Classic Spaghetti and Meatballs

For the meatballs we used this:

Meatballs

2 slices white sandwich bread (crusts discarded), torn into small cubes

1/2 cup buttermilk or 6 tablespoons plain yogurt thinned with 2 tablespoons sweet milk

1 pound ground beef chuck

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves

1 large egg yolk

1 small clove garlic , minced (1 teaspoon)

3/4 teaspoon table salt

Ground black pepper

vegetable oil for pan-frying (about 1 1/4 cups)

And for the tomato sauce:

2 T unsalted butter

1/4 c grated onion (or in food processor)

1/4 t dried oregano

salt to taste

2 garlic cloves

1 can crushed tomatoes (28 oz)

1/4 t sugar

2 T fresh basil

1 T olive oil

ground black pepper

Heat butter over mediumheat until melted. Add onion, oregano, and 1/2 t salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated and onion is golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in tomatoes and sugar; increase heat to high and bring to simmer. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until thickened slightly, about 10 minutes. Off heat, stir in basil and oil; season with salt and pepper.

Stuffed Green Peppers

Zach and Llael went to their pantry and said,
"Hey! We have lots of extra Green Peppers... and meat! We should use these somehow, lets send Matt and Brian to the store to pick up ingredients for a dish we haven't looked up yet."
And so, with such humble beginnings, our dinner was planned.


After I returned from the store with assorted ingredients that I felt might be helpful for a stuffed bell pepper dish, (they most certainly were not helpful at all, but hey... at least we got to snack on blueberries!) we got to looking up a good recipe to use. Nothing that we could find was close to what we wanted, so we ended up modifying a Bell Pepper stuffed with spiced lamb recipe.

Our Ingredients
Green Pepper	4
Brown Rice	1/2 cup
Onion (chopped)	1
Ground pork	1 lbs (ish)
Pepper Jack Cheese (grated)	1 block
Garlic Ginger Paste	1 Tbl
Red Pepper flakes	1/2 Tea
Cumin	1 Tbl
Cardamom	1 Tea
Sun Dried Tomatoes (Diced)	1 can (12 oz)
Fresh Cilantro (chopped)	3 Tbl

Brian cut the tops of the peppers and de-seeded them and then boiled them for 3 minutes until soft. While he was doing that we threw the rice into a rice cooker and started the Meat. We cooked the onions in oil until brown and then tossed the meat and spices. Once the meat was cooked we put in the ginger paste.

Once everything was cooked we combined the meat, rice, cilantro and most of the cheese, and tomatoes and then stuffed the peppers full (And boy did we stuff them, we probably had twice as much filling as we needed, but we were making STUFFED peppers, and you certainly could not say ours were not stuffed.)

We then baked them for 30 minutes at 350 in a casserole dish so if they fell over the filling wouldn't spread out.

And then all that was left was the eating! We felt it wasn't spicy enough so we had some red chili sauce on the side. (And a picture or two)

Pictures above yay!