Ground turkey gets a bad rap in the TV cooking shows. Yes, it sometimes has a distinctive flavor. That can be solved by carefully using herbs and spices. Yes, it has so much more fat than ground beef. I’ve become convinced, after years of watching food TV that those folks like fat, the taste and feel of it. Fat does add a satiation factor. They are the same cooks who enjoy using red pepper flakes and other forms of spicy piquancy. Perhaps this is to mask the actual taste of the food.

The other week, I had a nice yield of vegetables and two pounds of ground turkey. I decided to transform them into stuffed vegetables and a meatloaf. The whole family, all three of us, enjoy meatloaf. I make it loads of different ways, sometimes with a recipe, sometimes without (see 12/12/22 for a meatloaf loaded with vegetable recipe).

I also had two huge beefsteak tomatoes that called out for stuffing and a medium sized globe eggplant languishing in the fridge.

The stuffing: This time improvisation took hold and I used whatever was in the fridge vegetable drawer: onion, celery, mushrooms, the insides of the tomatoes and the lone eggplant, all chopped pretty finely. Of course, add salt and pepper, no herbs (or red pepper flakes).

Daughter will eat meatloaf, but passes on stuffed vegetables. I used the eggplant to make imam baldi for her (see 1/21/22 post for the recipe). This is a great dish for vegetarians/vegans. You cannot see it in the images, but instead of halving the eggplant, I carefully cut it into three sections. Equally carefully, I excised the flesh of the vegetable, leaving about ½ to 1 inch to be stuffed. Some of the mixed, chopped vegetables were spooned into the waiting eggplant “boats.”

Next I carefully mixed the ground turkey (2 pounds) and ground lamb (1 pound) with 1 (maybe 2) egg. When I was a kid, I hated making meatloaf. The gooey feel of the meat between my fingers was so uncomfortable. I’ve gotten over it! I separated out enough to fill the two tomatoes.

Stuffed tomatoes. I added a handful of long grain rice to the filling for the tomatoes. The tomatoes and eggplant were placed into a baking pan with about 1 ½ inch of water for baking. If you have leftover stuffing, make porcupine meatballs, the rice makes little spines when cooked.

Potluck meatloaf. I added the reserved vegetables to the meat set aside for the meatloaf along with a handful of matza meal (the classic recipe calls for old fashioned oats) and thoroughly mixed. Instead of topping with ketchup, I decided to make  use of some leftover baked potatoes, thinly sliced and layered on top of the meat, topped with a sprinkle of paprika.

Everything went into a preheated moderate (350 F) oven for an hour. Note, my meatloaf pan was almost overfilled and, thus, overflowed. You might want to put it on a baking pan to catch the overflow.

Yes, we enjoyed the ground turkey dinner and also the leftovers.