Meatless Monday

When it comes to cooking, I am pretty traditional.  I haven’t tried very many food crazes or trends; in fact, now that I think about it, I’m not sure I have ever tried a food craze.  That is until now.  I have been long intrigued with the whole zoodle craze – the idea that I could eat “noodles” to my hearts content with health benefits has practically been keeping me awake at night.  So last week I couldn’t wait any longer, and so I  ordered myself the Paderno Tri-Blade Spiralizer (found here).

Then it brought up the question, what am I going to spiralize?

When googling my options, it seemed like zoodles were the thing to make.  I am a little indifferent when it comes to zucchini (unless it is this amazing zucchini cake with crunchy lemon glaze), but I figured that I would try anything once.  But what to eat with it?  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to just make one of my go to sauces, or go all-out healthy.  I had just picked up a giant eggplant at the market, so I decided to Google eggplant recipes as well.  My Mom had recently made some eggplant “meatballs,” so when I came across this recipe on Skinnytaste for Vegan Eggplant Meatballs, I decided that we should give it a shot.

For our first night of cooking a food trend, we really went all in … zoodles, vegan, and meatless Monday!

getting my zoodle on

oodles of zoodles

I did follow all of Gina’s instructions for the dinner with the addition of some zoodle tips that I found here on GourmetGirlCooks.  She had some great suggestions on how to draw out the extra moisture from the zoodles.

I didn’t have any red sauce on hand, but I did have everything to make Gina’s quick marinara sauce.  (Quicker and tastier than running to the store to buy a bottle.)

After prepping my zoodles and getting my sauce Michael Bublé-ing (we love that joke…get it bublé-ing…bubbling?), it was time to start the “meatballs.”

before

after

After sautéing all of the veggies and lightly processing them with the white beans, it was time to get mixing and rolling.

My “meatballs” didn’t hold together as well as I thought they were going to, a little mushy, but I’m guessing that my measurements were off somewhere.  I’m thinking that my giant eggplant was a little too giant.  Regardless, into the oven they went, and we were a mere 25 minutes away from having our first meatless Monday, vegan, zoodle party!

tah-dah!

I have to say, when it all came together, it really did look quite appetizing, and I think much better than what I was expecting.  So for the taste test, here’s what we thought – we both loved the zoodles!  Seriously they were so good, I almost couldn’t believe it.  They actually didn’t have any zucchini flavor, they just tasted like a very crunchy noodle.  The quick marinara sauce was perfectly seasoned and a definite make again as well.  And for the meatballs, well, mixed reviews here – the Mr. loved them, and it’s not that I disliked them (the flavors were quite nice), I just couldn’t get past the meatless thing.  The Mr. kept suggesting that I look at it like an eggplant patty and not a meatball, but unfortunately I just kept craving a meatball :)  All in all, a success for so many new things.  Who knows what we’ll zoodle up next!