Last night for dinner I was going to make turkey meatballs in a coconut Thai curry sauce, but we had Asian the night before, so I wanted to change it up! Since I enjoy cooking, this was a chance to get creative (and didn’t stress me out at all). I ended up with meatballs in Ajvar sauce with riced-cauliflower.
One of my best friends is from Croatia and introduced my family to this sauce, and when I saw this jar at a small market in Kansas City, I knew I wanted to cook something with it! This roasted red pepper sauce is rich in flavor with red peppers and eggplant and is typically used in the Balkans in Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, and to a small degree the Slovenian cuisine.
Here’s a recipe if you want to make it yourself or you could get a jar of roasted red peppers, cook your eggplant and add garlic, vinegar and salt and put it in the food processer.
For the meatballs, I added paprika, garlic, mineral sea salt, dried shallots, thyme, almond flour and an egg; then popped them on a parchment-lined baking sheet and baked them for 20 mins at 350º. I’ll definitely make meatballs like that again. It was so easy!!!
To me, I always start with “what vegetable do I want?” because of all the vital nutrients and minerals they provide. And this dish made me happy because it had cauliflower, eggplant and red peppers! It was sooooo bright and cheerful on a gray evening.
I believe that what we eat impacts who we are and how we show up in life.
If your food is ground up
and reformed,
you’re going to feel wore out.
If your food has a ton of
preservatives,
your body is going to feel
stuck and lifeless.
If your food is filled
with chemicals,
your cells are going to be
confused and won’t
work right.
When your food has color,
your life will be colorful.
When your food has flavor,
your life will be full of excitement.
When you cook with joy,
your table will be
overflowing with love.
When you cook with what is real,
your body will rejoice.
Here’s to enjoying food of many different colors and flavors! I’m trying to be better about writing down recipes, so I can share. Make sure you sign up to get my emails, so you don’t miss a post!
Here’s to cooking with ALL the colors.
Many hugs,
Laura
