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Most of the recipes I make are inspired from thousands of blog posts I cull through and experiment with (post to come later about that process). But all those things aren’t what got me into cooking. My mother made us dinner every night, a main dish and two side vegetables and some type of carb. She made some killer meals (and some not so great; cranberry chicken still freaks me out to this day). At the time I’m not so sure I appreciated what a feat dinner on the table really was, but now I appreciate it in ways words could not describe. Dude, cooking is hard and exhausting, and that’s just one part of the process, you have to plan all the meals and shop for all the ingredients. I recently twittered that I wondered sometimes if I was pulling enough weight in my relationship and then I remembered I do all the cooking and grocery shopping and yep that’s enough. That’s a full-time job, actually not, but I wish it could be because even though it’s really hard I have really grown to love it.
My mom is Italian and makes the absolute best pasta sauce and meatballs ever. She has ruined me for italian food, because no one makes it like my mother. My great grandparents immigrated from the old country at the turn of century so they knew their food. My mother lived up stairs from her grandmother who was blind, so my mom and aunt would help my great-grandmother bake and cook and make homemade Italian sausage. Every Sunday my great-grandmother would have the whole family over for pasta and fresh-baked bread and everyone would leave with leftovers and a loaf.
Out of this comes my mother’s sauce and meatball recipe. My mother would start making it before we got out of bed and we could smell the sauce when we woke up. There is nothing better than waking up to that smell. That feeling equates directly to love for me.
So part one is the meatballs part two will be the sauce (which is a much longer process). I have a confession here, sometimes I make the meatballs and I don’t have the energy for the sauce. So I used bottled sauce, now for clarification I never used a brand bottled sauce (like prago or ragu; I just cannot do the taste). I typically use the sauce that is bottled at my favorite local Italian deli, that’s my recommendation; find a small local Italian joint and see if they bottle their sauce and then use that stuff. Sometime I also use Dean and Deluca’s sauces, or I make this sauce which consists mostly of butter but is totally to die for. Now this method is not Karen Anderson Mother approved, but hey it works. Sometimes I also take the meatballs and bottled sauce and make meatball sandwiches and that is a total yum.
Okay so enough of the drawn out emotional blubbering, here it is in all it’s vague old country glory.
Old Country Meatballs
1-2 pounds of ground beef
1 large onion finely diced
1/2 – 1 cup of bread crumbs
1/3 – 1/2 cup of freshly grated Romano cheese (or until you are tired of grating)
Pinch of salt and pepper
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 egg
Depending on how much meat you use you will want to adjust the amount of bread crumbs and cheese and garlic. I almost always use two pounds so I lean on the heavy side of those ingredients. I also don’t measure I just do it by feel, the meat shouldn’t be too dry or too moist. Basically you want be able to form 1.5 inch meatballs without the meat sticking to much to your hands.
So mix all the ingredients above well, using your two bare hands. Then form the meatballs into 1.5 inch round balls. Place those balls into glass or metal pans. They can be right next to each other.
Then sprinkle cheese and bread crumbs on top. Put in the oven at 350 degrees for one hour. After they are done, place the meatballs in the pasta sauce and heat on low for 20-30 minutes. This way the meat soaks up the sauce flavor and becomes melt-in-your-mouth-yum.
If you want to do meatball sandwiches you’ll need to toast some hoagie buns in the oven and melt some provolone on to the bun and then pile on the meat balls and sauce. So good and so much better than that subway meatball thing Subway tries to pass off as Italian food.
I have been experimenting in the scary world of yeast baking. Baking has always seemed liked some kind of witch craft to me. Mostly because baking with yeast felt like shooting in the dark. Sometimes the bread or dough would rise, sometimes not. And after you had spent hours prepping and anticipating for some lovely baked goods only to discover that nothing had happened in the greased bowl under a tea towel, there would be some serious epic mourning. The joy of a baked goods didn’t seem worth the sorrow of non risen failure.
I started off slowly with some pizza dough (which I plan on sharing some seriously awesome recipes in the days to come) and then just the other day worked my way up to a loaf of cinnamon bread. Melt in your mouth amazing. David and I love cinnamon bread, but it’s store-bought processed version is expensive and mostly dry, only good for toasting. This version however was crazy good by itself or toasted and slathered in butter. Which by the way you should count the times Ree says to slather stuff in butter in this recipe. Seriously, no surprise why I cannot seem to lose a pound of flesh these days.
There are three tips I have to baking with yeast, just to help avoid failure.
1) Use the yeast in the jar, not the packets. It’s just easier and you can measure out exactly what you need as opposed to figuring out the fractions of what’s in the packet and how many partial packets you need. Packets are really only more convenient for bread machine bread which you use the standard packet quantity. I love jarred yeast.
2) Proof the yeast. This was a huge revelation for me. Take the liquids in your recipe warm them up to the point of being really warm (not lukewarm), but not scalding. I typically stick my finger in it and it should not be painful. Then pour the yeast in the bowl and gently stir. Let that sit for 10 minutes. You should be able to see the yeast expanding and you should be able to smell it. This process, I’m convinced, has made my dough rise much more consistently.
3) Don’t work in a time crunch. Yeast can feel when you are rushed, and it doesn’t like being rushed. I only bake when I don’t have a time table. As in I can let something rise for four hours if I need to. Generally when I’m home on my lunch break, I’ll prep everything and set up the dough for the first rise. So basically I double the rise time. This seems to work, when I’m in a rush the yeast will resist me at every level.
4) Also like Ree in this recipe, I have to create the conditions in my house to make it conducive to the rising process. I turn on my oven when I start baking and while the bread is rising I set it in a metal bowl on top of my warm oven covered in plastic wrap and a tea towel. I’ll then open the oven several times before I leave it just to jump-start the process. Basically I’m trying to achieve a warm place for the yeast to do it’s work, and my home (kept at frigid temps so says the husband) is not normally warm enough.
David and I fight. We fight about big stuff and small stuff, I consider this a normal part of living with a person 24/7. The fighting isn’t constant but it is there.
For us the challenge hasn’t been the fighting itself, but learning how to fight well and fair.
A counselor had recommended a certain tool and both David and I have found it helpful and we have started recommending it for others. The other day I saw a couple was fighting in public and I wanted to hand them the format, only because they just weren’t getting anywhere.
So here is a typical fight (overly simplified) without the format:
I’m so angry at you.
Why?
When you said this, it made me so angry.
Well, I’m sorry for making you angry. (insert eyeroll)
That’s not an apology. (insert slamming doors)
End Scene.
So here enters the format. Basically you start out by saying what event has triggered your feelings (a), then you describe how you interpreted that event (b), and then you describe what that interpretation led you to feel (c).
Talking Format (copyrighted by Pia Mellody, her book is next on my list to read and review)
(A) When I heard/saw you…
Example: When I saw you leave without saying goodbye…
(B) What I thought/perceived/made up about that is…
Example: What I made up about that was that you don’t really care about my feelings…
(C) And about that I feel… (share your emotions and if you struggle with that pick one of the below)
Example: And about that I feel fear and sadness.
ANGER
FEAR
JOY
PASSION
SHAME
PAIN
LOVE
GUILT
Basically with this format you are not allowed to say “you made me”. It eliminates the pointing of fingers and requires that each partner own’s their own feelings. The format also doesn’t require a half hearted apology from your partner, because you are completely owning all of your own thoughts and feelings your partner shouldn’t feel manipulated into an apology.
With the format:
When I saw that you left dishes in the sink I made up in my mind that you don’t care about the work I do around the house and about that I feel anger and pain.
Okay, I hear you. I apologize for leaving the dishes in the sink. I really do care about the work you do around the house. I was just in a hurry when I left.
End scene.
See how that is much more helpful? I think even the process of having to reformat our thoughts and feelings has been a huge help. It basically slows the argument way down and requires that we really trace our thoughts or feelings back to the source; that thought that we made up in our minds.
The format is not just limited to the married or dating, I use it with friends or at work.
The other thing that David and I have found to be helpful is taking 24 hour time outs. Basically when either of us feel an argument isn’t getting anywhere we call a time out and make an agreement to not talk about it for 24 hours. This is especially hard for me, I hate it when there are things unresolved. But after some space and time, we can have the same argument 24 hours later in about half the time and zero name calling. We can actually make progress and resolve the issue.
I figure, David and I will always have disagreements, I think success just means fighting well and in the process learning about each other and how to love each other better. Lord, help us.
Normally this is where I would post a picture of the fabulous recipe I just cooked alas the picture did not turn out well and I didn’t have the energy to properly set up another picture. So instead I am posting a picture of my very guilty looking cat Claire (wait did I say “guilty looking”? now that I’m examining this portrait she looks down right indignant).
So the other night David had plans to hang with a friend, so I made concurrent plans to veg out in pajamas and eat Indian food (which he hates). I placed my Indian food order and I drove out and back to pick it up (at least a 45 minute round trip). I came home, put on my pajama’s, prepared my plate of food (butter chicken, raitha, pankora, and naan). I found the perfect channel on the TV and I sat down, curry in my lap, with a deep contented sigh.
All of a sudden I hear a flurry of activity and I see Annyoung ( my oldest cat) chasing Claire (pictured above) down the hallway and before I can react Claire vaults off the arm of the couch and lands directly onto my dinner plate. I stare at her in horror and she begins to panic and as she panics her back feet begin to slip in the curry and she begins to projectile launch the curry all over my face, the couch, the floor and the wall. Finally she gained enough traction to get herself off my plate leaving shear devastation in her wake.
I cannot describe to you the sound that came out of mouth. It was a loud wailing that can only be categorized as deep insatiable grief. The next hour was filled with tears and laundry and vacuuming all while watching Claire carefully eat all the butter chicken out of her paws (so infuriating as I had not even had a chance to eat my food yet but here she was all licking her lips). Thankfully I still had some food left and so I ate what I could after cleaning up.
But that was a long emotional into for this very quick bit of info. I decided to make a home made version of Butter Chicken that I found off the Tasty Kitchen blog. Find recipe here.
It was fabulous, not a truly authentic version, but the ingredients were simple and the process was easy unlike most Indian food which requires special everything.
Definitely worth trying, just lock up the pets.
I really like cooking. And so when I eat something from a restaurant I’m often thinking, “I can make this.” Or “geez this seems complicated, but I’d love to try”. As far as I can remember there is only one dish I love and tried to make and have resigned myself to leaving it with the pros.
It’s the glorious classic, eggs Benedict.
I always order the harvest, which includes sautéed veggies and cream cheese. YUM.
But trying to make this beauty requires a skill and patience level I don’t ever anticipate acquiring.
The key is timing all the components to come out right at the same time, which requires like 8 hands and 5 kitchen timers. Between the sautéed veggies, poached eggs and temperamental hollandaise sauce I was flying around the kitchen with melted butter spraying our of the blender and poached eggs violently swirling in hot water. And at the end of my little experiment, the hollandaise was runny, the eggs were luke warm and the english muffin was cold and I was really really stressed out.
So about every month or so the hubs and I trek to a local breakfast joint order up some coffee and let the kitchen staff run around like crazy people and out comes the most delish breakfast dish of all time and all I had to do was show up. Dreamy.
