Meatball Kolos**

**I do not know what Kolos means. This was an autocorrect fail. I meant to send a text to my friend Jordan, (along with a picture of these awesome lentil meatballs,) that said, "meatbaaaaalllllllls." and it auto-corrected it to, "meatball kolos"

And thus the name was born.

Now, as Jordan pointed out, I could pass this off as some sort of Greek dish. I, however, prefer not to go fishing around on the internet for words that I do not know the meaning of. You just never know where you could end up, these days. (For example, do NOT go to Skinnybitch.com. It is NOT the website for the book!)

Alright, anyhow. I give you, Meatball Kolos.

I got this recipe, again, from Vegweb.com.

2 cups lentils
1 cup oats
1 cup corn meal
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons onion powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder
vegetable oil, for frying

Okay, start with your lentils. Cook according to the package...




Next, mash up those lentils and preheat your oven to 500 degrees.






Okay, now the recipe calls for onion powder and garlic powder, which I didn't have. So, instead...I did my favorite thing.

I LOVE sautéing onion and garlic in olive, (or vegetable) oil. I love it. Nothing better. Most of my meals start this way.




So, my favorite thing is to cook the onions down, along with some herbs, (I lean toward Italian herbs...but I imagine anything you prefer would do,) until everything is nice and brown and crispy. Really just to flavor the oil.

So, next, I mixed up the dry ingredients. My kitchen Ninja, (as seen on TV) is still packed up, so I used this awesome old food processor that I'm pretty sure my parents got as a wedding present. They got married in 1977. (My mom was 26 years old...I'll be honest with you, this next birthday of mine is looming.)




The recipe did not call for a food processor, but when a recipe calls for oats I put them into the food processor because I prefer everything to be finely ground.

After this, I mixed the dry mixture, (oats and corn meal,) into the lentils.




Now, this mixture was dry. Really dry. I tried forming the "meatballs" and they crumbled right in my hands. So, I had to add water to my hands while I formed the meatballs...then I put them into a pan in my onion and garlic oil...




Once they are a little bit crispy all over...place them onto parchment paper on a baking sheet, and bake them, (at 500) for just a few minutes. Not too long, or it will dry them out more.




And that's that. I tossed some whole wheat penne pasta in the leftover cooking oil, (yum.) and then served it with the meatballs.




I thought this was great...they are kind of dry, so the next night I tried them in just some tomato sauce, which was good but they kind of fell apart. They actually made it really great sauce though, very hearty and "meaty".




So, there you have it. I will definitely keep playing around with this recipe. I am thinking that you could probably cut down on the corn meal and oats to make them less dry? Or I might try to add an egg replacer to the mixture. We'll see!

Until then, Atticus loves Meatball Kolos!