that I used the last of it and never replaced it!)

You know I love soup.  A lot.  I was inspired by this recipe – except I used beef for my balls.  I’ve made a similar soup before, using Italian sausage that also reminded me of spaghettios, but I think I like this meatball version better.

Another Grown Up Spaghettios and Meatballs

  • Makes six, 1.75 cup servings 358 calories, 11 fat, 47 carbs, 6 fiber and 16 protein (9 PointsPlus)

Ingredients:

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 3 large carrots, peeled and sliced
  • 3 large stalks of celery, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • Two 15 ounce cans tomato sauce
  • 4 cups beef broth
  • 6 ounces dried pasta of choice (I used penne)
  • 1 tablespoon dried basil
  • salt and pepper
  • shredded cheese sprinkled right before serving

For the meatballs:

  • 8 ounces ground sirloin
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/4 cup egg white
  • 1/4 cup whole wheat bread crumbs

Mix the meat mixture together and roll into marble size balls.  Heat Pam/Olive oil over medium high heat, and sear the meatballs, but don’t cook them all the way through.

In a stock pot, heat oil over medium high heat.  Add carrots, celery and garlic and cook for 5 minutes, careful not to burn the garlic.  Then add the tomato sauce, beef broth, pasta, and meatballs, allowing the pot to simmer for about 15 minutes or until the pasta is cooked through.

Add basil and salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle with shredded cheese of choice.  I had a colby jack, so I used that.

Damn, this is a delicious soup.  I can’t wait to have it for lunch this week!

And you know I couldn’t go a whole week without eating pizza. 😀  Last week when we made traditional Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza, I only used half the dough so I decided to see how the dough would work as a thin crust, since I typically am a thin crust pizza kinda girl.

I am not sure if its because the dough sat for a week in the fridge, but this crust was delicious – I think I almost like it better as a thin crust than a deep dish.  I made just a simple Italian sausage pizza – two slices hit the spot for lunch.

For dinner I made Italian sausage lasagna – its based on my zucchini lasagna, except this time I used actual lasagna noodles, and added Italian sausage – Tony won’t even look at my zucchini lasagna!

I also made a roasted red pepper sauce – 1 cup grape tomatoes cooked down with 1 cup jarred roasted red peppers, and 1/2 cup of chicken broth – I cooked that down for about 15 minutes, then pureed the sauce using a stick blender.  I ended up using about 3/4 of this sauce for our lasagna.

I made our lasagna in a bread pan – it makes two giant servings for 12 points each – totally worth it. 😀

Guess where I am off to . . . the gym!  Hope you have a great day!