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italian

Food, Savory

Meatballs – The Basics

Nom nom nom

Yup, I’m Italian. Yeah, it’s basically required that you know at least one way to make meatballs. That or I hear they disown you or something. (Okay, I might be making that one up. But you might as well know how to fake making a good Italian meal.)

Preheat your oven to 350. That’s right, they’re going in the oven. Surprising, since how I first learned to make meatballs just meant I put them in a frying pan.

Okay, here we go. Grab a pound of ground beef, 1 egg, 1/2 cup bread crumbs like 4C, a quarter of an onion minced, a quarter of a green pepper minced, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper, 1/4 tsp oregano, 1/4 tsp parsley, and 1/4 tsp garlic powder. Mash all of that up in a bowl and make one-inch round meatballs. Place on cooking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes until cooked through.

Once complete, you can eat them like that (my preference), or douse them in pasta sauce, cooked pasta, and fresh grated Parmesan.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to invite me for dinner.

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Food, Savory

Mozzarella and Tomato Salad

The basics. Something we can all do, and should know how to do. So I’m gonna give you the secret to my favorite treat.

Gather the following and read on.

This kept me alive and not broke when I lived in France. I would take the tram down to the grocery store and buy a container of fresh mozzarella. That’s the kind that’s a plastic tub full of semi-clear liquid and tiny white balls floating in it. Then I’d grab a few tomatoes (sometimes from the market) and bring them back to my host mom’s house. (I’ll tell you about her house sometime. Loved living there, even if it was only for four months.)

Anyway, I’d cut the tomatoes up into small pieces, and cube the mozzarella into similar sized pieces. Put them in a bowl and added ground pepper and sea salt. (I didn’t want to steal all the spices from my host mom’s cabinet, after all.)

Put that on a loaf of French bread (fresh from the bakery that’s below the apartment), and toast it in the oven. You’ve got heaven.

Now that I’ve brought the “recipe” home, I’ve added some more spices. Mostly garlic powder and some cayenne. A dash of parsley and some oregano and it’s perfect. Serve it with my toast bites I make and you’ve made yourself a quick appetizer to take to your next party or a picnic in the park. I’m invited, right?

Yummy and ready for the picnic!

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Food, Savory

Toasty Bread

Carb-aholic here. Pasta, rice, bread, tortillas. You name it, it has carbs, it’s headed for my dinner plate.

So why wouldn’t I make bread bites. Little triangles of goodness that can serve as the basis for any dip or veggie salad at your next party. Preheat the oven to 400.

While that’s going down, take a loaf of Italian bread and cut it into 1 to 1 1/2 inch pieces. Then cut those into thirds or quarters. In a small cup or bowl, melt some butter, a few dashes of garlic powder, black pepper, a small dash of cayenne, and a sprinkling of Italian seasonings (or just some parsley, basil, and oregano). Melt that mix so it’s spreadable and make those pieces of bread glisten.

Cook in oven until the pieces are golden (watch them closely, they can burn. I have done it before).

And ta-dah!!

I could eat them just like that.

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Food, Savory

Birthday Stromboli

Okay, so stromboli is not just for birthdays. It just so happens that my mom and I used to make it a lot and I thought, for her birthday, that it might be nice to make it for her again. I may have traveled 1,300 miles to celebrate with her. Anyway, back to the stromboli. Unlike a calzone, I do NOT put pizza sauce in, nor do I put tomato in it at all. Sooo, with that said, I opted to make my famed stromboli. nom nom

Gathered troops. Note the onion, green pepper, mushrooms, shaved beef from the deli, and american cheese. There’s pizza dough involved as well.

First of all, you must get the oven preheated to 350. While that’s getting all nice and toasty, get a frying pan going with some olive oil. In that, cook up some diced green pepper and slices of onion. Cook it through on medium until the onion is cooked through. I added a half pound of the shaved beef to the pan and kicked up the heat a hair to get the pan hot.

While I had been handed a glass of Moscato wine (that’s a sweet white wine), before I took a sip, I may have dropped a few drops into the pan to keep the meat moist. When that cooked off a bit, I was dropping in the mushrooms. Cooked those through.

Cookin’ up some goodness.

Then I went looking for a rolling pin to roll out the dough. But, being at my mom’s house, a normal rolling pin wouldn’t exactly be found in her kitchen. So I found this random beauty in a drawer…

What kind of rolling pin is this??

It looks like some sort of weird futuristic kitchen device. Why do you need two ends to a rolling thingy?

Anyway, I layered on some American cheese and then started scooping on the filling.

Filling it up!

I may have gone overboard and overfilled it, but I pulled the dough over and then cut a few little holes in the top of the dough to let it breathe. Bake for 25 minutes or until the top is browned.

Will be super hot when it comes out. As much as you want to eat it now, let it cool for 8 minutes.

I wanted to eat the whole thing myself. That’s probably a bad idea.

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