Sequestration Meal #418

 

While waiting on something more spring like, as you've been seeing from me lately, I decided to dial down hard on late winter/all-season goodness. When I was pondering what else to make to tide me over until the asparagus prices go down, I remembered I'd been wanting to try these vegan cranberry meatballs from Jessica in the Kitchen for ages, and I realized I had just enough cauliflower and quinoa to make them, plus almost everything else in it is stuff I always have around. I did have to buy a can of cranberry sauce, which I don't think has suffered yet from the inflationary issue, though I don't think I'd ever bought canned cranberry sauce before, so who knows? But it is one of the cheapest things on the canned fruit aisle, for what that may be worth.

In any case: These are delicious and you should definitely try them sometime, but only when you really want to spend a long time in the kitchen. (I was in the mood for that, but I wouldn't always be.) I was worried that I might not get them to hold together but they stayed together beautifully. I just had to be patient to carefully squeeze each portion into a ball. The recipe made 24 meatballs, so that was a lot of careful squeezing and shaping! The leftovers were more crumbly, so be forewarned.

Although quinoa is a complete protein, there wasn't a ton of quinoa in this, so I decided I should look for an additional protein source to layer in. I ran across an easily veganized recipe for carrots and celery with pecans, and that sounded like it would go well with the meatballs and not be too much effort. This was a delicious side, and I would definitely make it again. It's also pretty cheap, and makes celery more than just a finely chopped component (which is how I usually end up using celery). Celery is often underappreciated. But do add some salt to the pecan/dill/vegan butter mixture; I didn't think the salted water the veggies cooked in seasoned the dish quite enough.

I served this over a bed of mashed potatoes, because obviously mashed potatoes are practically mandatory with this sort of meal. Plus, it puts me on the "bowl" train. I'm still trying to get myself on that train, because I often find eating things out of a bowl comforting in some weird way.

This was very satisfying. They are definitely not going to make you think they're something other than veggies and grains, the way you might with Gardein and the like, but they're wonderful. Cauliflower does so many cool things. This is, in its basic essence, a bowl of vegetables. You can make it even if you live in an area without any specialty products at all. As the price of everything skyrockets, that remains somehow comforting to me. When the world falls apart, we'll probably still have some vegetables. They might as well be amazing.