When football season rolls around we start up meatball subs for dinner again. Maybe because the hoagie rolls are football shaped, maybe because the weather is meant to be cooler (but in Florida, it’s just not.) Either way, here is a whole meal-in-a-post for you!

Ingredients

For Meatballs:

For Sauce:

- Hoagie rolls (ours were baked fresh at the grocer’s bakery)
- Cheese of your choice, we used provolone and grated parmesan
- 2 C Green Veggie of your choice

Directions

1. If your beef is in the refrigerator, remove the packet, open it and place beef in large bowl. Let come to room temperature for about 10 mins.

2. Wash your hands with soap and water, and remove any rings or bracelets.

3. Add breadcrumbs, egg and ketchup to large bowl with beef. Using your hands, mix all ingredients well.

4. Spray top half of broiler pan with non-stick cooking spray

5. Roll meat mixture into meatballs about 1 inch in diameter and place on pan

6. Set oven to broil with oven rack at highest level. Put broiler pan with meatballs on the top rack and let oven door stay open - at the point where you can feel it pause before it closes. Meatballs will take about 8 mins took cook all the way through.

7. While meatballs are broiling, have one of the kids set the table. If someone in your house doesn’t eat white bread, you can also use this time to cook up some whole wheat spaghetti for them to have spaghetti and meatballs instead.

8. Set large saucepan on large burner at med-high heat. Add sauce ingredients and whisk with fork until blended. Let sauce come to low boil. (start preparing your green veggie of choice now)

9. When meatballs are done cooking (they’ll be brown instead of red), remove them from the oven and place meatballs one by one into the sauce. Set heat to low, so sauce simmers with meatballs in the sauce, for 3 minutes. Turn off heat and keep pan on burner 3 more minutes.

10. To make a meatball sub: Cut off the top of a hoagie roll - but don’t slice it in half like a hot dog bun, carve out an oval shaped dome from the top of the roll so the meatballs can rest inside a hole in the bun. Place cheese inside. Add 3 meatballs, spoon over a little extra sauce if desired, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese if desired.

Enjoy!

Makes about 5 sandwiches. Serve with your prepared green veggie.  

For some reason, when we buy bananas there is always one left behind that doesn’t seem to get eaten. If you have a banana turning brown on the counter, that is the best banana to bake with! If you don’t have time to bake it up in something yummy, put it in the freezer until you do. Once cold, the whole peel will turn dark brown, but just let it sit at room temp for a couple of hours and then slice one end off. The inside of the banana will easily slide out into a measuring cup, ready for you to bake with!

Actually this time I forgot to defrost the banana so I “defrosted” it in the toaster oven for 10 mins at 300 degrees while gathering everything else I needed.

Use 2 bananas for these Banana Oat Muffins:

Ingredients

 3/4 cup rolled oats
1  1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 shakes of salt
4 TB unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar (we used turbinado sugar)
1 large egg
1 cup mashed ripe banana
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup milk (we used almond milk)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together oats, flour, baking soda and salt.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat together butter and sugar until blended - the mixture will be sandy, rather than smooth. We used a hand mixer.

4. Add egg, banana and vanilla to lare bowl and mix until combined.

5. Gradually add dry ingredients to the large bowl, and stir mixture together until just combined.

6. Yummy mix-ins! We divided our mixture into 3 parts and added a different mix-in to each part: peanuts, chopped apple and raisins. Each of those 3 sections was poured into 2 jumbo muffin baking cups - making 2 banana peanut muffins, 2 banana apple muffins and 2 banana raisin muffins. Adding cinnamon or nutmeg to the apple or raisin muffins would be tasty too. Go easy with nutmeg, it’s strong!

7. After pouring into muffin tins (it’s OK to fill them up high), bake until the edges are golden and the centers are just set, about 25 minutes.

8. Let cool 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve at room temp or warm, plain or with butter or honey on top! Yum!

Any recipe that involves making you own yeast dough will be time consuming. This recipe is based on the recipe from The Vegan Chef - Whole Wheat Calzone Dough. We don’t have a bread machine or a food processor, but we do have a tabletop mixer, so we used that to mix the dough. You can do it by hand, you’ll just probably have to knead 3x as long.

Whole Wheat Calzones

1 1/3 cups warm water (110 degrees)
3 T. olive oil
1 - 1/4 oz. pkg. active dry yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 TB honey
olive oil

1. Place warm water, olive oil & yeast in bowl of tabletop mixer with bread hook attached. Mix for 30 seconds.

2. Allow mixture to sit for 10 minutes or until lightly foamy.

3. Add the flour & salt. Mix for 1 minute or until the dough forms a ball.

4. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. (NOTE: On a warm day you can place your dough in a sunny spot and save the oven for baking time, but we made ours at night.) If you are wearing rings or bracelets, remove them now. You’re about to knead…

5. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface (with about 1/4c flour on it) and knead the dough for 3 minutes or until smooth and elastic.

6. Drizzle with honey. Knead for another 3 minutes.

7. Lightly oil a large, oven-safe bowl with a little olive oil (We used a Pyrex Mixing Bowl. Make sure it is large because your dough will double in size). Place the ball of dough in the bowl, and roll the dough around the inside of the bowl to thoroughly coat it with oil.

8. Cover the bowl with a clean, wet towel, and place in your preheated oven. Leave the dough to rise for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk. (NOTE, again: On a warm day you can place your dough in a sunny spot and save the oven for baking time, but we made ours at night.)

9. In the meantime prepare your filling. We used the veggies we had in the house and low-moisture, part-skim mozzerella cheese. I combined mushrooms and fresh spinach and sauteed in butter with a garlic. Once the spinach wilted and the mushrooms browned I added steamed, chopped broccoli, steamed, chopped cauliflower and chunky salsa, lightly drained.

10. After the dough has doubled in size, punch down the dough, and turn it out onto your floured work surface again (you won’t need as much flour this time). Knead the dough a few times, place the bowl over the top of the dough, and leave it to rest for 20 minutes.

11. Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Using a rolling pin, roll out each piece of dough to form a circle. Be careful not to roll too thin! They’ll be about 6-8 inches. Spoon your filling on half of each circle of dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border at the edge. Fold the dough over to enclose the filling, crimp the edges closed with your fingers or a press lightly with a fork.

12. Transfer the filled calzones to a non-stick cookie sheet (we lined ours with a Silpat Nonstick Silicone Baking Mat and baked 3 there, and 3 on a Baking Stone) Bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow the calzones to cool for a few minutes before serving.

Note from Messy Mom: After making these, the dough seems to be all-purpose enough to use for other dishes. If I bake an apple pie, for instance I could make this dough, use half, freeze half - but I’d probably add twice as much honey for a dessert dough. Still, it’s all whole wheat and there is no actual sugar, just a drizzle of honey! I may finally be able to endulge in pizza again!