Weeknight Bolognese (or chili)

I’ve been telling my boss about the Green Monster for a while.  I kept telling her that it’s high in Vitamin A, calcium, and iron.  That you really can’t taste the spinach – it tastes like a banana shake to me.

I decided to make us mini bagel breakfast sandwiches and we’d split a serving of the Green Monster.  The only thing I’ll do differently, is to bring the smoothie maker to work.  I made it at home and put it in the fridge when I got to work.  By the time my boss got in, it had been in there for about an hour, so it was a bit melty?  Not sure if that’s the right word, but it didn’t have the same texture as when it comes right from the smoothie machine.

She didn’t love it.  But she didn’t totally hate it either.  I think next time I’ll add a bit more honey to hers too.

I ended up doing 10 miles on the bike at lunch!  While we had temps in the 60’s, it was rainy and stormy pretty much all day long.  So weird to hear thunder in January!

And while I can’t stand Anne Burrel, I did watch part of her show on FoodTV.  She made pulled pork that cooked for 9 hours, but what I was mostly interested in was the North Carolina barbecue sauce she made to go with it – it had me at three cups of apple cider vinegar!

Lunch, shocker, was more lasagna soup!  That’s the last of it, but pretty sure I’ll be making it again soon.

I bought some meatloaf mix over the weekend with the intention of making a slow cooked bolognese over the weekend and letting it develop flavor in the fridge for a few days.  Um, that didn’t happen.  So I adapted a recipe from Ina Garten for a weeknight Bolognese.

Weeknight Bolognese

• 1 pound meatloaf mix (mine was beef, pork and veal)
• 4 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
• pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (I put that just on my bowl)
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
• pinch of ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup of skim milk

I don’t know why recipes call for 2 tablespoons of olive oil to brown meat, when I think most of the time, there is enough fat in the meat that you don’t need it.  Feel free to add it though if you want.

Brown the meat and skim off any fat.  My meat was surprisingly pretty lean, so I didn’t have to do that.  Add remaining ingredients except the milk, bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.  Take off the heat and stir in the milk.

You can barely see it, but I had my 1 cup of pasta and 1/2 cup of sauce on two cups of chopped baby spinach.  The heat from the pasta wilted the spinach – so good!

The only thing I was missing for the recipe was the tomato paste.  It only called for 2 tablespoons so I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal to leave it out.  Well, our bolognese tasted more like chili!  It was still delicious though.

So Tony was able to videotape our friend squirrel!

Louise, hope you like the video!

I’ve got some link love today.  Danica put together a WW friendly Superbowl recipe round up – I was thrilled that she linked to my buffalo chicken chili – thanks Danica!

Autumn hit this one out of the park – her take on Chili’s onion rings and battered jalapenos – yum!

And I can’t wait to try this one – Mara made green burritos – I plan on subbing in Chobani plain yogurt for the sour cream, so this would be like a Green Monster burrito!  And only 8 WW points each!

So I didn’t weigh in last week – but here is my Day 28 Weigh In.  Sorry for the crappy picture, I forgot to turn the flash off!

So it looks like in the last two weeks I gained 1.4, for a total loss of only 1.8 for the month of January.  It got me thinking.  While I like to think I can eat intuitively with an occasional treat here and there, I think I need to go back to counting calories for February.  And maybe not make any Jack in the Box tacos!

Question of the Day:  How did your goals for January work out??

Make it a great day!