Day 2, Meatballs

But not just ANY meatballs.

Have you ever been to IKEA? It's a store here in Utah. Chances are, if you live anywhere else, you may not have. I don't know how many IKEAs are out there, but they've got these meatballs that are sooooooooooo good. My husband drools for them.

Well, i hadn't the faintest clue how to make them from scratch (although, i have bought them frozen before and done them up at home). But when i flipped past this massive picture in my cookbook today of big beautiful meatballs, it gave me the idea. And yes, for any of my vegetarian friends, i do apologize--my husband loves his meat.

If you want the recipe for the detailed meatballs, I found it in the "World Wide Ward Cookbook" that i bought from Walmart. That's the 'happy cookbook' that i keep mentioning. :) In that book, it's called Sweet and Sour Meatballs. But that's not what i actually made. I ended up with a few changes to the recipe and a completely different sauce (that you have GOT to try!), so it's not exactly as printed. So, does that mean since i changed it enough, i can share it here now??

the recipe called for stuff like ground beef, oats, onion, eggs, milk, this soy-sauce stuff that i won't even attempt to spell (the one that starts with a 'W'?), ect...

First off, i had no ground beef. We had ground turkey though. So, there was replacement number one. Why not? Right?

Second, no onions. But I had onion powder? My buddy said to put in 1 TBS instead of the amount of chopped onions it asked for. Happy for it anyways... i don't really care for onions. Or chopping them.

Issue number three? I really didn't care for the sauce. It called for mustard and vineger, two things that my husband and i both agree to detest. Greatly. but, i didn't have the ingredients for the sauce that i wanted to make--and the recipe wanted the meatballs cooked IN the sauce. (shrug) So i cooked them dry instead. 30 minutes in the oven at 350. By this point I was starting to wonder exactly why i chose this recipe to cook?? especially as i didn't have everything it actually asked for.

So, what did i do next? Emailed my husband and warned him that dinner may not be editable and i hoped he didn't starve.

:) He wrote back saying that he would gobble the whole thing up anyways.

Brave soul.

Meanwhile, I had rice cooking. The brown short-grain stuff that gets nice and sticky. See, i bought these triangle molds the other day at the chinese shop and i stuffed the rice down in it, squished the lid on, and then popped up these perfect and cute triangle rice thingys! (they're in the pic i posted up top) THAT part was a load of fun to make. (grin!) They looked just like the rice balls that the japanese-anime characters are always munching on.

Meatballs finished cooking, James came home with my shopping list, and i went straight to work on the sauce.

Now, this one i have to thank both my older sister for the recipe AND my mom for actually having a copy of the recipe. It made the whole dish! SO GOOD.

And shockingly simple.

One bottle of bullseye BBQ sauce
One small jar of Grape Jelly.

Mix the two in a pot until the jelly melts and the sauce is nice and hot. And that's it! "Are you sure, mom? That's it?" Yup--that was it.

Served it up along side some green-beans and home-grown zucchini. drink was an orange-mango-peach juice. Such a nice combo.

Served it up. James LOVES IT! Really really.
He kept saying "I can't believe that's just BBQ and Jelly. I would have never guessed." Which is SUCH a compliment coming from the Chef!

he also asked me... "so, how'd you get the rice like that?" which made me smirk.

Only drawback to the entire experience this time? My meatballs weren't exactly 'round', persay. They looked more like meat-cookies. LOL




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