The recipe book project

Next week marks our third wedding anniversary. This is fairly shocking for someone who never thought she'd have a wedding let alone an anniversary.

Inspired by the impending milestone, I have decided to embark upon a venture through the recipe books my mother-in-law compiled for us as a wedding present. Sort of like the Julie & Julia project, except without the slavish devotion to things like difficult French cuisine, doing every single recipe, doing it every single night, etc.

Okay, I lied to you. I wasn't inspired by the milestone. I was looking for a way to wean myself off my addiction to eat out constantly. But it's romantic to think that this is in honor of my anniversary so you can think that if you want. Plus, I'll probably give up after a week.

I *am* working my way through the book in order, which means Josh is going to be eating an awful lot of appetizers for dinner and the like. But luckily for me he doesn't care. I also will be skipping the recipes I know for sure I won't like. For example, there is a lovely recipe for something in there calling for olives. I do not like olives. I am not going to make it out of some bullshit slavish devotion to pointlessness. This is because I am amazing, obviously.

Last week I tried out the first recipe in there that I hadn't done (in a while/ever for josh). It is my mother's recipe for sweet & sour meatballs. It is one of those hilarious '70s recipes that combines cans of corporate conglomerate shit that you would never dream of combining, but tastes delicious and rots you from the inside out. The manufacturers obviously were cooking up ideas to try to get people to buy their stuff other than the normal use.

Result: Josh spent the rest of the weekend stuffing himself with them and accusing me of putting crack in them and secretly wanting him to get fat and die. None of this is true, obviously. But score 1 for Sweet & Sour Meatballs on the yum scale.

Recipe is as follows:

SWEET & SOUR MEATBALLS

3 lbs ground beef
1 1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1 cup minced onion (note: i forgot the onion; no one noticed)
3/4 cup milk
3 eggs
3 tbsp parsley
3 tsp salt
3/8 tsp pepper (what the hell is this? can't it just be 1/2 tsp?)
1 1/2 tsp worstershire
3/4 cup butter (you can use less; it's just for browning the beef, so just use what you need to brown it without burning things)
3 bottles chili sauce (note: ridiculous recipes from '70s manufacturers to sell product noted above)
3 jars grape jelly (ditto)

mix together all ingredients through worstershire. gently shape into balls. freak out that you are coating your kitchen with e coli. wash hands every 34 seconds in scalding water. ditto for anything that a drop of ground beef could have looked at.

realize that you need a giant platter for the army's worth of meatballs this makes, and not just the one dish you were hoping would accommodate everything. have josh get new plates for you so you don't have to touch more things with meat hands.

melt shortening (butter) in large pan and brown. remove and pour off fat. heat chili and jelly in pan (I recommend a stockpot; there is no way in hell this will fit in a normal pan) stirring constantly (hahaha yeah right) until jelly is melted. add meatballs until thoroughly coated. simmer 30 minutes uncovered.

immediately put everything in the dishwasher and scrub kitchen down, certain that this is the time you will give everyone food poisoning. go play a game of Little Big Planet while you wait for the meatbals to simmer. get jelly concoction all over stove and leave it for josh to clean, swearing you are never allowed to make this again. give self arterial disease eating too much and then pooping out jam.

NB1: you can prepare a day early and refrigerate, then simmer until hot before serving.
NB2: you can keep it warm in a chafing dish if you wish to show off at parties.