Veggie Muffins

I leave my house at 7 each morning, and I don't get back until about 7:30 at night. I don't have time to start cooking dinner at that hour, and on a diet (and budget!) takeout isn't an option.

Enter the freezer. I know it's not ideal. Every time I watch an episode of Gordon Ramsay's kitchen nightmares and he curses out the chefs for freezing things, I cringe. I freeze everything. I comfort myself by reminding myself that when I cook for company it's always fresh, and for my own tired self a defrosted meal is perfectly fine.

And so, Sunday is my day to cook for the week. I generally make two or three different dishes (in large quantities), eat some for dinner, pack some for lunch, and freeze the rest. That way, my freezer is stocked with a bunch of different dishes, so I don't have the same things every night.

This Sunday was unusual, in that I couldn't go to the store. Instead, I went on a "use up what's in the house" spree.

In the morning I defrosted a bag of frozen broccoli, and a package of raw meatball mix. (Well, in the interest of accuracy, it was turkeyball mix. Much lower fat!) I scavenged in the fridge until I found some sliced portobello mushrooms and a very tired looking red pepper. I also dug up a zucchini, some onions, some carrots and some garlic.

The wheels in my brain started turning, and I came up with these delicious vegetable muffins. I won't say they were perfect, I will definitely be tweaking the recipe, but they were so good as is, I decided to share.

Here's what I used:
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 large zucchini - peeled
1 large carrot -peeled
(about) 2 portobello mushrooms
1 red pepper
1 bag frozen broccoli (16 oz, defrosted.)
4 egg whites
2 whole eggs
Whole wheat bread crumbs
Salt
Pepper
Parsley flakes
Cayenne pepper

(I didn't measure the last 5 ingredients, sorry!)

Here's what I did:

In the food processor I chopped all of the veggies until they were very fine. (A little bit at a time, otherwise they won't get processed properly.) Then I mixed them all together in a big mixing bowl, added the eggs and enough breadcrumbs to get a good texture. I mixed in the spices, and the batter was complete.

Next I sprayed muffin pans and filled the cups to the top with the batter. I baked them at 375 for about 45 minutes, and took them out to enjoy the most delicious treat I've had in a while. And really healthy!

I know, I know, not the best picture. I need to work on food photography, huh?

(In case you were wondering what happened to the chopped turkey, that's coming in another post.)