Great Meatball Subs

Made meatball subs for the work crew yesterday. Never made meatballs until college, but now they're one of my favorite dishes. The original recipe I found called for making your own sauce, using three kinds of Italian sauage, etc., so needless to say I simplified it quite a bit.

1-2 lbs. ground beef, chuck, or round
1 package Italian sausage with casings removed
2 eggs
1/4 to 1/2 can of Italian bread crumbs
Minced garlic (at least 2 cloves)
Minced onion (about 1/2 a small yellow onion)

Combine all of these in a large mixing bowl, take of rings and watches and let the fun begin. Bake at 350 degrees until done all the way through. Then, depending on when you'll be serving them, you can put them in a slow cooker with a large jar of Prego or heat the sauce up immediately in a large skillet and stir the meatballs in with the sauce.

I did find that yesterday the longer the meatballs sat in the sauce in the crock pot, the better they tasted.

Serve with provolone or mozzarella cheese on a hoagie roll and enjoy. Also great the next day reheated, but there probably won't be any left.

Crispy Chicken Pitas

Ran to the grocery to pick up a quick dinner Monday night, and came up with a pretty tasty meal. I like to eat Greek-inspired food on a fairly regular basis, so that was my inspiration.

Picked up some fried chicken tenders from the deli, pita style flatbread, some spicy three pepper hummus, a tomato and a red onion. The only prep was to dice up the onion and slice the tomato. I warmed up the flatbread in the microwave, spread hummus on the bread then piled on the rest of the ingredients. Very quick, easy and tasty.

BBQ Chicken Pasta

My wife made dinner last night, and it was quite good. She just used a can of chicken, a can of pineapple chunks, Sweet Baby Ray's Hot and Spicy BBQ sauce, and some grated parmesan cheese. It was really good warm, and I bet it would be good cold, too, if there were any leftovers.

I was thinking bacon bits and green onions would also be good additions. We both agreed that next time we'll use crushed pineapple or the smaller chunks.

Just a few more hours until the weekend.

New Blog Direction

I've decided to make this blog almost exclusively about one of my favorite passions, food. I'll be sharing recipes, thoughts, menus and musings from my culinary world.

My other blog Bill-Adkins.com will be geared more towards technology, but I'm sure content might be shared on both from time to time.

So, last night I had a great taco salad with baked Doritos, taco meat, grape tomatoes, shredded cheese and some leftover chicken taco meat. Totally delicious. I may have had three helpings.

Tonight we're having BBQ chicken pasta salad. My mom made some for me to take on a road trip several years ago, and it was really good. I'm going to try and make it from memory, so it probably won't be quite as good. Perhaps I could see if she still has the recipe, but I doubt she does. Hopefully it will turn out well.

Ice Cream Results

The raspberry gelato was quite good, although my current sieve didn't get all the seeds out. I may have to look into buying a chinois, although a quick search turned up some very high prices. Don't know if I make sauces and purees enough to justify one of those.

Italian beef sandwich for lunch and taco salad for dinner; this is shaping up to a nice food day.

Weekend!

Going to see my sister tomorrow for her birthday. Mexican food here I come!

Also going to try out the ice cream maker tonight. Raspberry mango gelato, I know you're impressed. Hopefully I won't eat all of it in one sitting.

Back to Work

Had a great Christmas break, but now it's time to go back to work. Being bitterly cold outside is not making the first day back any easier. And yet, even though it's cold I still want to use my new ice cream maker.