What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Paula’s Pasta y Fagioli

8 Jan
Fast, easy and delicious! Perfect for a cold winter day.

Fast, easy and delicious! Perfect for a cold winter day.

My friend Paula has the most wonderful blog called My Soup For You, and I visit it often. Although it’s named for her delicious soups, it encompasses all of her cooking talents, not just soups. As she says, it’s “so much more” than just her delicious soups.

On one particular day she posted a recipe for a soup I just knew my family would love; a Pasta y Fagioli soup made in the crock pot.

Now, you know how I love my crock pot!

And with this cold, wintery weather, what would be better than a warm, simmering soup awaiting our arrival home one evening?

I only had to make two small changes to her super-easy recipe. The first change was that I didn’t have the pasta she recommended using, Ditalini. I used elbow pasta instead, which is a larger pasta, but still delicious. The second change was that I preferred to put cooked ground turkey into my recipe instead of ham or pancetta as Paula had done. Other than that, I followed her recipe to the T.

As I expected, this soup got all thumbs up from our family! We not only had it for dinner that evening, but there was enough left to send in thermoses for lunches the next day as well. It’s definitely a recipe I’d make again!

I have copied and pasted the recipe below, just as Paula has it on her blog, but I hope you’ll hop on over and visit her on My Soup For You and check out all she has to offer! She’s just recently updated and revamped her blog so there’s lots of great posts to explore!

Fast and Easy Pasta Y Fagioli
1 quart broth – I used chicken
6 oz can of tomato paste
2-3 cups pureed tomatoes
8 oz diced ham or pancetta – I used pancetta
1 can white beans – you can add more if you want a heartier soup
Garlic
Italian seasoning
salt and pepper
8 oz prepared ditalini pasta

1. Put everything but the pasta in a slow cooker.
2. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
3. Serve over the pasta.

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Snowy weather or winter boredom? No problem!

6 Jan
Stuck inside? No worries!

Stuck inside? No worries!

Living in the Northeast, we are prone to lots of cold, snowy winter weather. Sometimes we can get outside, go sledding, build a snowman. Sometimes though, it’s either snowing too hard or it’s just too cold to be out or out for long.

On those days, when we’re stuck inside, it’s fun to find some neat things to pass the time other than watching TV or playing one device or another.

Lucky for us, this weather usually follows our Christmas holidays and we have lots of great, new things to keep us busy. As I did last year, I thought I’d highlight and review a few of the really great things we received this year, which have already provided us with some great, indoor fun.

Today’s review is for one of my daughter Elizabeth’s (age 11) gifts from Santa: Snap Circuits, Jr.

The mat included in the kit really helps the kids to see where to place their pieces.

The mat included in the kit really helps the kids to see where to place their pieces.

This was a gift she put at the top of her list after seeing it in a catalog that came in our mail, but it was one that we didn’t know very much about. It has turned out to be one, very cool gift. Focusing on Science, Engineering and Technology skills, this kit contains over 100 projects that the kids can do, all of which produce an action: a light turns on, a fan runs, music stops or starts; things of that nature. To create the action however, the kids must connect a series of circuits. A flat surface is included, similar to the work mat that comes with LEGO kits. The circuits are all able to be created and put together on that mat. The mat helps the kids map out how far apart the various pieces need to be placed in order to be connected.

As a parent and as a former teacher, I liked so many things about this kit and I really had a great time delving into it with her one afternoon when it was just she and I at home for a little while.

First off, I loved that it was STEM related (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). I was so pleased to see my daughter enjoying utilizing those types of skills. We often tend to lean towards the crafty activities. We love to craft and create, but this was a whole different type of creativity and her eyes lit up that very first time she made the light bulb turn on with a flip of the switch that she’d connected herself.

The kit comes in a box that helps to keep the pieces organized and helps the kids know which piece is which.

The kit comes in a box that helps to keep the pieces organized and helps the kids know which piece is which.

Second, I loved how organized and easy to understand this kit was. It has many, many pieces and they’re all organized and easy to store, and come with a map to show you what you should have for pieces, what the pieces are called, and where they go in the box. I taped the map right into the cover of the box to help her put things back in the right spots.

Third, the booklet that comes in the kit is fabulous. The projects are numbered, with a place to check them off once done. They start out easy and basic and get more complicated as you go. Kids see success instantly as they do the first, quick project, and it fuels their fire, making them want to complete the next project, and the next. Each project has an objective, so the kids see what they’re going to do with that project, and then the directions follow, with a summary at the end which explains why the project did what it did. I was especially thrilled when one of the early projects explained to her how a battery connected to the circuit made a propeller spin, and we could connect that to the new spinbrush toothbrush she’d gotten in her stocking, which runs the same way. She went and got her toothbrush, turned it on and watched it spin as she looked at her Snap Circuits propeller spinning too. It was fantastic.

And finally: budget. This is a very affordable activity kit which provides so many hours of fun and learning. The Snap Circuits, Jr. kit runs in the $25 range, depending where you buy it and I’ve seen it online at Walmart, Target and on Amazon.com, but I know it’s also available in other places. I love it when things are affordable! I also know that there are lots of kinds of Snap Circuits kits, ranging from physics to lights, to much bigger and more complicated (and more expensive) kits. You can get replacement parts and there are learning extensions online at their website as well.

As we progressed along in the book, the projects got more complicated, using more pieces, the results more exciting.

As we progressed along in the book, the projects got more complicated, using more pieces, the results more exciting.

I’d definitely give the Snap Circuits, Jr. kit a thumbs up as a parent, and my daughter gives it her vote from a kid’s point of view as well. I highly recommend you giving it a try! It’s great for those rainy or snowy, cold weather days and provides hours of fun and entertainment, while lots of learning is taking place too.

When I looked on Amazon.com, the age recommended for the kit was 8 and up, and I have to agree. I have a daughter who is 8 also, and she likes it too, but my 11 year-old is definitely more independent with it than my 8 year-old. They’ve done some of the projects together as well, which is nice too. It’s also a  great gift for both boys and girls, which is not often easy to find.

I can’t wait to see what some of the next, more complicated and more exciting  projects will be!

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What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Cranberry Apple Chutney

18 Dec
This was delicious and will be on our table for Christmas Dinner next week!

This was delicious and will be on our table for Christmas Dinner next week!

We are food and cooking TV junkies. We watch all kinds of cooking shows at our house from Diners, Drive-ins and Dives to Restaurant Impossible, and more.

The bad thing about that is I’m constantly hungry because we’re always looking at food and it always looks delicious.

The good thing about that is we get some great inspiration from the things we see made on TV.

A few weeks back, Don saw a Cranberry Chutney cooked on television. It looked so good that he decided that he too, wanted to make a Cranberry Chutney the next time we had pork for dinner. He bought all the ingredients, throwing in some apples as well, and we planned the meal for the night of our kids’ Winter Recital for Dance. We’d be gone all day and coming back in time for supper.

Before we left, Don pre-cooked the chutney and we took a sneak peek at it. It looked delicious and smelled delicious! We took a taste. DELICIOUS! When we came home later that evening, all we’d have to do is reheat it. The pork went into the crock pot and off we went.

Sure enough, we came home starving and we couldn’t wait to dig in to that night’s dinner.

The chutney Don had made was amazing along side (or on top of) the pork roast. We had sauteed green beans, baked potatoes and homemade applesauce as well. The meal got all thumbs up all around and we’ve decided to have it again for our Christmas Dinner. I can’t wait!
I am sharing Don’s recipe with you today, inspired by the many TV shows we watch about food. If you’re looking for something new and different to do for your Christmas Dinner, I encourage you to give this recipe a try!

DON’S CRANBERRY APPLE CHUTNEY

I love how the fresh fruit looks in the pan all together. The colors are so wintry and fresh!

I love how the fresh fruit looks in the pan all together. The colors are so wintry and fresh!

INGREDIENTS

One bag of fresh cranberries (12 oz.)

3 medium sized Macintosh apples, diced

1/4 cup raisins

1/3 cup orange juice

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Combine all ingredients in pan.

Cook on top of the stove until cranberries begin to pop and apples have softened.
Orange juice should reduce down.

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Monday Musings: Giving in preparation for receiving

9 Dec
December, a month when we get so much from others, is a great time to focus more on the gift of giving to others and spreading peace.

December, a month when we get so much from others, is a great time to focus more on the gift of giving to others and spreading peace.

Christmas is coming!

In our house, the countdown is on in a couple of different locations around the house. We’ve got a countdown to Christmas written on the fridge memo board and we have a Christmas House countdown where each day, beginning with December 1, you open a window of the wooden house which has a tiny treat inside. You eat the treat, and wait for the next day when you do it again. At our house, each day has three M&Ms inside: one for each kid. Every year they await the day we decorate our living room and the Christmas House comes out of its box and goes onto the hutch next to our Nativity scene.

This year though, there’s an added twist to our countdown house. Just before the start of the month, a friend of mine, Gina, sent me a link she thought my kids would enjoy. The link, to 100 Days of Real Food, contained 25 business card-sized messages which each fit nicely, one per day, in the windows of our Christmas House, along with our three M&Ms. I read through the messages which gave daily Random Acts of Kindness (RAKs) and I loved the idea of including them in our countdown to Christmas. The RAKs gave ideas about sending a note to someone you haven’t seen in a while, or helping a parent/teacher/friend/sibling, and things of that nature.

What I liked most about this new idea was that it encouraged the kids to think about other people every day over the next month. I think overall we do a good job of raising our kids to think of other people, but this month-long activity would really put the focus on good deeds as the kids anticipate the arrival of Christmas.

I decided to write them a letter explaining to them this new twist that would be appearing in the Christmas House on the first day and every day throughout the month, and leave it for them propped up in front of the house for that first morning. I told them that there was no pressure here, that whichever of the RAKs they could accomplish would be one more nice thing than they might have normally thought to do on any given day and would brighten someone else’s day. I did not take away the treats, as I didn’t feel the need to erase one tradition in order to add in another. I placed an empty vase behind the house, and a post-it note sized note pad next to it. I asked them to fill out a piece of paper each time they accomplished one of the RAKs and throw it into the vase.

This was not to keep score, or to track who is doing RAKs and who isn’t. There will be no comparisons in the end. It was strictly a visual for them: at the end of the month they will be able to “see” what a difference they’ve made in other people’s lives through the season of Advent as they watch the vase go from empty to full.

Now that it’s begun and we’re a week in, I find it interesting to hear them talk about how this or that RAK  is one they already do frequently or one they’ve recently done for someone, or to hear them thinking about ways to accomplish that day’s RAK. It’s just nice to hear them talking about putting other people before themselves. It’s also neat to find other things we’ve done throughout the day and note that they’re also RAKs even though they weren’t necessarily the suggested ones in the window that day. This weekend for example, they made pillowcases for Kids Conquer Cancer at their sewing class, we bought a toy doll for a three year old girl who lives in a local shelter for our church’s giving tree, we bought pajamas for a school pajama drive, and we donated money to a charity for foster teens by attending a local fashion show for which their ticket prices went towards Christmas gifts for the teens. Having regular opportunities to talk about these actions reminds them that they truly do a lot of “good deeds” as the days go by.

Last week, Nelson Mandela passed away. At 95 years old, he was one of the worlds most prominent examples of a peacemaker; someone who dedicated his lifetime to being a truly good, peaceful person. As we sat in church this past Sunday morning, our pastor spoke about Mandela and his calling. He talked about what a leader Mandela was, what a role model he was for living a truly peaceful life. The pastor reminded us that we are all called to something bigger than just our own daily lives and responsibilities; although clearly we’re not all called to do such a huge job as Mandela, each thing we do makes a difference in the world.

Since the Newton CT. shootings at Sandy Hook last year, there are many people who chose last year and are choosing this year, to do 26 RAKs in December to honor the 26 victims of that shooting. I loved that idea as well. What a wonderful way to honor the victims of such a violent tragedy, by working to spread peace to others.

I feel like our 25 days of giving to others is an example of the little things we do in our lives that make a difference in the world, no matter how small. I’d never dare to even compare myself or my family to Nelson Mandela, but I do believe that we make a difference. I know we do. We are helping to spread goodness and peacefulness to others. We’re focusing on it a lot during Advent, as we prepare for Christmas, but it’s something we’ve built our family morals and values on as well, and we focus on it year-round.

I’m enjoying watching our vase fill with RAKs as the days go by, and I’m sure that this new type of countdown will be something we will add to our Advent traditions again next year. I’m certainly thankful for my friend Gina, that she came across this and thought to send it our way.

No matter what you celebrate or how you do it, I hope that your holiday season is peaceful and wonderful!

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Monday Musings: Traditions

2 Dec
The Thanksgiving table is never too full, we can always fit one or two more guests!

The Thanksgiving table is never too full, we can always fit one or two more guests!

Thursday was Thanksgiving Day.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays for a few reasons. First off, the obvious: dessert. But really, more importantly than that, I love it because of the traditions that surround us at Thanksgiving each year. Some traditions started before I was married with kids.  Watching the Macy’s Day Parade has been a favorite Thanksgiving morning tradition since I was a kid myself. Thanksgiving dinner has been hosted by my aunt and uncle for as long as I can remember, and they do a phenomenal job. It’s always a huge meal, a huge crowd and pretty much anyone and everyone is welcomed to our table each year. This year, five tables stretched end to end, filled with laughing, talking and even some tears as we remembered those who weren’t able to join us this year.

As parents, traditions are definitely something we wanted to pass along to our kids, but they’re also something we wanted to create with them as well. We passed along the love of the parade to our kids; now we watch as a family each Thanksgiving morning. We eat the same thing for breakfast each year: my Pumpkin Cranberry Bread, grilled to perfection. We spend Thanksgiving day from about noon through after dark, at my aunt and uncle’s house, having a huge, multi-course Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends; new and old. I bring the same pie every year to add my contribution to the plethora of desserts: my Cranberry Pie.

I was so happy to read about all of the memories we've helped to create for our kids as they've grown.

I was so happy to hear about all of the memories we’ve helped to create for our kids as they’ve grown.

Interestingly enough, we were riding to school on Wednesday morning when Elizabeth mentioned that she hoped the rain that day would not continue into the next, because every year we take a walk down to the beach during “the soup break” between courses at dinnertime. She said she wrote about that in her journal, and then proceeded to tell me all about her Thanksgiving journal entry.

I was stunned as she spoke, detailing for me all the things she wrote about in her journal entry that she was looking forward to having, eating, seeing or doing the very next day. As I drove her to school, listening, I swallowed a lump in my throat.

I was so happy to hear the details that she remembered from each year’s Thanksgiving, but I was all the more thrilled that the foundations we’ve worked hard to instill in them, the love for tradition and family and memories has carried on from us to them. They love the things about Thanksgiving that we love as well. They look forward to those traditions now, as much as we do, as well as some new ones we’ve peppered in, here and there.

After Elizabeth told me about her journal entry, I asked her to see if she could bring it home for the long weekend so that I could read it and photocopy it for some of our family members who I thought would enjoy it as much as I did, including my parents and my aunt and uncle. I made a few extra copies, just in case anyone else wanted one.

When my uncle mentioned Elizabeth’s Thanksgiving journal entry over dinner, someone asked her to read it out loud. I didn’t know if she would or not-there were 34 pairs of eyes waiting for her response-but she did. She stood up and read all about her Thanksgiving, and she did a great job. A few people actually cried as they listened to it, showing that our shared traditions mean as much to them as they do to us.

I believe that traditions are passed on and that they are also created. It doesn’t matter so much what the traditions are, but more so that they just are; that traditions exist within a family. They represent the foundations of our family and the values that we hold true. I am glad to see that our kids love both kinds of traditions as much as we do; both the ones we’ve passed on to them, and the ones that have been created since we’ve had them. I know that in the future as times change, our traditions may change as well, but I also know that if we need to let go of some old traditions, we will be making new ones in their place.

And it’s my hope, that no matter what, my children will take at least some part of our Thanksgiving tradition; something that means so much to each of them, and pass it along to their families one day in the not-so-far off future as well, and add it to the traditions that they too, will be creating.

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German Apple Cake

18 Nov
German Apple Cake is a recipe I loved, growing up.

German Apple Cake is a recipe I loved, growing up.

ORIGINALLY POSTED OCTOBER 17, 2011

**I decided to re-post this today, November 18, 2013 because I made it this weekend for our friends who came for dinner. Making it reminded me of this post, so I thought I’d run it again for my newer followers who may have missed it.**

Growing up, this was one of my favorite recipes that my mom made. I have one specific memory also, of a time (the ONE time) when my mom was sick and my dad helped us make this recipe for her. I still think of that each time I see the recipe or eat this cake.

As with all of my recipes it’s super easy and of course, super delicious.

What’s your favorite apple recipe for fall?

Ingredients:

3 c. chopped or shredded apples

1 c. oil

2 c. flour

1/2 c. choc. chips (or a few more if you love ’em as much as I do!)

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

pinch of salt

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together by hand in large bowl.

Grease and flour bundt pan.

Pour batter into pan.

Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Cool 1/2 hr. before removing from the pan.

 

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Fun Friday: My fun new Pampered Chef toy: The microwave egg cooker

15 Nov
This could possibly be one of my top favorite Pampered Chef purchases ever.

This could possibly be one of my top favorite Pampered Chef purchases ever.

I have a new toy from Pampered Chef. I got it at a recent party I went to this fall and it’s made my life so much easier.

When I went to the party in September, the stoneware microwave egg cooker was a special that month, so my consultant had it on hand, cooking an egg in it (which I ate) to show us how easy it was to use.

It was SO easy.

I was sold, instantly.

In this egg cooker, you can make fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, little egg omelets, and over hard eggs.

I use ours often to make egg sandwiches for breakfast, for lunches. I also make open-faced ham and egg on english muffin breakfasts.

I.Love.It.

One of our new favorite breakfast and lunch menu items, since acquiring the microwave egg cooker.

One of our new favorite breakfast and lunch menu items, since acquiring the microwave egg cooker.

The microwave egg cooker was affordable. It’s not huge, so it’s easy to store, which is key in my small kitchen. And it’s SO easy to use. SO easy.

To make the eggs above, I melted a little pat of butter in each well in the microwave, cracked my eggs in the wells, poked the yokes with a fork and cooked them for one minute and ten seconds.

Done.

Breakfast. On a week day.

I was recently asked to give a list of some of my “must haves” and this was definitely at the top of my list. It got me thinking though, what are some of my top favorites besides this?

1) My two scoops. I use one small one for scooping cookie batter and one medium sized scoop for scooping cupcake and muffin batter.

2) My large scraper

3) My micro scraper. I use the large one when I cook and this one to clean out the last of my Nutella from the jar.

4) My weighted whisk. This has taken the place of a hand-mixer when I mix cake batter, brownie mix and scrambled eggs.

5) My mini food chopper. I’ve chopped onions, celery, carrots and more in this little chopper. For a small tool it does a big job!

6) My stoneware mini loaf pan. I’ll be pulling this out next week when I make my mini cranberry breads for Thanksgiving.

7) My stoneware large bar pan and my stoneware pizza stones (I have large rectangle and small round and use them both for pizzas, for cookies, for crescent rolls; and I use the large bar pan for my granola bars, for cookies, and for nachos on a Friday night.

8) My Deep Covered Baker in which I can cook a whole chicken in the microwave in 40 minutes.

I think the things I like best about Pampered Chef tools is that they last, they’re good quality and they seem to always know exactly what I need, before I know I need it.

Like my microwave egg cooker.

I’m hosting an online party this month, so I’ve linked over all of my top faves to their spot in the online catalog in case you want to take a look!

At the moment, all I know is that I can’t wait until Pampered Chef comes out with their newest product that I didn’t know I needed!!

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What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Quinoa Tabbouleh Salad

13 Nov
Lunch or dinner, this was a great new recipe!

Lunch or dinner, this was a great new recipe!

Things are constantly getting lost in our house.

“Have you seen…”

“Does anyone know where…..”

“I can’t find my……”

This recipe is one of those lost items. I’d ripped it out of a magazine over the summer. It’s from the June 2013 Woman’s Day magazine. I thought it sounded great.

My husband’s family is Lebanese, he loves Lebanese food, especially tabbouleh, and so does Elizabeth. I love it as well. I thought for sure it’d be a hit.

If I could find it.

Once I ripped it out and showed him, he agreed it sounded great, and then I never saw the page again.

Until last week.

We happened to move the couch away from the wall to get something one of the kids had seen fall back there, and lo and behold…my Woman’s Day recipe!

It just so happened that we’d made quinoa the night before as a side dish for our dinner. We had leftovers and it was in the fridge already.

With the quinoa cooked and cooled previously, this was a super-easy lunch to throw together in the morning before school for Don and Elizabeth’s lunchboxes. I even had sliced cucumbers leftover from the day before too, so I was really already on my way.

The votes came back with big thumbs up for the new salad. I sent wheat pita pockets on the side. Elizabeth scooped hers up with the bread, Don put his right inside the bread.

We had a little bit leftover and they used it as a side dish one night with dinner.

This is a great, quick tabbouleh and if you like Middle Eastern foods, give this a try!

QUINOA TABBOULEH SALAD

Woman’s Day June 2013

In a medium bowl, whisk together:
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice1 Tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley
1 teaspoon olive oil
a pinch each of salt and pepper

Add:
3/4 cup cooked quinoa1/2 cup canned chickpeas
1 plum tomato, chopped
1 seedless cucumber, chopped

Toss to combine.

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Monday Musings: Keeping it all in perspective

11 Nov

This time of year is so busy for me.

The October/November/December and April/May/June months keep me running, covering several stories a day most days, some of them at night, and then typing them too, but it pays off in the summertime because I get lots of time off to be with my family.

When you mix in all the other “stuff” that takes place during a week: sports, scouting, church, and work-related or school-related meetings, it gets crazy. Sometimes at the end of a day, my body is sore and my legs hurt, as if I’ve run a marathon, even though it’s just daily running around.

I’m sure you can all relate. I know I’m not the only one running ragged.

This past week was one of those weeks. Everyone seemed to have everything. There were nighttime meetings and unexpected doctor appointments mixed in. By midweek I was exhausted already, and we had a big weekend ahead.

I happened to be looking at my calendar for the end of the week and noticed that somehow I’d written two meetings at the same time for Thursday night at 7:00. I looked and looked at the calendar page (yes, I still use a paper “planner” type of calendar) and I tried to figure out which meeting I should attend.

One of them I’d skipped last month to be able to attend the other, so maybe I’d go to the one I’d skipped. But then one of them had a pressing event coming up that we needed to talk about. Maybe I should go to that one.

All of a sudden I noticed that at the top of that day’s block, I had written “Grandma Rose’s Birthday” in big letters as well. Mixed in with interviewing the mayor, seeing a student council sworn in, Girl Scouts, and two meetings, my Grandma Rose, the kids’ Great-Grandma Rose, was turning 93 years old.

That doesn’t happen every day.

She’s had a rough time lately, recovering from a recent stroke, moving from her home.

I decided that instead of picking another meeting to attend, instead of dragging myself to one more “thing,” I would attend neither meeting and instead, pay a visit to Grandma Rose that evening after dinner to help her celebrate her birthday.

That night, I was running behind in my day by the time Don called after work to check in. I had no card, no flowers, nothing I’d envisioned in my head had gone the way I’d planned. But I told him that I still wanted to make this work. I still wanted to make her day with our visit.

He came up with a great idea: rather than flowers, we could bring a party to her: cake, coffee, paper goods, and celebrate for real, right there with her. When I called her that evening, just to make sure she’d be home, she was so happy to hear that we’d be coming for a visit. I didn’t tell her about our “party in a bag” that we were bringing to her.

She was so happy to hear the news. She couldn’t wait.

We arrived at the same time as my parents, my dad is her oldest son, so it really was a big party, with eight of us in her apartment eating cake and drinking coffee, just hanging out all together. We stayed quite a while, but eventually it was time to leave.

It made me happy as we were walking out the door, to hear her say to my dad, “I had a good birthday,” when we left. I knew then that I’d made the right decision, that I’d made the right decision by putting my family first. When we got in the car, one of the kids said, “That was really fun.”

The meetings will always be there, but Grandma Rose is now 93. No one knows what the future will hold.

This week’s events put things into perspective for me. Sometimes we need to remember to slow down, to stop and remember what is truly important to us and make sure that we’re keeping our priorities in order. I cringe to think of Grandma Rose’s night had we not gone. Her apartment was so alive and full of life with all of us there.

I’m glad that her birthday memories will be full of those memories and I’m glad that we too, will have the memory of how we were able to make her night, to make her birthday just a little bit more special, just by choosing her.

Sometimes your presence alone, is the gift.

Sometimes your presence alone, is the gift.

What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Sweet and Sour Meatballs

6 Nov
This week's recipe is definitely a keeper at our house!

This week’s recipe is definitely a keeper at our house!

When I was in the midst of my crock pot cooking frenzy of eight weeks, I came across a crock pot recipe for Sweet and Sour Meatballs that the kids wanted me to try.

I never got the chance to try them out, the recipe was still on my list of things to make in the future, but I did not like that the “sweet and sour” part of the recipe was a jar of sweet and sour sauce. I like to make things on my own when I can, so that I know exactly what I’m putting into the recipe and I can modify if I need to.

In the meantime, I follow Six Sisters’ Stuff on Facebook, and this week I clicked on a link of theirs that came through for ground beef recipes, and somehow I kept clicking until I ended up at a recipe from one of the sisters, Mel, on her site, Mel’s Kitchen Cafe for sweet and sour meatballs with a homemade sauce. The Six Sisters often have some good stuff on their sites!

I decided to try it out this week, and I’m glad I did! All but my little non-meat-eater, Alex, liked this recipe. LOVED this recipe. Even Alex ate one meatball. She just didn’t like it.  I got so many compliments on it other than from her though, that it was well worth it!

We also decided that this would be great for a party. We often do traditional meatballs in sauce, but this would be a nice change. When I made them this time, I used my larger of the two Pampered Chef scoops, the same one I use to scoop my muffin batter into my tins. If I did this recipe for a party, I’d use the smaller of the two scoops, which is the same one I use for cookie batter.

I did, in fact, modify this recipe just a bit:

* It called for 1 1/2 lbs. of ground beef but I used 2 lbs of ground turkey instead.

* It said it wasn’t a particularly saucy recipe and that you could double the sauce. Since I prefer saucier than not and since I was using more meat than it called for, I did opt to double it.

*The directions called for making the meatballs and baking them right in the sauce for 30 minutes. I wasn’t all that comfortable with putting the raw meat into the sauce, so I baked them for 15 minutes first, added in the sauce and then baked them the rest of the time in the sauce.

*I left about 12 out of sauce for those who wanted plain. I’m glad I did. We all tried both and we all liked both.

I made sure to bake these in a deeper casserole dish rather than on a baking sheet, so that there’d  be plenty of space for the sauce.

Below is Mel’s recipe, just as she has it here on her site. I encourage you to try it out and take a look at some of the other recipes on her site as well!

Ingredients

Meatballs:
    • 1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef (you don’t want the beef to be too high in fat because the fat will all pool at the bottom of the baking dish after baking – big time grody-ness in my book)
    • 3/4 cup quick oats
    • 2 eggs, slightly beaten
    • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
    • 1/2 cup milk
    • 1 teaspoon salt
    • 1/2 teaspoon pepper
    • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Sauce:
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon mustard
  • 1/4 cup barbeque sauce
  • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Directions

  1. For the meatballs: Combine all of the ingredients and mix well. Form into about 12 balls, eacha bout 2 inches in diameter. Place in a casserole dish. Cover with sauce (below). Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Serve over rice.
  2. For the sauce: Combine ingredients and blend thoroughly. Heat in a small saucepan until combined and sugar is dissolved and pour over meatballs. (This dish is not overly abundant on sauce so if you enjoy things a bit saucier, double the sauce ingredients.)

Notes

Freezable Meal: After covering the meatballs with sauce, cover the pan with two layers of aluminum foil and freeze. To bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake covered without thawing for 1 hour. Uncover and bake 20-30 minutes more, until meatballs are cooked through.

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