One important aspect of “survival” and self-sufficiency is being able to cook tasty food that is both inexpensive and simple to prepare.

Recently I was going through a bit of ‘food fatigue’ where my usual dinner fare just wasn’t exciting me, and I found myself wanting to pick up BBQ or something on the way home. As someone who follows a (s)low-carb, no grain diet, I really needed something besides my usual chicken, eggs or beans.

I had some ground beef in the freezer that I pulled out for dinner, and figured I’d do meatloaf or something with it. As things went into the mixing bowl, I must have grabbed a jar of inspiration because what happened next was nothing short of brilliant.

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1/3 lb bacon (roughly 1/3 of a package), chopped
• 3 tbs or to taste chopped dried onion (I use my LDS onion!)
• 1 tbs garlic powder
• 1 tbs or so salt
• few shakes of black pepper
• 1/4 cup catsup or 1/2 can of tomato paste + splash of vinegar
• squirt of Siracha
• 8 oz goat cheese (or in a pinch, cream cheese will work)

Line a square or rectangular cake pan with parchment paper (for easy cleanup). Preheat oven to 350°.

Mix all ingredients other than goat cheese in a large bowl as if you were preparing meatloaf. Then while it sits for a few minutes for everything to meld, make marble-sized balls of goat cheese (pretend it’s playdough) on a plate. Then make a ball of meat and form it around your marble of goat cheese. Place in baking pan.

Bake in oven until tops of meatballs are lightly brown, roughly 20-30 min (okay I didn’t time it, I just eyeball them).

And.. eat. No sauce needed. (Really!)

If you want to get super fancy, add some chopped fresh cauliflower, mushrooms, onion and garlic to pan and allow these to roast shoulder to shoulder with your meatballs. Even better than meat and potatoes!

Makes between 10-12 meatballs.