New Recipe of the Week

One of my goals for the new year was to have my husband pick out a new recipe each week for me to prepare. I really like this idea because I actually would like to become a better cook and making the same old stuff all of the time won't help me accomplish that.

This week he chose a pretty simple dish from Rachel Ray magazine (P'sghetti and Meatballs)- it is basically a spaghetti and meatball dish. The sauce and meatballs are both made from scratch. Here are the basic ingredients (I'm not going to write everything out because it really wasn't a keeper):

three 28 oz cans peeled Italian tomatoes

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

6 smashed cloves of garlic

salt and pepper

1 small chopped onion

2 eggs plus 2 egg whites

1 pound extra lean ground beef

2 slices whole wheat bread ground into breadcrumbs

grated Parmesan cheese

whole wheat spaghetti

The sauce tasted nothing like what you would buy in a jar- which I thought was really good. My only issue is that the cooking time for the sauce was over an hour (it used whole canned tomatoes) whereas I get the same taste when I make my super quick sauce.

Erica's Super Quick Sauce

one can of diced tomatoes

chopped onion

oregano

salt pepper

whatever other things I feel like adding

throw everything into a pan and simmer while your pasta is cooking. mix pasta and sauce and then liberally add grated Parmesan cheese. yum.

So, I will not be making Rachel Ray's sauce again. The meatballs were really good, but I didn't follow her exact recipe because I was only using 10 oz. of ground beef instead of 16 oz. so I just did what I usually do when I make meatballs- I added what seemed good to add. What I did do that her recipe called for was I cooked the onion in olive oil until it was soft and once it was cooled I added it to the meatball mixture. My husband absolutely loved them! I ended up making eleven and he ate eight of those. I feels good when you make something that someone else loves.

In the end, even though the sauce ended up being a long winded version of what I usually make, I learned a new technique for my meatballs. Also, I actually got my husband to eat whole wheat pasta which is completely amazing.