Greek Turkey Gyros

I am back on the blogging bandwagon and with a vengeance! My husband loves Greek food – by love I mean asks for it every single time we go out somewhere. I am fine with it but never found a good healthy place. These turkey meatballs are great because they have zucchini and onion in them so kids (and husbands) are non the wiser!I also loved the naan so much I decided to make some pita bread. The blog I get the bread recipe from is amazing and I also got her pita bread from there – I am not even going to attempt to pretend that I know how to make bread so here is the pita. To go with the pita I made some hummus and tzatziki! Here we go:

Hummus:

1 can of chickpeas rinsed
1/4c tahini
1/4c lemon juice
1t cumin
1 clove of garlic
1T olive oil

Blend everything in a food processor and add a little bit of water if the mixture needs some help moving along. Let it sit in the fridge until you are ready for it.

Tzatziki:

1c Greek yogurt
1 clove of garlic crushed
1t lemon juice
1/2 cucumber peeled, seeded and grated – make sure to squeeze any moisture out
1T dill
1T chives

Mix everything together and let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour so that the flavors can mix.

all the accoutrements!!

Turkey Meatballs:

1 1/4c ground turkey
1 egg
1/4-1/2 red onion grated and moisture squeezed out
1 zucchini peeled and grated and moisture removed
1/4c panko
2-3 garlic cloves minced
2T oregano
2T parsley
2T mint

Mix all of the ingredients together and roll them into small balls (I used an ice cream scoop) and put them on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for an hour or so so that they can keep their shape.

fridge time

Once you are ready to cook, you can either grill them or cook them on the stove –  I used our grill pan on the stove.

getting all yummy

Once everything is cooked and nice and brown you can begin assembling. We made ours with hummus, spinach, tomato, red onion slices, 2 turkey balls and tzatziki in the pita.

The final tasty product!

We loved this recipe because you could make components ahead of time so really all I had to do come dinner time was cook the meatballs. Plus you can’t really argue with the price of this meal: $15.50 and with a total of 6 servings of 2 meatballs each serving comes out to $2.58 each. Not too shabby!

Now on to the nutrition – we broke it down to a serving being 1 pita, 2 meatballs, 2T each of hummus and tzatziki and as much spinach and tomatoes as you want. This comes to a total of 340 calories, 7.6g of fat and 22.2g of protein. Boy howdy does that make me happy! Cheap and super healthy! I hope you love this as much as I do!

Turkey Meatballs with Green Sauce

Super Bowl is here again and the husband and I are a little sad that with the amazing game and commercials comes also the end of football season until fall. We were very excited by this years competitors – Green Back Packers vs. Pittsburgh Steelers.  We wanted to bring something for a crowd that would also still be a safe option for our diets because most Super Bowl parties are pizza, wings, beer, chips – baad things for us. These turkey meatballs are great because they are baked – no oil at all! They make a lot for not a lot of money! Plus we are using the extra green sauce tomorrow for fajitas! Can’t beat that!

Ingredients for the meatballs:
1 1/4 ground extra lean turkey
1 jalapeno seeded (the jalapenos at HEB and Randall’s looked terrible so we got serrano peppers)
1/4 c fresh cilantro
2 cloves of garlic
3 green onions
1/4 c panko bread crumbs (the mixture was a little loose for me so I added just a teaspoon more of panko)
1 egg
1 t cumin
1 T oregano
cooking spray (we have super convenient silicone mats for baking so we did not need any cooking spray)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put the peppers,  cilantro, garlic and green onion in a small food processor and grind until minced.

Getting ready to get mixed!

Using your hands, combine the turkey, panko, egg, spices and cilantro mixture until equally mixed. Using a spoon, scoop out a small spoonful of the mixture and roll gently in your hands into a ball. Place onto the baking sheet – don’t crowd them.

Pre-baking

Bake the meatballs for 20-25 minutes until nice and brown. Serve with the green sauce.

Green sauce ingredients:
1/2 c low fat buttermilk
1/4 c light mayo (we have Hellmans light made with olive oil)
1/4 c plain fat free Greek yogurt
1 small jalapeno (again, the jalapeno’s at both grocery stores looked terrible so we seeded a serano)
1/4 c fresh cilantro
1 fresh tomatillo with husk removed
1 clove of garlic
1 green onion
juice of 1/2 a lime
1 t cumin
again – salt is a no no for me always so I didn’t add it and neither should you!

Add everything to a small food processor and puree until smooth. Let it setup in the fridge and serve! It is great as a salsa, condiment, salad dressing or sauce!

The breakdown for nutrition for the meatballs is a serving size of 2 meatballs is 67.1 calories, 1.8g fat, 2.3g carbs, .4g fiber and 10.5g protein. The sauce for a 1/4c serving is 43.3 calories, 2.1g protein, 2.4g fat, 3.7g carbs, .3g carbs. The total grocery bill for everything sans spices, egg, mayo and garlic is a total of $10.13 (this also includes the extra panko, lime, green onion, tomatillo – I bought 2 in case one was bad – I had leftover) and for 19 t0tal meatballs it was about $1.07 for each serving! Can’t beat that!