Scones, Balls and Tots!

My boss was out of the office on Friday when we did office treats for Boss’s Day, so yesterday before work I decided to make her scones, because she’s loved the ones I’ve made before.  The copycat Starbuck’s cinnamon chip scone, the blueberry lemon scones and the craisin scones (ignore the awful photos in that last scone recipe!).  But I had apples I needed to use up from the $1 rack.  And a couple weeks ago on an impulse purchase I bought Marzetti’s light caramel dip.  They had it right next to the apples, so what was I supposed to do?!   So I thought, what about a caramel apple scone!  Sadly, I wasn’t the first to come up with this concept, so I took inspiration from The Recipe Girl’s recipe.

I did a much simpler version though.  I didn’t cook the apples ahead of time, I thought I’d prefer the crunchy texture of the raw apple, which everyone at my office did.  I also made a much simpler caramel icing.

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Holy balls these were good – chunks of apple, the crust was a bit crunchy, yet the scone was light and flakey.  The caramel sauce brought it all together.  Insulin worthy!  On the side I had a microwave egg white omelet with spinach, roasted red peppers and cheese.

I realized half way to work that I forgot my fit bit – wah!  Oh well.  I ended up doing arms and abs at lunch at the gym, then finished off with a 2.25 walk while watching The Chew.  Padma was one of the guests judges from Top Chef – love her!  She loves to eat but still has the body of a model – totally not fair.  Ha!

So over the weekend when I was cleaning it out, I realized I had leftover cooked lentils leftover from my lentil Bolognese last week.   I promised my daughter-in-law Lizz that while I wasn’t going to jump on her 30 day vegan bandwagon, I would come up with some vegan recipes for her.  I’ve made falafel before using chick peas and thought, why not use lentils?  I had to guess at the measurements though to get the right dough texture, considering lentils are smaller than chick peas.

• 1 cup cooked lentils
• 1/4 cup cilantro
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1/2 a jalapeno (with seeds because you know I love the spicy shit!)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 cup flour

Mix in a food processor.  Let the dough sit in the fridge for at least an hour before frying.  I used our deep fryer at 350.  I used a melon baller to portion out each ball which comes in at 65 calories and a whopping 5 grams of fiber per ball.  Then wet my hands, rolled each into a ball and fried them for 3-4 minutes.

As much as I loved the lentil balls, um, the pita bread stole the show.  Tracey sent me the Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes A Day last week.  I quickly tagged recipes I wanted to make asap, and naan was at the top of my list.  Most of the recipes in the book call for giant portions – the point being that if you have dough in your fridge the possibilities are endless.  So I made the dough recipe to make 16 pitas – each one is only 111 calories!

• 3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 package yeast (2.25 teaspoons if you have loose yeast)
• 1.5 cups water
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

Mix the flour, salt, sugar and yeast and mix well.  Stir in water and combine until the flour is incorporated.  Again, I used my hands to mix the dough.  Let the dough rise 90 minutes.  Dump the dough on the counter and portion it into 16 pieces – each of my dough balls weighed in at 1.6 ounces.  Roll out to about 4-5 inches.  Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat.  Mix the salt and pepper in with the two tablespoons of peanut oil.  Brush one side with a bit of oil, cook the oil side first and when you start to see bubbles forming on the top, brush the top of the pita with more peanut oil, sprinkle on the sesame seeds and flip again, and cook another minute.

I just put the pita bread in the microwave for 20 seconds before building my lentil falafel sammie.   I reheated the lentil balls in my office toaster oven for 7 minutes at 350 degrees, until they were heated through.  Granted, I didn’t stick to the whole vegan way – I used tzatziki sauce and feta cheese on mine with sliced baby cucumber and roasted red peppers.  The balls and the pita bread are vegan though!

I made this dish for one of the attorneys at my office because I know he loves this type of food.  He gave this plate two thumbs WAY up!  Believe it or not, that whole plate above comes in at just 425 calories, but a whopping 19 grams of fiber!  Holy balls – no wonder both of us were stuffed for the rest of the day.  And you could easily add store bought hummus in place of the tzatiki and leave off the cheese to make it totally vegan.

Over the weekend when I was drooling over all the food at Mariano’s, I saw that they had all their brats on sale, so I picked up two for cheap – $1.88 for two!

I saw an idea on Pinterest to make make German potato sauerkraut balls.  Huh.  I love sauerkraut so much, but the original recipe was like for a family of four!  I decided to make it serve two – one of my co-workers husbands loves sauerkraut as much as I do, so I am bringing the second serving to her today to take home to him.  This is where it comes in handy to bake several potatoes over the weekend and stick them in the fridge – it worked perfect in this recipe since I skipped the step of cooking the potatoes because they were already cooked.

• 1 cup cooked potato (scooped from one large baked potato)
• 1/2 cup sauerkraut, squeezed and drained (next time I will double this amount)
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon stone ground mustard
• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
• 1/3 cup bread crumbs
• 2 tablespoons flour

Squeeze the potatoes until there are no more big chunks of potatoes – don’t you guys love how I use my hands as utensils?!  Add in the remaining ingredients and mix well.  Then shape into “tot” size pieces.  I got 18 tots out of this batter, 9 tots per serving.  Heat fryer or oil to 350.  Fry for 3-4 minutes, drain on paper towel and season with salt.

These were so good, but the potato really shined in this dish – next time I’ll double the sauerkraut, but dipped in stone ground mustard – super delicious!  Next time I might roll the tots in panko bread crumbs to get an extra bit of crunch.

So much good food yesterday!   It might make today’s food seem boring – not.  I am making chicken and corn tacos for lunch today with an avocado cream and homemade salsa verde – I got my friends recipe for cooking the tomatillos on the stove top so I’ll be posting that recipe tomorrow.  For the record, I left her stinky onions out of my version.

Alright – off to put my shit together for the day – make it a great day!