Easy Turkey Salad (in a bell pepper “bowl”)

I love green salads and will typically take one for lunch every day, but they do get old after a while. Especially during a Whole30, when variety can be the difference between completing 30 days with minimal stress or falling face first into a box of doughnuts. Another one of my lunch staples is chicken, egg, or turkey salad made with homemade mayonnaise, and instead of the same old bed of greens, one day I decided to change it up by using a fresh bell pepper as a “bowl” – and this lovely little lunch was born!

WHAT YOU NEED:

serves one, but easily multiplied

all ingredients are to taste

1 bell pepper (any color, pick your favorite)

grilled turkey breast, chopped

homemade mayonnaise

diced celery

diced apple (I used about two wedges of a cored and sliced honeycrisp apple)

dried currents or cherries (no sugar added)

slivered almonds

tumeric

smoked paprika

salt and pepper

WHAT YOU DO:

Basically, dump everything into a bowl and mix well. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary. Cut off the top of your bell pepper and scoop out the ribs and seeds, making a nice “bowl”. Hint: when picking out a bell pepper, find one with a relatively flat bottom that will stand on it’s own as your “bowl”. Fill your pepper bowl with salad and voila!

Although it’s nice to use a bell pepper to stand up, it’s not strictly necessary and to be honest, it was more for presentation than anything else. You can always just slice up your bell pepper into thick strips and “scoop” your salad into them. While I did throw the entire turkey filled pepper into a tupperware and took it to work a is, I ended up cutting the pepper into scoops and eating it that way.

If you’re taking this to work for lunch, as I did, I’d also recommend bringing some additional snacks as a supplement. I packed baby carrots and some macadamia nuts for the extra veggies and protein. In any case, this was a delicious change to my tried and true “grilled chicken breast over mixed salad” lunches.

Plus, it just looks so pretty!

Enjoy!

Turkey Vegetable Meatballs

Every single time I juice I watch my husband scrape out the juicer and toss money straight into the garbage. Seriously, that’s how I view it when all that leftover juice pulp goes into the trash can. Don’t get me wrong, juice is awesome and full of nutrients and yay! But all I can think is “Wow. That was $20 of fresh produce and we just tossed 3/4 of it.”

So I finally got smart. Last time I juiced I added the vegetables first (spinach, kale, parsley, celery and carrot, to be exact) and cleaned out the pulp before adding the fruit, saving it to use in the meatballs I’m sharing with you today. (Although I realized too late that I didn’t take any nice pictures of the finished product – my husband and I ate them too fast!)

I wasn’t sure if this would even work or not but the end result was even better than I could have hoped for. The extra veggies give the meatballs a pop of flavor, not to mention the pulp kept them from drying out. Delicious! They may in fact be the best meatballs I’ve made, except maybe for these italian parmesan lovelies.

The best part about these meatballs is that once you have your juice pulp, this is essentially a three ingredient recipe. All I did was combine the veggie pulp, the ground turkey, and a healthy dose of Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute and voila. Easy as…well, meatballs.

I love it when a great plan comes together. Not only do I have a great new meatball recipe to share, I’m also saving money by making the most of the vegetables I’m juicing! Double win over here, y’all!

Turkey Vegetable Meatballs

yields 15-18 meatballs

Ingredients

1 lb ground turkey

1/2 onion, diced

3/4 cup – 1 cup juice vegetable pulp (I used spinach, kale, parsley, carrot and celery)

Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute, approximately 3 tablespoons

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Form into uniformly shaped meatballs and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through. These tasted phenomenal by themselves or drizzled with some ketchup, but they are also delicious served with marinara sauce over some spaghetti squash or zucchini noodles!

Side Note: I made these a second time and used beef instead of turkey – they tasted just as good!

Turkey Sage Meatloaf Bites

Turkey and sage is one of those combinations that just…works. Kind of like chocolate and peanut butter. Pork and sauerkraut. Cookies and milk. Lamb and tuna fish. (Name that movie!) Ok so obviously not that last one but you get my point, right?

Or maybe it’s just me.

I got the idea for these little meatloaf bites from this recipe in the Winter 2014 Menu Magazine from Wegmans. I’m a total sucker for the Menu Magazine – if you live anywhere close to a Wegmans you need to check it out! Not only does it show all the delicious new products that are on sale but they give you meal recipes for those who want to cook (they even tell you where in the store to find all the ingredients! seriously!), prepared entrees for those who don’t want to cook, and a mix for those who only want to cook a little. It’s freaking brilliant. But where were we? Oh right. Meatloaf.

I actually made this as meatloaf the first time I tried it and while it was tasted great and we had leftovers for days the downside was…we had leftovers for days. I used three pounds of ground turkey and it was ridiculous. The nice thing was that I was forced to come up with some new ideas for how to eat meatloaf and I think I did pretty good, but I don’t see the need to make another three pound meatloaf for two people anytime in the near future.

What I like best about these little meatloaf bites (not gonna lie – i thought these were going to turn out to be bigger but the turkey cooked down a lot more than I was expecting, which is why we have “bites” and not something else) is that you can grab two of them on your way out the door in the morning or eat one as a post-workout snack in the afternoon or maybe even sneak one in the evening if you’re really hungry. Versatility is a huge win in my book, and these are certainly versatile!

I ended up eating some of my cute little meatloaf bites with a side of roasted brussels sprouts and prosciutto for dinner.

Turkey Sage Meatloaf Bites (lightly adapted from this recipe)

makes 15

prep time: 10 minutes

cook time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

1.5 pounds ground turkey

1 small onion, diced fine

4 stalks celery, diced fine

1 egg

10 sprigs fresh sage (give or take), chopped fine

1/4 cup almond flour

2 tsp garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375. If you prefer, pulse the onion and celery in a food processor until combined – this will make for a more moist meatloaf and you won’t have the larger chunks of onion and celery. Over medium heat cook the onion-celery mixture for about 5 minutes and set aside. In a bowl combine all ingredients and mix well. Once combined, use an ice cream scoop or a large spoon to fill muffin tins about 3/4 full with mixture. (The meatloaf will cook down so feel free to fill the tins all the way if you’d like larger “bites”). Bake at 375 for approximately 25 minutes or until juices run clear.

Aren’t they the cutest??

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