Turkey Thursdays and Pumpkin Brownies

So today I found a bargain that nobody could turn down. A 7 lb turkey for 99 cents a pound. So seven bucks and I had myself a turkey!

I put oven at 350, poured half a container of Chicken broth, tossed some Herbs de Provence, and put a little butter in the cavity. I covered it in tinfoil and left it in for an hour. Checked it, cranked it up to 400, removed the tinfoil, and left it in for another 30-40 minutes. When it said 165 on the thermometer, I took it out and let it cook itself to 180 degrees. Delicious.

Then, I made a dark chocolate brownie mix adding nothing but a can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix). No eggs, no oil, no water. Baked at 350 for 35 minutes in an 8x8 glass dish. Fudgey amazingness.

On Top Of Mount Smokey... AKA Spaghetti and Meatballs with a Twist

So Bradford and I were offered Red Sox/Yankees field seats tonight. Normally, I would jump on this rare opportunity to bust out my Red Sox shirt at Yankee stadium, but alas, the heat combined with my cold/allergies/inability to breathe deeply has made me woozy, so we opted to watch the game from home while consuming the classic comfort dish, spaghetti and meatballs followed by warm brownie with vanilla ice cream.

So spaghetti is rather simple... place in a pot of boiling water and let bubble for 10 minutes and then drain thoroughly.

Now, since this meal is supposed to be simple for a sick girl and her boyfriend to create, jarred sauce is the way to go. But unfortunately, the Jersey Tomato sauce that I actually like (and is very low in sugar!) was not available, so all we had was Prego, which I'm not a huge fan of consuming. So a few touch ups were necessary.

I started with olive oil in a pan and added some garlic and a chopped onion. While this was simmering, I chopped up a red bell pepper and a whole tomato and added it to the mix along with some fresh basil. After about 5 minutes, when the tomato started to "melt," I turned the burner on low and let it sit for a while.

The meatballs involved the kitchen sink. Basically I threw turkey ground meat, ketchup, some egg whites, Italian bread crumbs, parsley, oregano, garlic, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt and pepper into a bowl, then grated some Jarlsberg cheese (since it was the only one we had, being on sale at Stew Leonard's and all...) and hand mixed it forming round meatballs. I placed them on tinfoil on a cookie sheet, and popped them into the oven that was set at 350. After 15 minutes, I flipped 'em and cooked the little suckers for another 5 minutes.

After the meatballs had been flipped, I added the unfortunate Prego to my onion, pepper, tomato mixture and turned the heat back up for about 3 minutes. Then I let the whole thing simmer for the last two. Combine it all together, and Voila! spaghetti and meatballs and hopefully a Sox victory!