domesticity,  Stealthy Spy Cooking

Meal Planning Day Two!

meal planning day 2

There’s a reason I made super-healthy stir-fry pork and vegetables yesterday. It was because I made super-unhealthy sour-cream sauce meatballs today. I don’t know where this recipe came from. Maybe I made it up. My grandma (Hi Gramma!) made Swedish meatballs a lot for us when I was a kid but I never got the hang of her mushroom soup sauce. I know she’s told me how to make it a million times but this sauce seems to work pretty well for me. Also, Toby likes it. He’s pretty picky about certain things tasting like they came out of a can so this works for us.

How bad is it to cook with three giant heaping serving-size spoons full of sour cream anyway? I never asked. Is it as bad as creamy alfredo sauce? Worse? I’m sure there is a way you could make this lighter. I do add milk sometimes to make it go further.

ingredients for meatballs

So for those of you hopeless cooks like me looking for new recipes, or for those of you who just want to laugh at me, here is the makeshift recipe:

Ingredients:

  • a package of hamburger (a pound? I don’t know, whatever your family eats)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup cornbread stuffing, ground into bread crumbs (or you could just use bread crumbs—imagine that!)
  • half an onion, chopped fine
  • oregano
  • garlic salt
  • pepper
  • sour cream
  • olive oil
  • some pretty green herbs snipped from your herb garden (optional)
  • Directions:

    1. Make sure you remember to get your hamburger out of the freezer the night before or the morning of. It’s impossible to make meatballs with frozen meat. Or at least that is my experience. Microwaving it never really works that great for me.
    2. Mix the hamburger, egg, chopped onion, and ground-up stuffing or breadcrumbs. Add oregano, garlic salt and pepper to your taste. (We like a lot of pepper in our house.) Mix mix mix. If you have a helper on hand, enlist her! Just make sure she washes her hands.
    3. mixer girl

    4. Make meatballs. This is pretty self explanatory, no?
    5. washing up

    6. Heat a little bit of olive oil in a skillet and sauté the meatballs.
    7. When meatballs are done, drain excess oil. Or leave it in if you like heart attacks. Sometimes I do. Heh.
    8. Add three giant scoops of sour cream and roll your meatballs around in it. Cook for 1 minute.
    9. Add pretty snipped herbs from your garden (English Thyme for me) so that your meatballs don’t look like mushy white balls of grossness.
    10. close-up

    11. Serve with boiled potatoes and a salad and enjoy!
    12. That’s all I got! Tomorrow: green enchiladas! Get your crockpots out!

    16 Comments

    • bethany actually

      I spy an octopus plate!

      The olive oil you use to fry the meatballs isn’t heart-attack inducing. Olive oil is quite good for your heart, actually.

      As for the sour cream, as long as you’re not eating all the meatballs yourself in one sitting you’re probably okay. And you could always reduce the fat by using lowfat sour cream, though I know you guys are allergic to lowfat stuff in the Ponnay house. ;-)

    • Jennifer

      YUM. I love meatballs. Homemade though. I’ve had a few frozen varieties and they were gross. I’ve been really good about cooking each night but tomorrow (actually today!) I am going out to dinner, WITHOUT KIDS! I can’t wait!!! haha.

      Looking forward to reading about enchiladas. We’ll be doing Mexican on Thursday also.

    • Ninabi

      I have a list of 6 or 7 meals that I cook over and over, too. Now- yay! It’s doubled. These look so good. I wonder how they would be with ground turkey?

    • Sonja

      I used to eat sour cream by the spoonfulls. So far, I’m doing okay… :)
      This looks so delicious. I think I may just have to make this tonight!

    • Katie

      This recipe looks delicious too. I think you should give yourself some credit. It looks to me like your food is quite delicious. :) You aren’t making shoe leather steaks or burnt offerings like my mom did. Thank goodness I didn’t get my mom’s cooking inabilities. hehe :D

    • Laurie

      This looks great! Give yourself more credit. I can’t wait to try it! (My meals are planned for this week, so next it is!) Hooray!

    • Aunt Kathy

      I haven’t had Swedish meatballs in a while. Probably since I left home! You are an inspiration to kick my grocery shopping/cooking/meal planning back into gear. So far your meals look delish! Can’t wait for your enchiladas.

    • Donna

      Everything looks yummy! You could photograph for a cookbook!! BTW, the logos on hubby’s shirts look awesome!

    • Janna from Honeyed Hashette

      This looks great and I think my husband would like it too (as long as I substituted the onion for either minced shallot or onion powder)! I will be posting a beef stroganoff recipe soon and I think you would like it. Super easy and my hubby had 2 helpings. :)

    • Gramma

      Can’t wait to try your meatball recipe. It must be good because of the sour cream if nothing else.

      My basic for “swedish” includes 2 slices of fresh bread, crumbled into 1’4 cup milk. 1/2 cup finely chopped onion, 3 Tablespoons butter, pinch of salt, 3/4 cup ground beef, 3/4 cup ground pork, 2 large eggs, 1/2 teaspoon black peper, 1/4 teaspoon all spice, 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (this is the flavor I love), 1/4 cup flour, 3 cups beef broth (I use boullion and water). 1/4 cup heavy cream.

    • BeachMama

      OH MY, those look delicious! I am so lazy, I buy my swedish meatballs at Ikea, complete with the sauce packets. We get three meals out of a bag. Total cost with sauce is $11.00. Divide that by 3 and its a pretty easy meal, less work too ;).

    • Gramma

      One of my daughters used the pre-made meatballs from Cosco in her vegetarian meal for the week. She claimed they were made with so much filler that the qualified as a no-meat meal.

    • Monique

      my most favorite snack is the lime flavored tortilla chips with plain sour cream as a dip. i will sit and eat the entire 2 cup container if given the chance. this looks yummy. thanks for sharing these… my home menu is growing!

    • Kuky

      Wow that sounds easy! I’ll have to try this and see how Alan likes it. He already shot down Vegetable Pork Stir-fry but I think I’ll just go ahead and see how he likes it. He always say no before giving things a chance. I just won’t accept it this time. :)