Italian Meatballs

Last Friday was the office holiday party and due to so many budget cuts, there's no money in the department budget for going out or catering or much of anything at all. Kinda stinks, but we sucked it up and had an Italian potluck. The result was a real good lunch of antipasto, salad, fruit, lasagna, a most excellent cheesecake, and my contribution, meatballs in sauce. It's been a long time since I made Italian meatballs, so I went looking for recipe in my old cookbooks and I found this one for spaghetti and meatballs in my 1980 Betty Crocker International Cookbook. I didn't make the spaghetti, just the meatballs. They were good - no pictures, though, sorry. I'll post them next time. And there will be a next time.

Meatballs!
Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds ground round
3/4 cups dry bread crumbs *(make your own)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 Tablespoons fresh grated Parmesan**
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

* Make your won breadcrumbs - I toasted some 2 day old Italian bread, let it cool, then ran it through the food processor to make the bread crumbs.
**2 Tablespoons? Really? No. I added a little more, about a 1/2 cup.

Method:
1) Heat oven to 350.
2) Mix all of the ingredients together and use the very best mix mixer you've got, your hands!
3) Shape the mixture into 1 1/2 inch balls. (For easier shaping, dip your hands into cold water from time to time.)
4) Place on an ungreased jelly roll pan (I lined mine with heavy duty foil for easier cleanup).
5) Cook uncovered 15-20 minutes. (I "sacrificed" one to make sure they were done. Yummy.)

As for the sauce, well, I went easy and cheap. Once at work, I put the meatballs in a crockpot, and added a 26 oz can of Hunt's Garlic & Herb Spaghetti Sauce. I gave it a quick stir and let it sit in the crock on low from about 0900 until lunch at 1130.

Enjoy,
Lorence

If it's cheap and easy it must be...Slutty Chicken

With a name like that, you know there's a story...

So what do I make for dinner when I haven't been to the grocery store in a while and all I've got is one large boneless chicken breast and some pasta...? Dang, not even a can or jar of tomato sauce. Ah, my wife is headed to Target - "Hey, Honey, pick up a jar of sauce while you're out, ok?" So she returns with a cheap jar of Target brand "Traditional" spaghetti sauce - 99¢; I dump 2/3's of it into a medium sized sauce pan and add the diced up chicken (which I had gotten pretty cheap, too, on sale for $1.29 lb). I dropped in some dried basil, dried oregano and a couple of minced cloves of garlic, then slow simmered it covered for about 40 minutes (stirring occasionally, of course) while Boogie and I played Lego... There was a package of Kroger brand campanelle in the cupboard (another whole 99¢), so I boiled that up.

The chicken had cooked up so tender in the sauce that it was falling apart into shreds -just perfect and exactly what I had in mind... I served the sauce over the campanelle with some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (the most expensive item in the entire meal!).

Both my wife and Boogie were happily wolfing it down when I realized that I had just made a meal that was cheap and easy and for some reason it reminded me of a girl we all knew about in high school - thus the name, Slutty Chicken.

Sorry, no photos, so just make some and see for yourself.

Enjoy,
Lorence