Meatballs. Yeah commence happy dance

Okay so apparently, I do more cooking than anything. I realized I should probably give away one of my favorite SECRETS...Cooking secrets that is. I'm talking about Meatballs. Homemade, hands messy, a part of your soul, and a whole lot of love poured into each little ball you hand form. These babies are moist, and they taste amazing. I have REFERENCES.


What Cha Need:

1 lb ground beef. (I dont care what percentage...but I use lean ground beef)
garlic powder
salt and pepper
1 egg
3/4 cups of water
3/4 cups fancy cheese (I used asiago, romano, & parmesan combined)
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I use these A LOT don't I?)
and a honkin' bowl.


Now you see all the ingredients up there? Exactly as they are listed LAYER...See that....I SAID LAYER everything. NO MIXING, no combining early. LLLAAAYYYYEEERRRRRRR. Don't question me on my madness.
This means you put the meat on the bottom, then the garlic powder right on top (now some people in my family are sensitive to garlic so use your best judgement on how much to use), then salt and pepper on top (same use your best judgement rule) and so on and so forth.

Here we are in order

Now when everything is sitting pretty on top of one another in the order listed wash your hands.


Then take off any jewelry that means anything to you that is on your hands. I would hate for meat or crumbs or cheese to get stuck in a diamond, or a crevice you cant clean on your wedding ring or something. See i did it...

This is the part when i usually heat up my pasta sauce for spaghetti and meatballs.

Mixing time!
Now this is fun for the kids to get in on too.

SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH mix that with your hands. Feel the icky gooey, and mush it all together. I would say do this for about 3-4 minutes.

once everything is mixed and loving one another in that bowl you will need to form little balls about the size of a golf ball maybe a bit bigger, depending on how big you want them. I then place them all in the sauce as its heating up and i cover it. 

Occasionally i will come by and jostle the pan, but be careful not to rough them up too much for they might break apart and you end up with just a "meat sauce".

After about 5-7 minutes on one side in the sauce I turn mine GENTLY over. Recover pan. Again these babies are fragile. Another 5 minutes and i would normally take one lucky pup out of the pan and cut it in half to make sure its cooked through. And i sample too...NO big deal. Usually at this moment i revel in my awesomeness because my mouth just went to some sort of sicilian heaven. MMMM

You are welcome! Now you make!

The poor man pasta

The poor man pasta... how do I explain this? 

I came up with this pasta idea, when all I had were a few ingredients to make something for dinner. I became a master at this task when I went to college. You know the saying "starving artist". Well I know it first hand. Now I made this batch just for me and my two year old. so you will have to adjust accordingly.

Ingredients:

Egg Noodles

frozen corn

frozen peas

Frozen spinach (I always bought fresh spinach in the produce section, then when i get home i stick it in the freezer)

1/4 cup bread crumbs

garlic

oregano

salt

pepper

Olive oil

Tyson Grilled and Ready Chicken breasts (always have some of these on hand-salads, quesadillas, pasta dishes such as this, wraps) 

Instructions are easy.

Cook the chicken in the oven at 375 for 18-20 minutes. Or if your really short on time it's microwavable.

Cook pasta. Cook the amount you feel your family will devour.

Cook the corn, peas, and spinach in the same pot...its okay i promise. (since the spinach was frozen all I had to do was crunch it in my hands and it was pretty much shredded into the mix of veggies. hidden from sight..ninja like)

In a little bowl while the stuff is cooking mix breadcrumbs, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper together. 

After pasta is complete drizzle some olive oil over the pasta. Chop cooked chieken-add it to pasta. Drain water from veggies and add to pasta. Mix together. Then add the little bowl of mixed seasonings. mix well. You can add some butter or more olive oil to the mix if i needs a little extra moisture. I added about 2 more tablespoons of butter to it and mixed until it was melted. Thats it your done. Pretty easy.