oh nom nom nom

So my new dress?

It has spaghetti sauce dribbles all over it and I'M NOT SORRY.

I turned out my first try at meatballs and they came out stellar, stellar I say! I'm not sure why I waited so damned long in the first place. I lived in dread of half cooked or overcooked meatballs that would taste like sawdust and thus, I left all my meatball preparations to someone with more experience.

But since I live with a kid who adores meatballs and I'm celebrating my six year anniversary with an Italian meatball lover, I figured I'd give it a whirl. Wanna know how I did it? (No, Bear Allen, there was no grape jelly involved, mmkay?)

Before we get started, I apologize for the ish directions. I'm not a very accurate cook and pretty much everything is a guestimate. Are you ready? Good. Get the following crap together.

1lb each of ground turkey, pork, and beef. I think I might have used a pound and a half of beef though.

2 shallots, minced

1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs

2 eggs

1/4 cup grated parm, romano, and/or asiago. I went with romano.

5 cloves of garlic, minced (more or less depending on how many syllables you have in your last name and/or if it ends in a vowel)

Mix all of that together in a big old bowl, squishing all up in there for a good few minutes. It helps that you're using three types of meat because it's easier to see if it's well blended between all the various hues of well, you know, meat slop. Roll it up into decent sized balls, plop on a baking sheet, and slide in the oven at 400 until they look meatballish. Mine took about 20 minutes. Oh, and don't forget the salt and pepper.

Now for the sauce. I should call it the Somewhere Between Giada and Sandra Lee Sauce. There are no fresh tomatoes involved but I didn't pour in two cans of ragu, grate some cheese on top, and call it Semi Homemade either. (My FIL used to call it Mostly Store-bought. I miss that man.) So maybe it's in Rachel Ray territory. Of course mentioning Food Network people is probably not a ringing endorsement but whatever, this shizz is tasty, okay? Give it a while.

But first, you'll need the following:

one green pepper, diced

four cloves of garlic, minced (see Italian rule above)

2 lrg cans of stewed tomatoes

2 lrg cans of crushed tomatoes

2 small cans of diced tomato

2 small cans of tomato sauce

1/4 cup of tomato paste

a half cup or so of red wine (cheap is fine)

1 tbsp each of thyme, basil, and oregano

1 tsp chili powder

2 tsp of sugar

One onion, diced unless you happen to have half a red onion and half a vidalia onion hanging around, then use that.

one jar of roasted red pepper, diced and juices saved (or you could not be a lazy heifer and roast two yourself. It's super easy, I swear and probably cheaper. Just burn it on high in the oven, put in a paper bag to cool, then strip off the burned skin and carry on with your bad self. Not burned. Charred. I apologize. Charred.)

If I was feeling really sassy, I would have chopped up four slices of bacon, cooked them up, slid the pieces down my gullet, and used the bacon grease as a starter. But I was feeling lazy, as per usual, and dropped a bit of olive oil in the pan instead.

I cooked down the onion and green pepper with a little salt and pepper first. Then I added the garlic and the herbs. Next came the red pepper and the wine. I let that cook for a bit before squeezing in the tomato paste as mine comes in a tube resembling toothpaste that might have grossed me out the first time I used it.

Once that's bubbling all nicely, dump in all that tomato crap, the chili powder, and the sugar. Taste to make sure you aren't horribly offended and tweak as necessary. As a hint, it always needs more pepper. I have no idea why but if you can't figure out what tastes off, that's usually what is it, lack of pepper.

Then you just let it simmer low and slow until it's all thick and tasty and gloriously red. Then dump in your meatball masterpieces and let it simmer a bit more.

Boil up some pasta and bask in the glow of awesome.

You're welcome.

This week's Sunday Dinner

There is nothing better than beef. Bacon, of course, ranks pretty high but a good piece of beef is a thing of beauty. When I was a kid, my mom used had a cookbook with a burgundy cover that I loved to peruse. The pictures looks like something the Two Fat Ladies would come up with but the results were divine. One of those recipes was called London Broil and instructed you to marinate a nice side of beef for a few hours and then save part of it for a follow up recipe called Buckingham Beef Salad.

I'd completely forgotten about this particular blend of awesomeness until my grocery store circular offered a sale price on London Broil. Immediately, my insides demanded I stuff it with deliciousness, never you mind the fact that I don't have the recipe and haven't made it since I was fourteen or so. I would figure it out if it killed me.

And figure it out I did. This stuff was the bombdiggity or perhaps I was simply giddy on lighter fluid fumes and the thrill of managing my first perfect grill fire of the season.

Either way, it was good eats at Casa de la Hot Mess and I managed to approximate the flavors pretty well. I made it a family affair and served it with garlic green beans in the style of my father in law and rounded it out with yummy sour cream and herb potatoes.

Meat and potatoes.

Does it get any better for a Sunday Dinner??

Why yes it does. May I present to you a cake that tastes and feels like a tagalong Girl Scout cake??

The exact recipe isn't important. You just need three things for success here, one yellow cake slightly warm from the oven, a half cup or so of smooth peanut butter, and a tasty milk chocolate icing. You just nuke the peanut butter for a few seconds until it spreads easily, about 30 seconds by my count. Slather it all over your cake. Next, freeze it until the peanut butter is nice and solid, then spread your icing on top. Pour yourself a glass of milk and try not to eat the whole pan.

You're welcome in advance.

Before I go, wanna see my shoes??

They were free courtesy of a credit I don't recall earning but took advantage of nonetheless. It's a wonderful color, one of my favorite colors as I'm a turquoise, aqua, sage, mint loving heifer.

And because my hair felt like cooperating, here's a shot of that too.

Even Tigger approves.

Busy as a bee

I want you to pretend you're looking at a hunter green baby tee shirt with a  little dude in lederhosen sweetly embroidered on the front along with a cute pair of green striped shorts to go with it. Why are you pretending when I could be posting pictures? Because my kid hates my face and a upchucked all over it before I can get a picture.

::le sigh::

Tomorrow is laundry day though so I suppose I'll try to catch him before he goes all Vesuvius on me again. But at least he didn't pee on my bed today. He saved that little treat for his sister.

But enough about baby grossness. Let's discuss Sunday dinner. Not to toot my own horn here (or totally to toot my own horn as what else is a blog?)

It.was. AMAZEBALLS!

It was originally supposed to be Saturday dinner but my hot mess ass had to wait until the last minute to go to the store and buy a grill. By the time I was done ordering children around, saying not to nice things at random screws, and cursing whomever had the good sense to misplace the stupid rachet, it was near dark and too late to grill up my delicious, on sale ribeyes. Instead, I fired up the grill after church on Sunday and laid it out.

Of course, Sunday wasn't free of mishaps either. I tried out this new dessert recipe I found in the latest issue of All You which instructed me to grill some poundcake. Yeah, uh no. I didn't grill it. I charred the living crap out of it. Genius move, I know. Lucky for two kidlets who live for Sunday dessert, I had a box of gingerbread mix that's been sitting around since Christmas. So we tried again.

And let me tell you, the gingerbread was per.fect. In fact, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to try this recipe with anything other than gingerbread. Lemon + blueberries + gingerbread = heaven.

Would you like the recipe? It was ridiculously simple.

Just take 1/2c heavy cream plus 1Tbsp of sugar and whip it until you get to the soft peak stage. Fold in 1/4 lemon curd. Drop a dollop on top of some gingerbread and sprinkle with a small handful of blueberries. Shovel in your mouth like no one feeds you and call it good.

The blueberries pop on your tongue in the middle of a fluffy, tangy cloud of lemon cream and it just feels like summer.

I might have eaten two pieces yesterday and two more today.

Butter is a beautiful thing

Don't ask me why there is deodorant on my countertop.
Actually, don't ask me why any of that crap is on my counter.
Ask pinky, aka miss yes, I cleaned the counters, mommy, aka
not really, I'm just hoping you'll let me watch tv anyway.

It was Paula Deen day up in the Snarktastical household. I felt like I slathered the whole world with copious amounts of butter for Sunday dinner but thinking about it now, I really didn't use that much.

It's quite possible, however, that I really am a fat ass and that's a crapton of butter. But whatever, haters. My potatoes were the bombdiggty. Want to know how I made them?

1) Cut up a bunch of potatoes. Any kind will do but I'm quite partial to reds. Since they were pretty small, I quartered most of them. You'll want to cut them into 1-2 inch pieces, depending on how big your mouth is. If I were making them for pinky, I would have left them whole. That's one way to keep a child's mouth from running at the table.

2) Boil up a bunch of potatoes. Drop them in a pot of salted water, bring to a rolling bowl and keep cooking until they poke easily with a fork. This usually takes about 20 minutes.

3) Drain up a bunch of potatoes. I think that part's pretty self explainatory, yes? Then onward we go.

4) Butter up a bunch of potatoes. I flopped them all into a nice bowl and then dropped at many pats of butter on there as made my heart happy. I used skinny pats lest I get too excited and end up with a ham in my face.

5) Stir up a bunch of potatoes. Just chop up a bit of thyme, sprinkle it in there and stir it up along with the rapidly melting butter. Salt and pepper to taste.

At this point, you could be done. However, I had leftover stuffed mushroom filling that was too good for the garbage can so I toasted that in a small skillet on the stove and sprinkled it on top for extra yummy goodness. If that sounds tasty to you, here's what's in it: about 2tbsp of both breadcrumbs and shredded parm, one clove of minced garlic, and a 1/2tsp each of sage and thyme plus salt and pepper to taste.

The stuffed mushrooms and Chicken red-wine-posing-as-Marsala recipes came from the Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian cookbook I've had in my trunk for more than a year and have only just now got around to trying. So far, I like it. But I'll need to try a few more recipes before I can give the old Starktastical only Italian via marriage and numerous viewings of Goodfellas seal of approval.

Sunday Dinner

Oh what a beautiful morning!

My children made me breakfast on Sunday. Okay, so I made them make breakfast. This makes me responsible for the girlchild leaving the house this morning looking like she caught a case of the measles. I'd almost rather she had. Then, I wouldn't have to explain that I let my kid get popped in the face by a roving band of melted butter that hopped right from the frying pan and onto her skin. Dude, totally her fault for dropping a piece of ham on to the skillet from a high point, right? Or, yanno, my fault for not paying attention while she was cooking.

Then there was the moment when we got to church I asked pete where the diaper bag was.

"Oh, you must have forgotten it at home, mommy."

Wut, who?? I, who said, pete, get my purse and the diaper bag and go get in the car?

Yeah, sure, I forgot it. ::eyeroll:: Thank God pudding didn't have a massive blow out at church because what better way is there to spend your Mother's day than getting shat on by your own kid.

Le sigh.

Let's talk about dinner, shall we?

Before you yell at my husband for making me cook on Mother's Day, please understand that I adore our Sunday dinner tradition. I plan the menu well in advance, researching recipes, wondering if I should buy a new serving platter or baking pan, what new food to offer up, etc. I planned this Sunday's dinner before I even realized what today was and once it was planned, the hounds of hell couldn't stop me from looking forward to making my very first poundcake and attempting homemade beef pot pie.

Since my greatgrandmother taught me to eat my veggies before dessert, let's start with dinner. For my Sunday Dinners, I've been working with the Cover and Bake cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. I cannot rave enough about the awesomeness contained in these marvelous pages. In addition to some kick ass recipes perfectly suited for my tastes, as a bonus, this book spends a huge amount of time explaining why they've chosen to make the recipe the way they did, how to select ingredients, and what type of equipment to use. Even if you know how to cook well and can easily tie up the perfect pork roast, I guarantee you this book will teach you things you didn't know.

Today, it taught me to make a perfect pot pie. First, the ingredients.

You'll also need your favorite biscuit dough or pie crust recipe.

So now that you've got all that gathered, let's proceed. Heat up the butter in a large pot and cook the beef, seasoning with salt and pepper until browned. Remove from pan and set aside. While resisting the urge to shove all the tasty beef down your gullet, brown the onion and carrots. Stir in the garlic then sprinkle in the flour. Keep stirring and cook flour until golden brown. Then slowly add the wine, scraping up any browned bits. Next, pour in the chicken broth, tomato paste, and thyme. Stir until smooth. Dump the beef you haven't managed to eat back into the pot and stick a lid on it. Then let that bad boy simmer on low until the beef is nice and tender.

Slap the whole shebang in cassarole dish. I used buttermilk biscuit dough for my topping. I rolled it out, stamped out about 12 biscuits and laid them on top all nice like. Then I baked it at 400 for about 20 minutes or until the biscuits were nice and brown.

Profit.

So for mother's day, mr man gave me exactly what I wanted, another opportunity to turn out an amazing dinner, not because I'm the type of sap who lovingly declares how much they just love taking care of their family but because I like being a grade A attention whore in my cute apron.